For all of Arrow’s fourth season we’ve been left with the massive question of ‘who’s in the grave?’, and now there’s confirmation on just who’s bitten the bullet. It should go without saying, but there’s some pretty heavy spoilers ahead.

In the very first episode of this current season, debuting uber-rogue Damien Darhk promised that somebody close to the Emerald Archer would die… then we were flashed-forward six months and to the site of Stephen Amell’s Oliver stood at a grave and being consoled by Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen. The only person that we know who’s definitely not in the ground is Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity Smoak, for she was later shown waiting at the site for Ollie to get done with paying his respects.

So, that’s where we’re currently at, and now there’s some leaked images that indicate just exactly whose name is on said gravestone. Read on at your own peril:

SPOILERS

Still with us? If so, that means the gloves are well and truly off as we’re veering into major, major spoiler territory. But before we get to the grim reveal, this particular spoiler is one that has producer Marc Guggenheim all kinds of pissed off, and some would argue rightly so. He’s gone on record with The Hollywood Reporter to say, “Look, it’s not cool. Straight up. Honestly, I just look at these paparazzi people as like, they’re just spoiling it for everybody. They’re taking a big steaming dump on the work that all these people do.”

You can certainly see Guggenheim’s point, hence why we’re including plenty of spoiler warnings and leaving this reveal down to you (seriously, if you still want to avoid the spoiler, it’s not too late to turn back…), but with the information now out there, continue to read on if you really, really, really do want to find out who’s about to be offed in the ever-great Arrow. Again, you’ve been warned.

Amongst the few leaked images snapped by paparazzi, the below one is pretty much all you need to know – and it doesn’t get more spoiler than this:

Yep, the person in the grave is indeed Katie Cassidy’s Laurel Lance. And the death is going to stick, as in dead dead. Of course, in a show that has been known to drop its corpses in one of Ra’s al Ghul’s Lazarus Pits, how permanent is dead dead? We’ll have to wait and see, although Guggenheim and executive producer Wendy Mericle are insisting that this death is going to be a permanent arrangement, even if there’s maybe the chance of Laurel turning up again in some form in one of The CW’s DC-based shows.

Guggenheim explained, “Dead is not goodbye. We definitely recognise across all three shows that when we kill off a character, it means something different now. I’m not going to put a qualitative judgement on whether it’s more or less impactful. I’ll leave that up to the audience. But certainly, we acknowledge that there’s a difference. Arrow much more so than Flash or Legends, for a lot of reasons, it traffics in death. For better or for worse, death is a part of the show. What we’re finding as we’re pushing into Season 5, the show has to evolve. The concept of death on the show is evolving and changing as we’ve seen with Sara Lance. As the show has evolved, so has death.”

On having this death stick, Wendy Mericle said, “It’s going to be huge and significant. There’s no question that it is going to be shocking. It was a shocking thig for us to process and to write the aftermath. We really wanted to make sure that we did it in a way that was very honourable and gave us space to honour all the characters’ various reactions to it. The episodes we’ve written in the aftermath are devastating. They’re meant to be. We wanted to explore that and have everybody feel the impact of this loss.”

Interestingly, both Guggenheim and Mericle admitted that the writers didn’t actually want to kill off Laurel, but they felt that the move was warranted to get a decent pay-off on a plot arc that started back in the Season 4 premiere. At that point, there’d been no decision made on just who was going to be in the grave.

The episode in which this big reveal happens is scheduled to air tonight in the US, with UK audiences having to wait a little while longer for this to all play out.

Moving forward, we know for definite that The Flash is due to meet the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance, known as Black Siren, later on in the Scarlet Speedster’s second season. Other than that, there’s always the chance that an alternative/past/future Laurel could turn up in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, a show that’s now been confirmed for a second season.

Where Arrow and that world’s standard narrative is concerned, though, it looks as if that’s it as far as Laurel Lance is concerned.