Arrow Season 3 Spoilers: Scoop on Main Character's Exit from Series

The CW's Arrow returned with a new episode on Wednesday entitled "Broken Arrow" that said farewell to a series regular.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ARROW AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

The episode featured the departure of Colton Haynes as Roy Harper aka Arsenal after he faked his own death in order to clear the name of Oliver Queen and make everyone think the Arrow had died.

The cast of the show had been tweeting and Instagram-ing about an emotional goodbye, so it's clear this was it. But apparently this had been in the works for a while.

Buzzfeed spoke with executive producer Greg Berlanti about the exit.

"When we made Colton's deal, he was coming off of Teen Wolf where he was beloved, and he had a lot of opportunities," Berlanti said. "So we did a trial thing where we said, for his sake and ours, 'We'll just do a bunch of episodes and see if you like it and if you enjoy it.' And he did. Then pilot season came up that year and before another pilot could snatch him up, we made a two-year deal, so we always knew we were on a clock."

"We're grateful that he, in the nascent stages of our show, really gave us the time and commitment to help get the show out there and get seen and talked about," he continued. "He was such a wonderful element as a character and a person. It was super sad, but everybody kinda looked at each other and realized that he's at the start of, what I'm sure will be, an incredibly incredibly impressive career. It's great that he gets to go on and have that and we got to have him while we did."

Berlanti also told Entertainment Weekly that this is just par for the course on television. "Every year characters come and go on all these shows," he said. "It's just the nature. We always try and do it in the right away, I guess."

But the good news is that the producers said Haynes would likely be back for at least one episode this season and could return down the road, or on the yet-to-be-titled Arrow/Flash spinoff.

What do you make of this news? Let us know in the comments section.