It is worth providing an explanation first, I think.

“Fridging” is a term which is used to describe the death of a female character to further the development of and advance the plot for a male character. It is typically the bastion of the lazy screenwriter, given that it is a tired and overused cliché. You need only take a quick perusal of this TV Tropes page, or indeed the Women in Refrigerators website where the concept was first defined, to appreciate quite how proliferated our media has become with this hackneyed trope.

More to the point, though, there is often an inherent misogyny and sexism to this trope. That’s very much self evident, really; when a writer kills off a female character to further develop a male one, then the implicit suggestion is that her story is one not worth telling.



Arrow has engaged in this not once, not twice, but at least five times - this is in a show which hasn’t even begun its fifth season yet. For obvious reasons, that’s not really something to be proud of.

In response to the obvious, immediate counterpoint; Arrow, though focused on a male main character, also acts as something of an ensemble show with the supporting cast. But, I think even more pertinent is the fact that if your efforts to develop the lead are at the expense of the supporting characters, then there is an issue with the writing.

That’s what’s at the heart of this, really. Fridging isn’t just inherently offensive and demeaning, it’s also indicative of bad writing. To revel in cheap angst motivated solely by a quick death isn’t just lacking in originality, it’s lacking anything resembling emotional maturity, and the ability to write something a little more complex.

What follows is a discussion of those five times, and an explanation of just why they were mistakes, and what exactly is so offensive about them. In case you’ve not realised, there will be spoilers across the entirety of Arrow, up to and including the fourth season finale. This article does assume the reader will have at least a basic understanding of Arrow, but it should be accessible for the casual viewer. There’s a summary of sorts at the end, if you want the condensed version however.

Each of the following clips belongs, of course, to the CW Network, and originate from their popular superhero drama Arrow.

Shado (2x09)

This one, of course, is in many ways a textbook example of a fridging. It’s framed explicitly in terms of Oliver, and Oliver’s feelings; Shado’s death isn’t allowed to be about her, and ultimately in her final moments, the character is sidelined in favour of another. It was carried forward as a motivation for Slade Wilson, the second season’s main adversary. He was wonderful, of course, but the fact remains that Shado was cast aside to provide angst for not just one, but two, male characters.

In some regards, this particular instance is to be expected. Given that Shado was on the Island with Oliver in the past, it was arguably a death sentence in many ways; about half the supporting cast who have been on the island did eventually die. It’s even fair to say that this is quite a tense scene, which does work quite well, dramatically speaking.

But you can’t avoid the fact that, here, a female character was stripped of her autonomy and her agency, with all control taken from her; she was then removed from the narrative, with her death not about her, not completing her own character arc, but being made about the other, male characters.

Moira Queen (2x20)

It’s worth including this by measure of contrast, actually, because I think that this isn’t a fridging as such. Certainly, it retains key elements of them - Moira is killed by Slade, for revenge on Oliver, to cause him pain. It’s built as a deliberate parallel to Shado’s death, and you’ve unarguably got the basic tenets of a fridging there.

However, it’s important to focus on the one key difference. Here, Moira is in control; she takes command of the scene, and ultimately her death is just as much about her as it is about the other characters. The death is built around her character, and the situation arises from it; Moira dies, ultimately, in one final act of protecting her children. Given that her character arc had been, in many ways, about becoming a better mother, this final sacrifice is also a moment of redemption, and the culmination of the trajectory she’d been taking across the past two seasons.