Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-31953669-20180124124137/@comment-26397825-20180315012640

Pretty much what Someone said; Roman was supposed to be a one off character, he wasn't supposed to last past the first couple of episodes. They enjoyed writing him so much that they kept him around, and he ended up becoming a bit of a problem - they couldn't find a way to keep him around in the later story without affecting the other characters and villains and plot points.

Basically they said they had to kill him off because he's the type of character who would be involved later down the line so his lack of presence would be questionable, and they enjoyed him too much to keep him out of it if he did survive anyway.

Also, I know no one has said it in this thread but it's likely gonna crop up at one point; the writers kept writing him because they liked him, not because the fans liked him. The fans enjoying Roman was just a bonus to them.

Thinking about it, I wonder if Watts was supposed to be introduced at the end of V3 when Roman was on the ship controlling the systems with the Black Queen virus? It would make sense that an "Atlesian scientist" would have been able to be on the ship, and his part in that could have originally been part of what was supposed to disgrace him in the first place, like Raven said he was. That would have been cool, the first sight of Boss Villains other than Cinder instead of that Salem shot being the first hint we saw.