Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-27265101-20170131070502/@comment-3387274-20170201182730

More to the point, her being killed by Pyrha was in universe perfect for Cinder's plan for reasons that were imediately clear and obvious out of universe. And having killed off a relatively minor character, they managed to have an impact without lessening the deaths that followed.

I have always found Penny's death questionable, due to it being credible she survived or could be rebuilt in some form (intact head, implying intact brain), but there's no denying the entire chain of events was orchestrated well from a narrative point of view.

They foreshadowed Penny vs Pyrha enough to make it predictable, but because nobody had died yet it was also close enough to left field to have an impact. Roman dying was the opposite; it had no warning whatsoever, but didn't feel out of nowhere because Penny had already established that characters could die now. After all that Pyrha was very predictable, but then it already was all allong, and they still left us some hope right till the last minute.