By Craig Wack | TV | December 10, 2015 |
By Craig Wack | TV | December 10, 2015 |
Without spinoff baggage weighing them down, both midseason finales of The Flash and Arrow felt like their old selves again. As a matter of fact, Arrow laid a doozy of a cliffhanger on fans Wednesday night.
We’re going to talk about where the show will go from here, but if you are still not caught up this is your warning for spoilers ahoy. In the meantime, enjoy this GIF of shirtless Ollie doing salmon ladders.
So we’ve got Oliver Queen weeping at a “six months later” grave in the first episode of the season and Felicity Smoak shot in the midseason finale. We all know that one plus one equals dead plucky nerd girl, right?
Ollie’s track record with women demands something terrible happen to Felicity. I’ve detailed this before but it bears repeating: Oillie’s mom was gutted like a trout on the side of the highway; sister Thea has battled addiction, been hypnotized into being an assassin, been returned from almost death and now suffers from chronic bloodlust; Huntress went on a kill spree and is now in prison; the chick he knocked up was forced to be a single mom resisting the urge to cash a million dollar check for 10 years; Laurel Lance has also had addiction issues, identity problems and is the worst character on TV and you could write a book on the horrors that have been visited on Sara Lance since shagging Oliver.
On the weight of that evidence alone, Felicity is as good as gone.
That’s right Lee Corso, noted ESPN football analyst and mascot fetishist, not so fast.
Olicity shippers can take heart. This boat may be taking on water but it ain’t going down just yet. That grave that that Oliver is weeping all over is empty. If it’s not empty, then Felicity certainly isn’t in it.
After spending the evening at my Dustin Rowles signature brand yarnwall piecing together the evidence, Felicity’s path is clear. She’s going to come out the other side of this as Oracle.
For those unfamiliar with Oracle, she is a former Batgirl who was paralyzed by the Joker in the classic comic The Killing Joke. She became a computer expert and strategist for Batman and a crime fighting group called the Birds of Prey, featuring … wait for it … Black Canary and Huntress.
Except for the paralyzed part, Felicity has been filling that role for Team Arrow for a while, so the leap to Oracle isn’t that far.
Borrowing from the Batman pantheon hasn’t exactly been rare for Arrow. Slade Wilson, Ra’s al Ghul, Deadshot, Amanda Waller, Huntress and many other characters who have graced Star City in the past three and half seasons are all better known for their association with Batman than Green Arrow. Adding another Bat-character won’t be a stretch for the show.
It also looked like Felicity took a hit to the abdomen, which is survivable but depending on the path the bullet takes can lead to paralysis.
There’s also the small fact that the show’s creators have been kicking the idea around for a while now. In February of 2014, comicbook.com reported Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim said “hopefully we’ll get there” when asked if Felicity would ever take up the mantle of Oracle.
Felicity’s death will be faked to throw Damien Dahrk off Oliver’s trail, and she will be paralyzed as a result of her wounds. After Cisco comes to down to deliver Harrison Wells’ sweet ass super-wheelchair, Felicity will get the code name she’s desired since she joined Team Arrow because they can’t be calling her “Felicity” on the radio any more when she’s supposed to be dead.
Or at least this is what Olicity fans can tell themselves until Arrow comes back in January, so they don’t break into tears at the drop of a dreidel during the holidays.
For discussion of other comic book TV shows please join Craig Wack and Pajiba commenter Tatiana Torres for the Agents of GEEK podcast updated every Friday and is also on iTunes.