Team GATV Midseason Roundtable: Arrow Season 5 So Far

Does “Olicity” need to return?

CRAIG: And now we’re at the question that will and always provide the most controversy: But I will say this. Even in my review of the Season 5 premiere, I said I saw Season 5 as a good opportunity for Oliver to “earn” Felicity back. There have been mistakes. There was a fatal mistake in the most recent episode. But if the two of them get to the point where they can talk it over and come at each other as equals, why not? For now, I’m happy that they at least aren’t lying to each other, as Stephen Amell himself has pointed out…. in the future? Let’s see. Maybe they deserve some happiness, but knowing how this show works, it’ll get pulled away just as quickly.

MATT: Ah, the torch/pitchfork question. We’ll get murdered for this no matter what way we answer. I don’t think it needs to return because I think the best of it stil exists: them as friends and a support system. The moments when they are connecting with each other to lift each other up and remind them of who they are have always been the best of what’s between them. That still lives and it provides a harbor that we don’t get from Oliver’s interactions with Diggle or Thea or with the team.

STEPHANIE: I’d like for Olicity – in the sense of Oliver and Felicity working as well as a team as they did in Season 2 – to continue throughout this season. They bring out humor and such a fun energy in one another when they can collaborate as colleagues without any underlying expectations, and the show definitely benefits from these touches of lightness. After Oliver killed her boyfriend, I have a hard time seeing a romance on the near horizon, but if they can work it out, then I’m not opposed, so long as the conflict doesn’t become about lying and crying.

MELISSA: Absolutely. For a dozen reasons from audience expectation, to the actors’ chemistry, to narrative continuity, to creative possibilities, to the simple pleasure of watching them once again smile at each other. Oliver would be the Green Arrow in or out of a relationship, but I feel like over the seasons, the show has tied Oliver’s journey toward being a better man and a better hero to his success in relationships. He doesn’t need someone to be his light, but being in a relationship and being a good partner is part of what would show he has his own light.

Last season after Felicity broke off the engagement, Oliver called Felicity his “always”. This season, even amidst talk of moving on, he called what they had a “mortal lock”. His relationship with Felicity isn’t like the one he had with Laurel where he came to realize neither of them was the person the other thought they loved. Oliver and Felicity broke up not because of a lack of love or being star crossed; their wedding was called off because Oliver wasn’t being the partner Felicity needed.

Some of the episodes late last season began to touch on if he could change and not revert to his first instinct to go it alone. This season he’s tried to open up to include more people in his fight. It’s not the same at all as showing he’s now ready to be a good partner in a marriage, be it to Felicity or any woman, but that’s ok, he’s on a journey. And the path isn’t always straight ahead, but for him never to get there or to get there but not with the woman he considers his always would be highly unsatisfying.

Beyond that, and perhaps more importantly, I find Oliver a better, more watchable and relatable character when he is with Felicity. They’ve had their share of manufactured melodrama, so hopefully Arrow could take a page from The Flash and look for conflict from outside the relationship from now on. When they are united as a team with in a team, it elevated everything I enjoyed about the show. Right now, the struggle to keep them apart and not talking about anything meaningful creates stilted dialogue and inorganic plotlines that immediately pull me out of the show.