Team GATV Roundtable: Talking Arrow Season 6 So Far

The way the “Olicity” wedding came about was rather controversial online. Were you okay with it?

MATT: I think I mentioned this before: I just don’t care much any more. I’d rather them just get married and move on to other things rather than dwell on the status of their relationship for another half a season or longer. Butting into Barry and Iris’ ceremony was particularly uncouth of the two of them — I’m glad the writing staffs acknowledged this with Iris throwing some shade about it on the subsequent Flash episode — but at least we didn’t have to drag out a wedding any further. I care about Oliver’s and Felicity’s connection as people, but I just don’t have anything left to give positively or negatively towards the relationship.

STEPHANIE: No, and it has nothing to do with the pairing itself, but rather the lack of logic behind it. Every couple and every ship’s fan base deserve to have their wedding be about them and only them. They deserve the pomp and the fuss and the spotlight. Felicity took that away from WestAllen without justification. Especially since Felicity had been so strongly opposed to marriage, albeit for a flimsy reason, there was no need for her and Oliver to marry right then and there, which makes me think it was a convenient way for the writers and production to avoid spending time and money on an actual wedding event.

MELISSA: Yes. In the scope of the crossover, the ending with Oliver and Felicity joining in on Iris and Barry’s spur of the moment ceremony made perfect sense.

Iris and Barry’s wedding was the reason why the heroes gathered, setting the framework for the beginning and the end, but the question of Oliver and Felicity’s feelings for one another and them getting married or not was one of the major storylines being told throughout the whole crossover. It made sense for Oliver and Felicity to find resolution to their crossover story basically at the same time as Barry and Iris found theirs since much of Oliver and Felicity’s emotional journey during the crossover paralleled the big tent pole moments of the WestAllen wedding saga.

As Iris and Barry are preparing for the festivities, they both pepper their friends with questions about when they are getting married. Then at the rehearsal dinner after Joe gives a speech about how Barry and Iris’s love inspired him to find love again, Oliver is in turn inspired to propose on the spot, and he couldn’t wait another second to ask for it. Felicity though is afraid of a formal commitment since the trauma of all that happened last time they got engaged and how it all fell apart is all tangled up together in her mind.

In the ensuing episodes, Oliver and Felicity grapple with their issues and eventually, the fear of never seeing one another pushes both to regret how they left things and Oliver realizes he doesn’t need the formalities of a wedding; he only needs Felicity. But that clearly isn’t their final resolution and the crossover isn’t going to end on the sadness of a funeral.

So after all the trauma of Nazis invading their big day (and well, the planet) Barry and Iris tell their friends they won’t need to come back for their wedding since all Barry and Iris want is to be legally wed. They look exhausted and are just going to go to the courthouse because it doesn’t matter to them how it happens.

Diggle is brought in as an alternative to a Justice of the Peace and they are just going to do where they stand in the park. It doesn’t matter to them if they just came from a funeral and are still dressed in black or that most of their friends and no family are there to witness their union. It doesn’t matter to them that they don’t have their rings or even that they are still standing right next to a pile of vomit. Nothing but their love for one another and their desire have the marriage be official matters. That’s how Barry and Iris’s ceremony is presented.

They say their vows and talk about the love they have for one another and in a call back to Joe’s speech at the rehearsal dinner which had prompted Oliver to propose on the spot, Felicity now is the one inspired by their love to grab the love in front of her. In a clearly unpremeditated moment of pure spontaneity, Felicity interrupts Diggle right before he finishes and she asks everyone if she and Oliver can be married as well.

For a second, everyone is confused which is natural since Felicity’s request is out of the ordinary, but so is everything else about the wedding and the request comes clearly with no ill intent, perfectly born out of the moment and all that came before it during the crossover. Felicity explains the faith and love she has in Oliver is stronger than her reasons not to get married and the second Oliver understands what is happening, his face is transformed by joy.

And it was a beautiful moment. (It’s so cute; Oliver says “I do” twice before even being asked a question.)

Iris and Barry appear completely in tune with what is happening; you see on their faces their happiness is only increased by their friends’ happiness. If a different set of writers, on a different show, with a different agenda, wanted to retroactively claim Iris was “not bitter”, that’s on them. For me, I saw the spontaneous double wedding as the perfect ending for how the crossover was written, intertwining together both couples’ journey to marriage. From “guys like us don’t get the girl” to “I do”.

Barry and Iris were always going to get married. The dramatic resolution had to come from Oliver and Felicity also joining in at the last minute.

Would each fandom have planned it differently if left in charge of the weddings? Of course! But that doesn’t mean what each fandom was delivered wasn’t bursting with heart and joy and wonder. I can’t imagine choosing negativity over enjoyment of my favorites reaching a major milestone on their way to their happily ever after.

I feel the “controversy” was played up for clicks and attention. The crossover had actual Nazis attacking during the actual WestAllen wedding, but I read things claiming Felicity’s two minute delay to a vomit adjacent, makeshift ceremony proved she was the real monster. Just hilarious.

CRAIG: I’m not bothered by getting Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak back together. The third episode of Season 6, especially, set that up a bit, showing that Felicity fits in well with that “family” and how much Oliver and Felicity truly care for each other. (Really, that arc started around “Underneath” and accurately set that up.) With that said, hijacking the wedding of Barry and Iris – first making the engagement party about themselves, and then taking over before Barry and Iris even got to say “I do” – bothered me a lot. I’m not sure why they couldn’t just wait to get back to Star City and share it with their loved ones, as they did in “Irreconcilable Differences” anyway.

It was negative feeling I had from an otherwise great crossover, and sadly, it did put Arrow’s worst foot forward to potential viewers. As many fans as there are of the relationship — there are a lot of people who don’t want to see this aspect. I think websites who covered the fallout and the negative feedback associated with it were well within their rights to do so; it seemed tacky, and to someone who doesn’t normally watch Arrow, they might think it’s always about Oliver and Felicity relationship drama rather than kick-ass action sequences and vigilante stuff which the series does so well.

Whether one likes Olicity or hates it, ratings seemed to take a dive once the two of them started having serious drama in “Taken.” However, if moving forward the two of them work well as a loving, married couple without unnecessary drama between the two of them, it should be fine. Let’s just hope for no return to that “end-of-Taken” feeling.