Arrow launched an entire universe of shows. While we didn’t realize the impact that it would have on the CW, or the TV landscape, when it debuted in 2012. It’s clear to see that there definitely has been an impact, thanks to the show. While the show and the characters underwent some pretty big changes from page to screen, one of the biggest ones was the unexpected romance between Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell).
The reason is simple: she doesn’t have a counterpart in the comic. In season one, the writers seemingly were angling for a Laurel and Oliver romance as is comic canon. Felicity, however, changed the game in a major way, sparking one of the most enduring romances in the Arrowverse and a legion of dedicated fans. The couple, lovingly nicknamed "Olicity," has remained a cornerstone of the show ever since, to the endless delight of fans.
Whether it goes up or down, these two crazy kids definitely do love each other. Love, however, just isn’t enough. There’s a point when just loving another person slam against the cold hard face of logic. While we love this couple, we can admit that there are somethings about their relationship that just doesn’t compute. We have six seasons (and some change) to cover here. Over the years, these two have made some pretty baffling decisions. The only thing we can do is list what they are.
Here are 20 Things That Make No Sense About Felicity And Oliver’s Relationship.
The Whole Loft Living Situation
This may seem like a relatively minor criticism, but the living situations during seasons four and five are just baffling. The Loft, originally, belonged to Thea Queen (Willa Holland). Oliver eventually moved in with his sister. Then Thea gave control of the Loft over to Oliver. Felicity would eventually move in when their relationship started getting serious.
When they broke up, Oliver left what was technically his apartment originally.
Maybe this was just him being nice so Felicity didn’t have to move out, but Felicity looked like she was about to move out as well. She didn’t, however, offer Oliver what was his apartment originally. Of course, then it was just never mentioned again. Can we blame this on Flashpoint?
Felicity’s Insensitivity About Lian Yu
Thanks to the five seasons of flashbacks, it’s safe to say that Oliver has been through a lot of trauma during his time on the island. There have been some very clear instances where Oliver is shown to be experiencing some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s why characters making light of his time there tends to make us cringe. This is doubly true when it’s the characters closest to him cracking wise.
Felicity has done this several times and, given her natural empathy, it just doesn’t compute why she would do that. For example, she referred to it as “Fantasy Island” when Oliver was there with both Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) and Shado (Celina Jade).
Oliver makes decisions without her
Oliver can be a brilliant strategist and tactician when given time to actual plan things out. It’s just unfortunate that a lot of the time, he tends to super impulsive in the heat of the moment. Those impulsive actions tend to have some pretty big consequences, all things considered.
In his relationship with Felicity, Oliver doesn’t really take that much-needed moment and consider the feelings of his partner.
Sure, most times, he can’t talk to her before making these decisions. Other times, however, he had enough time to share what he was thinking-- like when he chose to confess to the world that he is Green Arrow.
Felicity’s Season Six Passivity
Felicity is unafraid to tell people when they are wrong or to stand her ground. She’s done it many times with Oliver over the years. But when they were married, suddenly Felicity was a lot more passive. A small part of the reasoning makes sense: William (Jack Moore) had already suffered through the loss of his mother. Naturally, when Oliver resumed his vigilante activities after an extended break, he wanted Felicity to take a more passive role in things, so at least, William will have one parent.
Even so, there are some times when Felicity needed to be a more active agent in the storyline. Just because she wasn’t out in the fiel didn’t mean that she couldn’t give Oliver a much-needed metaphorical slap upside the head.
Overcomplicating Their Relationship When Broken Up
Felicity and Oliver went through a lot of break-ups and make-ups over the seasons of Arrow. When they were off, however, they were always a little bit on, because they tended to overcomplicate their relationship during these "off moments." A lot of couples who work together and then break-up will still have to work together.
They need to take some professional distance in order to accomplish what needs doing.
Oliver and Felicity, though, kept blurring the lines. They would sleep together, get overly personal, fake their relationship again, and just kept colliding when they needed time to cool down. They would always try to keep things on a simmer, but it just would boil over.
Oliver Expecting Felicity To Prioritize Arrow Over Everything Else
Oliver tends to have a very laser-like focus in terms of his vigilante work. He will often prioritize it over everything else. Granted, no one in the Arrowverse has the best work-life balance-- we’ll go whole seasons without seeing characters at their day jobs. Even so, however, they do have other jobs and responsibilities.
At times, even early on in their friendship, Oliver would just expect Felicity to drop everything in order to help.
That’s what actually got her fired from her job at Tech Village. Granted, it wasn’t the most stimulating job in existence. It did, however, provide her with a salary and benefits that she needed to live on.
Felicity’s Work With Helix
Felicity definitely has a past, which shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Even in the first season, she was clearly vastly overqualified for her IT job with Queen Consolidated. Despite this, however, it took some time before we learned about her hacktivist past during her MIT years.
Even though she said it was long behind her, she clearly still had some nostalgia for those days when she learned about Helix, a hacktivist collective. Desperate to get some info on Prometheus, she joined up with the group. She did this without talking about with Oliver or the team. Granted, Oliver has done the same to her, but since she’s been on the other side of that scenario in the past, she knows how it feels.
They're both way too jealous
Jealousy is something that affects most people, but in a functional relationship, people talk about these feeling with each other. Felicity’s jealousy with Oliver’s relationships leads to some bouts of insensitivity and passive aggressiveness. Her jokes about Lian Yu, for example, are born from jealousy.
Oliver, meanwhile, gets a bit violent and suspicious-- not toward to Felicity, but to her love interests. He’s immediately suspicious when Felicity and Barry strike up a rapport. It transfers over to others such as Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) as well. Those two are the nicest guys on the planet. Again, it comes down to a need to communicate. Hopefully, this will end with their marriage.
Oliver Gets Mad At Felicity For Telling Barry His Identity
This one goes all the way back to season two of the show, when we were first introduced to Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). At the end of “The Scientist”, after being injected by an unknown toxin, Felicity made the decision to ask Barry for help, due to his training. Barry was able to counteract the toxin Oliver was given. When Oliver did come around, he realized that Felicity revealed his identity to Barry without his permission and got mad at Felicity for doing so.
Oliver, buddy, you were going to lose your life!
Of course, she was going to go to someone who could help and seemed trustworthy. This also implied that he didn’t trust her judgement.
Keeping Secrets From Each Other
There are several entries on this list that involve Oliver and Felicity keeping secrets from each other, but here we’re talking about the other, minor times that they’ve done so. It’s just so frustrating to watch. Relationships, especially romantic ones, are built on trust.
While you don’t have to tell your partner every dark and painful secret in your past, you do have to let them in somewhat.
The consequences for that lack of of trust ave been played out on the show, multiple times. There is suspicion and resentment, and when one of those whoppers comes to light, it just ignites a powder keg.
Oliver Leaving Felicity Out Of The League Of Assassins Business
In season three, Oliver went down a darker path. After those five years of seeing his own inner darkness, it’s unsurprising that he would stray into the shadows. As the Arrowverse teaches us, being the good guy is hard work. Part of this darker need arose from Sara’s senseless and tragic passing. In order to stop Ra’s al Ghul, Oliver felt that he needed to become him.
He also neglected to tell Felicity about this plan. While the League of Assassins is a dangerous foe, Felicity was already in their crosshairs anyway. Rather than go at it alone, Oliver could have had help and support, which probably would have saved him from ending up in a situation he couldn’t control.
It Took Them Being Trapped In A Bunker To Resolve Their Issues
Here’s a difference between The Flash and Arrow. When Iris and Barry were having couple issues, they went to an actual licensed therapist-- they had to omit details but got the gist across. Oliver and Felicity needed to be trapped in a bunker with the chip in order to get through their issues.
To be fair, it’s not like there is a superhero therapist in the Arrowverse.
They are both to blame for getting to this point. There was a lot of hurt feelings between them that needed to be cleared up, but it took them to be trapped together in order to do so. In actuality, they just needed to talk to each other.
Felicity's Repression
Felicity is a woman of many virtues and excellent qualities. Despite being an empathetic sort of person, she tends to have trouble processing her own feelings. While Oliver is not an example of emotional sharing, he does process his emotions. Felicity, however, kind of buries them deep down and just lets it fester in a real ugly way.
If she wants emotional availability and honesty from Oliver, then she needs to do the same for him and for herself. One of the more jarring things is that she never really seemed to process redirecting the nuke to Havenbrook, ending everyone there. It’s not something she'd probably like to think about, but it’s something that should have been addressed.
What Happened In Star City 2046 Timeline?
“Star City 2046” is a bit of an odd duck in terms of the Arrowverse timeline. It also looks like it’s unlikely to happen, given the other shows in the Arrowverse. Arrow itself apparently debunked it with Oliver willingly coming out of the vigilante closet, rather than being forced out decades later. While we don’t know much about that timeline, we’re still a little confounded by it.
If Felicity and Oliver were married, then why would she up and leave Star City?
Why wouldn’t Oliver let his wife know that he was still alive? There are so many unanswered questions about that timeline. It looks like that we’ll never get the answers about why Oliver and Felicity’s relationship fell apart that hard.
Oliver Hid William From Felicity
Oliver learned that Samantha (Anna Hopkins) did carry William to term and that Moira (Susanna Thompson) paid her to lie to him in season four. It was definitely an awkward moment. The frustrating thing, however, was that Oliver didn’t tell anyone in his life about William’s existence. At the time, he and Felicity were pretty serious about their relationship.
It makes sense that Oliver would want to keep his newly discovered son safe. It doesn’t make sense that Felicity, who can probably do some hacker tricks to digitally protect William, remained in the dark about this. On a practical and emotional level, it just seems like it was drama for drama’s sake.
Felicity’s Weird Bout Of Commitment Phobia
Given Felicity’s upbringing and her mother (Charlotte Ross) in general, it does make sense that she would have some relationship issues, but they seem to come up at weird times. She clearly wants a loving relationship and enjoys it with her various partners over the years.
She just gets a bit weird about the permanence of things.
The most obvious example of this is during Barry and Iris’ (Candice Patton) wedding in “Crisis on Earth-X”. Yes, Oliver probably shouldn’t be talking about proposing at this time, but Felicity really did not have to yell at him and make a scene during the rehearsal. They could have gone somewhere in private and talked it out.
Hijacking Barry and Iris’ Wedding
People who propose during someone else’s wedding tend to be regarded as rude. Hijacking your friends' ceremony just doesn’t make sense. Yes, Oliver and Felicity are married now, which means no more break-ups-- hopefully, but this wasn't the way it was supposed to happen.
It was intended to be a sweet moment with the two big couples of the Arrowverse. Instead, it just overshadowed something The Flash fans really wanted to see with more of Oliver and Felicity's drama. We could have had a real Arrow wedding episode instead. Even Iris threw major shade on their decision in following The Flash episode.
Felicity’s Paralysis
One of the shockers of season four was when Felicity was left paralyzed from the waist down after an attack. For a brief moment, people theorized that she would go the route of Barbara Gordon and become Oracle. Obviously, this didn’t happen. Instead, she was in a wheelchair for a little bit before she and Curtis came up with a chip that would allow her to walk. Even with that aid, you think that she would need like intensive physical therapy or something.
She was quickly up and walking around with no complications whatsoever.
Why was that even a thing to begin with? Was it just something to make Oliver feel even more guilty? Either way, it was a wasted story opportunity.
Oliver Made His Deal With Watson Without Telling Felicity
Oliver almost got his identity outed in every s eason of the show. It’s unsurprising that sooner or later the outing would stick. We’re just surprised that it was Oliver who voluntarily outed himself. In a deal with Agent Watson (Sydelle Noel), Oliver agreed to come forward as Green Arrow in exchange for protection against Diaz and prosecution for his friends and family.
Seeing as how he’s married by this point and his decisions affect more than just his own life, this was one of those things he needed to talk with wife about. By this point, it’s just revisiting a frustrating plot point with the show. Oliver and Felicity need to talk to each other before doing things that affect all of them.
Do they want A More “Normal” Life or not?
“Normal” is all relative. It various from person to person, from culture to culture. We can’t really settle on a single definition of the word. To Felicity and Oliver, it means being away from the vigilante lifestyle and not having their lives threatened on the regular. Over the years of the show, the pair of them keep going back and forth in their desire to have a more normal life.
When one gets out, then the other pulls them back in.
When both get out, then they both get pulled in. Oliver and Felicity are both people who can’t stand idly by. It counteracts their natures, so they need to accept that heroism is their normal.
---
What else doesn't make sense about Oliver and Felicity's relationship in Arrow? Let us know in the comments!