One of the most beloved characters on CW’s Arrow has been the witty Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) and last night, fans finally got to learn a lot more about Felicity’s background and as always, beware of spoilers.
The episode opened up with what has to be the show’s coolest training montage yet with Oliver training with Roy, Thea with Malcolm, Laurel with Ted while poor Felicity struggles with her sit ups. It’s not only cool from a geek standpoint, but it’s also impressive because it shows how far all these characters have come in terms of being physically fit as heroes or villains. I wouldn’t mind getting an opening montage like that every week for this show.
The episode introduces (finally) Felicity’s mother, Donna Smoak (played by the amazing Charlotte Ross) who couldn’t have been more different from her daughter. I have never been this excited for an introduction of a TV mom as Donna was just a joy to watch and it really gave us a lot of intel on what Felicity’s childhood was like when she was growing up. Ross was just so charming and fun in her performance, and I really need more episodes with her. I especially loved her interactions with Oliver and Diggle. They both just seemed utterly surprised that this was Felicity’s mom. “How many billionaires do you know?!” will forever be one of my favorite lines of the series.
“The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak” also goes into Felicity’s backstory, five years ago, when she used to be a Goth at college with a fellow hacker for a boyfriend. I like the nod they give to old school Felicity Smoak fans out there that remember her with black hair back in the very old Firestorm comics. I liked how easy it was to follow it and how it set up what was going on in the present, although I was expecting Donna to be there somewhere (aside from that phone call) to explain more about her relationship with Felicity. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who laughed about Felicity’s boyfriend’s name being Cooper Sheldon which was by no means a little shout-out to The Big Bang Theory. Spoiler alert: it totally was a shout-out.
Nolan Funk was OK in the role he played. I think he is a good actor, but the things I have seen him in, like Glee, for example, he rarely gets good material to play with and his characters always come off as very bland and one-dimensional. I did love, however, the Easter Egg that was Brother Eye and that he went with that as his name, but the impact that his character had on Felicity from the past and in the present was all that mattered to me. As he attacks the city, that’s when we see Felicity having her most difficult time ever in the show as her past catches up with her in a very bad way.
One of the deepest moments in the whole episode is when Felicity opened up to her mom how she felt about her, and it shows another side of Felicity that we haven’t seen before. Donna admitting that she felt like an outsider when Felicity’s dad was (he was apparently the person where Felicity got her intelligence from) was very heartbreaking. But the heart-to-heart got interrupted when the Smoak women got kidnapped and taken to Cooper, who Felicity is surprised to see as she was told years ago that he was dead. There were so many great moments in this entire episode, but I think the most epic one was when Felicity kicked Cooper’s sorry butt as she was at gun point.
I can’t stress enough how happy I was that Felicity was able to get out of a dangerous situation on her own and didn’t need Oliver to save her, even though he was there. This was one of the best character development episodes of Arrow ever and seeing how far Felicity has come, both mentally and physically, is a huge accomplishment. I’m actually hoping to see more physical training for Felicity so that she is not only an amazing IT-person, but also a physically dangerous one too. Rickards got so much great stuff to work with in this episode and gave one of her greatest performances ever.
However, there is a huge elephant in the room that we have to talk about and that is one Mr. Roy Harper. In the final minute of the episode, Roy is dreaming that he is up on the roof with Sara and fires arrows into her, revealing that he was the one who killed her. Now this was something that I was speculating about, but found very unlikely because I wasn’t sure if the Mirakuru was completely out of his system. I’m very mixed about this as it is something that takes a completely different direction from the Roy that I know in the comic books. Obviously, he didn’t do it by choice, as something is taking control of him, whether it’s a part of Mirakuru that is coming back or something else.
Is it multiple personalities that we are talking about here? Is League of Assassins in fact involved after all? One of my biggest questions right now is that if the cure against Mirakuru didn’t work completely on Roy, what does that mean for Slade Wilson? This would be a great way to bring him back, but more about that another day. I’m very intrigued now what happened and how it’s going to play out. Overall, this episode was a very strong episode as it gave the show the opportunity to finally give one of their most beloved characters a lot of great focus while dropping a huge bomb on us regarding Oliver’s trusty sidekick.
Arrow airs on Wednesday nights, 8/7c on The CW.
Photo via The CW
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What interests me the most (if Roy is in fact the killer) is what effect it will have on Laurel, as right now she is training to avenge Sara’s death and track down her killer. Let’s say for argument’s sake, that Roy did kill Sara, but in some mirakuru-induced zombie-like haze which he doesn’t remember. When Laurel finds out that this was the case, it’s totally going to take the air out her sails, as Sara’s death was an unfortunate accident. What is she going to do with herself when she finds out she no longer has an enemy to track down? What will become of her and her training? I’m looking forward to that.