Arrow: Why Felicity Smoak Needs a Happy Ending
It seems pretty impossible to have the show go on, as it is, without one-third of Arrow’s core involved in the story. So, after many years of being an integral part of the journey, it’s easy to understand the concern—and a need—for Felicity Megan Smoak to have a happy ending/positive send-off.
It’s clear from Arrow Season 7 Episode 16, “Star City 2040,” that Felicity survives the twenty-year jump to the future and has suffered plenty, with her family forced apart and operating under her father’s alias for part of the time, only seeing Mia and William together for the first time when they try to save her.
What’s not clear, though, is how we’ll be saying goodbye to Arrow’s leading lady. Considering all she’s been through, Felicity Smoak needs a promising send-off.
Felicity has come such a long way from her introduction on Arrow Season 1 Episode 3, “The Lone Gunman,” going on her own parallel journey to find out who she is and what she’s capable of.
She’s always had a certainty about her and a need to do what’s right, from those pieces of her life we saw before on Arrow Season 3 Episode 5, “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak,” to the way she zealously advocated for reconsidering killing a villain of the week on Arrow Season 1 Episode 15, “The Dodger.”
But from the moment she joined Oliver and Diggle on The Hood’s mission on Arrow Season 1 Episode 14, “The Odyssey,” it’s clear that she found her purpose in the mission. Felicity understood what the vigilante/hero life entailed, even if there was another way to go about it.
There was still sacrifice involved, and there was no shortage of it for Felicity, from her safety—by staying on beyond her offer to find Walter—her livelihood, and her family, with the impossible choice she and Oliver made in “Star City 2040,” when they went into hiding and kept their family apart to keep them safe.
Felicity: Being a hero, Mia, means choosing other people’s safety above your own, including your family.
She’s endured so much over the last seven years, including paralysis, rebuilding her company (over and over again), and having to live apart from her family, giving up a chance at happiness for the sake of her and Oliver’s mission—keeping Star City safe.
These sacrifices she’s made willingly with no expectation of a reward because it’s not one she or anyone on OTA ever expected out of their work.
She’s had to watch the love of her life sacrifice himself multiple times over the years and figure out a way to continue his legacy and mission, a mission that became her own the moment she agreed to stay on.
From what we’ve seen over the years, Felicity has been able to do that time and again with building new iterations of Team Arrow after Arrow Season 3 Episode 9, “The Climb,” and then helping create a new team, bringing in the newbies, in Season 5.
Felicity’s even had to deal with the guilt of being forced to deal with the excruciating situation that culminated in Havenrock on Arrow Season 4 Episode 21, “Monument Point.”
It’s why she deserves a happy ending. She deserves a win, so to speak, that will stick.
She’s earned a happy ending being reunited with Oliver, Mia, and William. She’s earned a chance to live happily and stress-free, succeeding in keeping Star City safe together with her partner and husband, and making it out of the uncertainty that has been this flash-forward arc alive.
After all, Oliver and Felicity’s stories have become indelibly intertwined in a way that any kind of ending for either of them that results in anything other than happiness would doom the other.
It essentially boils down to the story the Arrow writers have been telling for years, specifically when it comes to Felicity. She’s provided the beacon and the support. She’s contributed to the vision of a future where their city is safe, and their friends and family are living a life beyond their hoods and masks.
That’s the end goal, and a promising send-off for Felicity would keep that vision of the future, despite the actual future we see in the flash forwards, alive. It would provide that bit of optimism to the remainder of the series as things are bound to get bleaker before the series wraps up.
If there isn’t a reward for the sacrifices she’s made, for the impossible situations she’s been put in, if there is no brighter side to the mission being accomplished, it would feel like it goes against what Felicity’s story and words of encouragement to Oliver over the years were about.
Felicity: I don’t accept that. You shouldn’t, either. You can’t just accept things, Oliver. If I’d accepted my life, I would be a cocktail waitress in Vegas like my mother, and I never would have gone to college, and I never would have moved a thousand miles away to work at Queen Consolidated, and I never would have believed some crazy guy in a hood when he told me I could be more than just an IT girl.
There should be another way to end Felicity Smoak’s story than darkness; the same way Felicity showed there was another way to become a hero.
With fewer episodes left, though, which way will her story end? Will Felicity get the ending she deserves?
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What do you think? Should Felicity get her happy ending? What does your idea of a happy ending for Felicity entail? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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Brianna Martinez
Brianna spends her time away from briefs, legal research, and pleadings, watching TV and writing about it. She generally has a lot of feelings about TV, which you can read about here and on Twitter.
2 comments
I so hope she does they both do, Oliver and Felicity deserve that and I would love to see Star City and all it’s ungrateful citizens forgotten for their happy ending. At this point it doesn’t deserve to be saved. Oliver Felicity William and Mia could live a life of tranquility and piece in Aruba or Barbados pick one. Leave the hero-ing to the flock if birds. John Lyla JJ and Conner could move with them and be neighbors.
Now the arrow is finishing up she still did get a small happy ending considering she got to marry oliver and have a kid with him. But it always ends up sad in season 7 felicity has to say goodbye to both and breaks all thier hearts. Then she returns and finds oliver dead. BTW no matter how hard she works her endings are sad, but how she always makes everyone else have their happy ending is why I am her #1 fan. olicity forever!
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