‘Arrow’ Fans Raise Over $7K and Honor Olicity on a Park Bench

Fans of the Olicity relationship on The CW’s Arrow are a passionate group. They’ve been outspoken about the character pairing and while sometimes that enthusiasm has come across negatively, the fandom recently turned their energy towards doing something not only to honor their favorite character pairing, but to benefit Vancouver’s Stanley Park as well.

On Saturday, Stephen Amell shared a photo to his Twitter account of a park bench in Stanley Park that had been dedicated to Olicity, noting that the fans had raised over $7,000 for the bench with the money going to environmental preservation efforts at the park.

The bench, which has a plaque that reads “In celebration of the unthinkable Olicity ‘we found ourselves in each other,’” was officially installed in Stanley Park last week, though the efforts to bring the park to life began this summer. Back in June, a group of Olicity fans created the Olicity Fandom Bench project to, according to the project’s Tumblr, create “something special to unite the fandom during the hiatus.” That something special ended up being a campaign to raise money for the bench, with Stanley Park being chosen as Arrow is filmed in Vancouver. The project detailed that the bench would not only help unite the fandom, but would provide a “mini tourist attraction for fans all over the world who visit Vancouver.” The original goal of the project was to raise the $3,000/$4,000 CAD to pay for a 10-year dedication of the bench, but the project exceeded its goal within 2 days.

For those who aren’t quite familiar with Olicity and the fandom, the term refers to the pairing of Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickard.) From nearly Felicity’s first appearance in Arrow‘s first season, fans have eagerly wanted to see the couple in a romantic relationship and, for in the show’s third season they finally got their wish. However, their happiness was short-lived with the characters breaking up in season four. Things started to look up again towards the end of the show’s fifth season.

But while Olicity fans have eagerly anticipated both the reunion of their favorite character pairing as well as the installation of the park bench’s dedication, they couldn’t have predicted how both would collide. Oliver and Felicity got married during the last moments of the Arrowverse crossover event “Crisis on Earth-X” in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The bench was dedicated just a few days later on December 1.

Arrow airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW. The show is currently on winter hiatus and will return January 18, 2018.