Arrow: The CW President Addresses if Emily Bett Rickards Will Return in Final Season

Earlier this year, Arrow fans were hit with a one-two punch of difficult announcements. First, it was announced that the fan-favorite series that launched the network's "Arrowverse" of DC programing would be ending its run after the upcoming Season 8 and then, hot on the heels of that announcement, series star Emily Bett Rickards announced that she would be leaving the show at the end of Season 7. Since then, fans have hoped there would be a way Rickards to return as Felicity Smoak at some point in the show's final series and now network president Mark Pedowitz is addressing that possibility.

During a press call ahead of today's upfronts presentation in New York, Pedowitz said that while they are open to the possibility, he's pleased with how things wrapped up.

"Emily was terrific on the show, and we believe Beth Schwartz did a great job wrapping up her storyline last year," Pedowtiz said. "If Beth can find a way to bring her back that makes sense, and Emily is available, we'd love to have her. Otherwise, I'm pleased at how they said goodbye to the character."

For the moment, it appears that Felicity's departure (and thus, Rickard's) is a pretty final one. During the Arrow season finale on Monday night, fans saw Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity share a tearful goodbye in the "present" when The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) arrived to collect on the bargain he and Oliver struck back in "Elseworlds". Then, the show cut to the flash-forward timeline in which Felicity said goodbye to her children after having stopped the Archer program once and for all only for her to herself meet up with The Monitor. After reminding her that there was no coming back from where he was taking her, Felicity said she'd been waiting a long time to see "him" again -- hinting that she was being taken to reunite with Oliver after twenty years.

While there is, in theory, some space to have Rickards reprise the role of Felicity as there are those 20 years between Oliver's departure and Felicity's in the future, the Arrow season finale did give the characters something of a bittersweet "happy" ending with the promise of the being reunited in the universe -- an ending very similar to that of Kal-L in the comics "Crisis on Infinite Earths" storyline.

Arrow returns this fall for its eighth and final season on The CW.

What do you think about Pedowtiz's comments? Let us know in the comments below.

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