Arrow Twitter Reacts to “Underneath” With Epic Olicity GIF Avalanche

Tonight’s episode of Arrow, titled “Underneath,” finally answered many of the questions raised between last season and this one about what, exactly, happened to Oliver and Felicity’s relationship, which was left somewhat up in the air at the end of Arrow season 4 and was fully over by the time season 5 began.

Producers promised an Olicity-heavy relationship, and the episode delivered, even reaching back into last season’s bag of tricks to utilize Felicity’s spinal injury as a storytelling device.

Fans who have been watching right along will remember that she received the injury just after becoming engaged to Oliver, and recovered from it (with a little help from Palmer Tech super-science) moments before using her newfound ability to walk, to literally walk out on Oliver.

Felicity addressed that this week, apologizing to Oliver for walking away rather than staying to talk about what she acknowledged was a more complex decision than she understood at the time to keep her unaware of his illegitimate child, William.

The episode also served as a big of a coda to the William storyline, with Prometheus tracking the boy down in the final moments of the show.

But the biggest story was probably Twitter’s reaction to the episode, which were plentiful and exuberant from within the #Olicity hashtag, which has generally been frustrated with the show this season as their OTP of choice has been on the back burner.

Here are some of our favorite reactions to “Underneath.”

(Can we just all agree that it was a double entendre about the fact that they were locked in the bunker but also that Oliver was on bottom during flashback lair sex? Because our first reaction is pretty confident…)

THE MEAT OF IT ALL

There were a lot of tweets that amounted to GIF sets based on the tipsy lair sex flashback (we’ll get to those, we promise), but there were also plenty of fans ready to break down the episode.

That makes sense: the Olicity fandom have been objecting all season to what some of them call character regression, since the breakup wasn’t dealt with onscreen and they felt that some of the development the characters had undergone in seasons 3 and 4 had been swept under the rug. One can argue whether or not that’s a fair assessment of the season so far, but one thing is certain: some of the fan base came out to break down the game tape.

Many other fans noticed that the song used in throughout most of the Oliver/Felicity love scenes was carried over from season 3, episode 20, widely regarded as the Ollicity love theme.

And there was plenty of breaking down what Curtis Holt brought to the episode, standing in as Cupid in the flashbacks and as a kind of backup Overwatch in the main story, bringing T-Spheres into play and bringing Oliver and Felicity home.

But mostly, the discussion was about the relationship stuff, which finally got aired out after 6 months of waiting.

…Though for some, the waiting wasn’t so bad…

THE GIFS

 

Yeah, let’s just get to this one.

There were…A TON… of GIFs and screenshots, mostly out of the passionate, alcohol-induced flashback sex.

We’re just gonna leave these right here…

THE ARGUING

It’s the Arrow fandom, though, so you don’t get anybody being happy without somebody else being angry.

The #NoLaurelNoArrow hashtag came back in force tonight, as did the #NOlicity hashtag — both things used by fans upset by the handling of the relationship in previous seasons, or who believe Oliver should have ended up with Laurel Lance, the TV corollary to his one true love in the comics.

We’re not going to spend a bunch of time on the feuds; they’ve been covered here and elsewhere, but it’s worth noting that since this season has won over a lot of fans who were critical of Arrow as a whole and Olicity in particular last year, it seems like the protest hashtags were out in significantly less force than the happy tags.

There’s a lot of analysis to be done about the role Olicity has in dividing the fandom, versus how much of it would have happened regardless given how much more fans responded to villains like Deathstroke and Merlyn than later-season plots and villains like Damien Darhk. Still, it seems even when an episode gets largely raves, it’s not going to please all of the people, all of the time.

Shocking, we know.