After two years of Oliver and Felicity’s relationship being a major plot driver on The CW’s Arrow, showrunner Wendy Mericle told TVLine recently that Season Five will downplay that aspect of the series.
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The reason isn’t any conflict between the characters or even a storytelling reason like putting off the assumed “endgame” of the pair ending up together. Instead, it’s the nuts and bolts of Team Arrow at this moment in time that’s standing in the way of a reunion.
“They’re both in crisis mode. Oliver’s got two really big jobs, and [Felicity] is spinning out about Havenrock,” Mericle said. “Until they’ve gotten some clarity for themselves, there’s not much room for the relationship side of things.”
Havenrock, for those who don’t remember, was the name of a town of about 10,000 people, which was destroyed in the final episodes of Arrow‘s fourth season. In an attempt to save Star City — preserving its millions of lives and preventing their deaths from making Damien Darhk more or less omnipotent — Felicity hacked into a nuclear missile. Unable to prevent it from detonating, she was able only to convince the bomb’s GPS that it had reached its destination, so that it would detonate early, saving the vast majority of lives.
One popular criticism of the end of season four is that Felicity did not seem particularly affected by her part in killing thousands of people, even if she did so for a justifiable and necessary reason. Given the amount of plot that was being resolved in those final episodes, though, it’s likely that the explanation will be that Felicity was too focused on resolving the problem in front of her to look back.
Now, though, she’s had months to reflect on what happened.
The destruction of Havenrock was reminiscent of the near-destruction of Monument Point in the comics — which took place in a Justice Society of America story written by Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim. This is noticeable mostly because Havenrock was destroyed in an episode titled “Monument Point.”
Oliver, meanwhile, is struggling to deal with his job as mayor (badly, apparently), and raising up a new generation of Team Arrow. All of that wil be set against a season in which he’ll face a villain known as Prometheus (no relation to the Justice League villain of the same name, in spite of his blood feud with Oliver Queen in the comics). In this year’s flashbacks, Oliver will encounter the Bratva, led by guest star Dolph Lundgren, most famous for playing a big Russian in Rocky IV.
Arrow returns to The CW on October 5 and airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
