Felicity Smoak: Team Arrow's Change Agent
In the Arrow season 3 premiere "The Calm," John Diggle makes a prophetic statement to Oliver Queen: "Maybe Felicity will change all that." Meaning, Oliver's love life and hopes for the future.
Oliver's answer, "It's not the right time" (to be with Felicity Smoak), turned out to be prophetic, too, at least until the season 3 finale.
Something we learned two seasons before this conversation: Felicity is more than the heart of Team Arrow. She's the change agent, and not just in Oliver's life.
In the show.
It was Felicity who encouraged Laurel Lance to continue being the Black Canary when she was discouraged and ready to quit. It was Felicity who gave Thea Queen her presumed-dead boyfriend Roy Harper's contact information and encouraged Thea to reach out to him, which resulted in not only an emotional resolution to Roy's departure, but also her Speedy superhero identity.
During season 3 "Broken Arrow," in one of the most emotional goodbyes in the history of the show (and the actors said for them personally as well), Felicity put that untraceable satellite phone in Roy's bag. So, if Roy shows up as Arsenal on The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow, which the showrunners have said is a distinct possibility, Felicity will be his first call.
It was also Felicity who got Oliver and Ray Palmer, billionaire scientist and her boyfriend at the time - a situation Oliver created himself, but still hated with a passion - to team up against a serious threat to the city.
(I predict Arrow/ATOM will be an ongoing collaboration when Ray is on Legends of Tomorrow.)
Felicity was the member of Team Arrow who intimidated Thea's super-villain father Malcolm into doing the right thing by the team through the end of season 3. The team supposedly minus Oliver, who was in Nanda Parbat on a fool's errand to become the next Ra's Al-Ghul.
Upon arriving in Nanda Parbat, Felicity faced down the Demon's Head, unannounced and unarmed, and proceeded to tell him to go to hell. By contrast, on his previous "visit," Malcolm had kneeled before Ra's like a whiny little coward and begged Ra's to allow him to "be of service once more."
And it was Felicity who orchestrated Oliver's poisoning and failed escape. (You know it's true love when you thank the person who just knocked you out cold.)
Malcolm can have no doubt that Felicity will follow through on her threat to tweet the world his current address in Nanda Parbat if he ever betrays Team Arrow. Malcolm knows from past history that he can play the Thea card with Oliver, but has no such leverage with Felicity.
Even in season 1, although she didn't find out Oliver's secret identity until "The Odyssey," more than halfway through the season, one different decision by Felicity would've changed the whole Arrow plot.
It was she who joined up with Diggle and Oliver because she wanted to help find Walter Steele, Oliver's stepfather and CEO of Queen Consolidated, who'd gone missing under mysterious circumstances. It was also she who insisted that Team Arrow not miss the opportunity to follow the one promising lead that ultimately helped Oliver rescue him.
Walter owes his life to Felicity, and Starling City owes her, too. Finding Walter blew wide open the conspiracy around the Queen's Gambit and Oliver's mother Moira Queen's involvement in the Undertaking, Malcolm Merlyn's plot that would ultimately destroy half of Starling City. Oliver was so deeply in denial about his mother's possible complicity that he'd yelled at Diggle when Diggle suggested he should consider it.
Diggle was right, of course, as he's been so consistently throughout the series. He's the rock of Team Arrow, and for Oliver, too, these past 3 years.
Which brings me to the heart-breaking but not unexpected breakup between Diggle and Oliver at the end of the season 3 finale. Oliver said he didn't expect Diggle to be able to get past what happened between them: Oliver using Diggle's family as bait to make his transition to the League of Assassins more convincing, and then not trusting Diggle or Felicity enough to tell them about the plot to overthrow Ra's.
Worse yet, confiding in Malcolm Merlyn instead. And even worse than that, rewarding Malcolm with the Demon's Head ring and title of Ra's, which Diggle may find out about the hard way in early season 4.
I doubt Oliver realized at the time what losing Diggle as a friend, ally, and brother was really going to mean. When he gets back to Star City, he will. And it will crush him.
Oliver will have been in a Felicity-induced euphoria for 5 months, since literally driving off into the sunset together. Although he'll return home a happier, more settled Oliver, according to the Arrow writers, that doesn't auto-undo the damage he did to his relationships around the League of Assassins debacle.
The only other time Oliver and Diggle have had a falling out was over Diggle's family, too, when Oliver prioritized another takedown over Diggle's opportunity to get Deadshot, who had assassinated Diggle's brother Andy. (We're ecstatic that the reason behind this hired hit, and the organization HIVE that ordered it, are key to the season 4 plot.)
This time the betrayal is more serious because Diggle is now a husband and a father to baby Sara, who was born in the season 3 premiere. He could rightly say that if Oliver had a wife and child, too, he never would have considered a plan that jeopardized someone else's family. He would've found another way.
What a time for Oliver to ignore Felicity's advice from way back in season 2!
(I predict it is Felicity who discovers Oliver has unknowingly been a father for several years, and helps him and Team Arrow navigate this plot twist.)
I think Felicity will be instrumental in healing this brotherly rift, but she won't let Oliver off the hook. What he did was unconscionable, whatever his justifications. I think she's going give him some tough love: I love you and Diggle both, but I can't fix this for you. You, and only you, have to figure out how to earn back Diggle's trust and respect.
Maybe Diggle's wife Lyla can expedite this reunion. Sometimes your spouse or partner can get through to you when nobody else can.
When Oliver returns to Star City, he won't be the big man on campus anymore, either. Diggle will have been Team Arrow leader for almost half the year. Oliver ceded his superhero mantle in the season 3 finale and hopefully returns with a renewed purpose to save the city as an ensemble member and not with a renewed sense of needing to tell everybody what to do.
(I also really hope Oliver doesn't lapse and throw a tantrum similar to the one in season 3 "Canaries" about "I'm back now" and why are you questioning me?)
Once again, Felicity is the change agent.
Oliver finally sees the huge downside of making decisions for people and about people, like he's the sole all-knowing adult. Especially the people to whom he entrusts his life every day. He needs a strong motivation to permanently un-learn his default reaction.
Felicity, and his future with her, is that motivation.
He saw her literally walk away from him in season 3 "Uprising" over this exact issue, and it was devastating (but apparently not devastating enough to prevent him from doing it 2 or 3 more times).
But now, after finding the happiness he thought he'd never experience, nor deserve? I doubt he'll purposely risk that happening again. Fundamentally changing his MO for her and with her will benefit EVERY relationship in Oliver Queen's life.
Especially with his brother John Diggle.
