There has been a lot of speculation about Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) and her future on Arrow this season. When Oliver (Stephen Amell) first went to the mysterious gravesite and shed a single tear, fans wondered if Felicity might be the one he’s mourning. But, a flash forward in last week’s “Blood Debts” showed Felicity sitting in the car waiting for Oliver at the cemetery, so strike that!

Felicity’s injury at the hands of Damien Darhk’s (Neal McDonough) goons seemed to be suggesting that she could become the comic character Oracle, although executive producer Wendy Mericle shot down that theory last week. Felicity is definitely in a wheelchair though, and definitely dealing with some dark things, as revealed in a sneak peak video for this week’s episode. Check it out:


So, we see Felicity popping some pills (as you would — although when TV characters start taking pills it usually only leads to abuse and intervention, so we’ll see about that). And then, something weird happens. She starts talking to herself, and then her other self appears. Now, it looks an awful lot like Goth Felicity that we saw in Season 3’s “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak, but she also looks like the Sandman comic character Death. Still, I think it's possibly just a nod, and not indicative of her actually becoming Death (though what an inversion on the grave speculation that would be!)

Executive producer Marc Guggenheim spoke to EW recently, saying that

“The wheelchair is the beginning of Felicity’s story this year, not the end of it. I read online people saying, ‘Oh, lighter season my ass.’ I would argue that for Arrow, this is lighter. What’s particularly lighter is Felicity’s reaction to her injury and the way she handles it. Last year, there would’ve been a lot of sobbing and crying. This year, you’ll see that, in many ways, Felicity comes into her own in a much greater way than she would have had she not faced this adversity. Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. You’re really going to see that in the upcoming episodes.”

Some fans have complained that Felicity being a wheelchair means that she’ll be sidelined from the action, but I hardly think that will be the case. Either there will be a miraculous discovery that heals her, or she will stay in the wheelchair and maybe even do some stunts. Hey, it happened in Mac and Me!

Arrow airs Wednesday nights on the CW.

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Image via the CW