Before we dive into this ARROW recap, it is important that you are very well aware that there will be major – and I mean gigantic – spoilers ahead. Proceed at your own risk.
Well, that was intense. I went from blissfully happy to completely shocked in two minutes flat during last night’s winter finale of ARROW . Have you guys recovered yet?
“Dark Waters” starts out with an event for Oliver’s mayoral campaign. He invited the people of Star City to come out and help them clean up the Bay Area, and it was a success. That is, up until the moment that a drone showed up and started shooting at people. It’s tense, there were a lot of kids there and, afterwards, Oliver obviously feels guilty about it because a lot of people got hurt. The team gets together and devise a plan to out Dahrk to the media, and that’s exactly what Oliver does. He calls the press and gets everyone together to release Damien Dahrk’s photo, along with all they know about H.I.V.E. and it obviously ruffles Dahrk’s feathers.
We get to see Mamma Smoak again and it just made me wonder whether she has been staying with Oliver and Felicity all this time. Our IT queen seems to be on very good terms with her mother and doesn’t bat an eye when she arrives at the loft only to find decorations everywhere. Donna wants Felicity’s Jewish heritage to be part of the festivities and has made it her mission to get the right ornaments together. While she is going through the decorations box, she finds the ring and nearly gives Felicity a heart attack when she squeals so loudly that it nearly hurt my ears. But the secret is out and now Felicity knows Oliver has or had the intention to propose. Later, when they’re at the Holiday party for Oliver’s campaign, she confronts him about it, after realizing he was going to propose three months ago, when they were living the blissfully domestic life in Ivy Town.
Their conversation is cut short when Dahrk shows up, ghosts shooting right, left and center and then promptly kidnaps Felicity, Dig and Thea after knocking Oliver unconscious. When he comes to, our vigilante goes a little crazy and literally tries to beat the location out of every ghost he finds in his way, without any success. Malcolm shows up, saying he has acquired an encrypted phone from one of the ghosts. So Oliver contacts Dahrk and makes a deal to let his team go. However, as Dahrk himself said it, bad guy, remember? The villain predictably double crosses him and throws Felicity into a gas chamber, along with John and Thea. These were a few tense minutes until Malcolm – dressed as the Green Arrow – and Laurel get there in time to help Oliver get them out.
Now let’s talk about this scene for a second. Dahrk explains how every once in a while, humanity needs a reset, a do over, and then he puts a guy in a gas chamber and kills him to prove his point. It makes me think that this is his plan, so to speak. Purify the human race, according to his own messed up notion of what is good and worthy. Could they be hinting at a holocaust kind of thing here? Because, as if the gas chamber thing wasn’t dark enough, he goes and throws a Jewish girl into it and tries to kill her asphyxiated. Granted, he may not have known that Felicity is Jewish, but the showrunners sure do, as her heritage was widely publicized this entire episode. So this moment, right here? A little too dark, even for ARROW.
Everyone makes it back to the lair safely and everything seems to be okay for now. When they go to the tree lighting event and Oliver proposes, I was seriously just waiting for the other shoe to drop. As much as my heart had just grown two sizes watching my favorite couple be super happy, this was the episode that had been announced as the game-changer and that it was going to be crazier than running Oliver through with a sword and pushing him off a cliff, like last year. So I knew that something big was about to happen. When Oliver and Felicity are in the limo and they are so happy, I was seriously on the edge of my seat. And then the ghosts come out of nowhere and shoot the hell out of their limo. The moment Felicity was hit, I swear my heart broke in a million little pieces. And then my screen faded to black.
Sigh.
Alright, now that it has been over twelve hours since that shocker of a winter finale happened, I think we can finally start to process everything that happened. First and foremost, let’s all take a deep breath, guys. I know the last scene was shocking and the promo for the next ARROW episode – which is scheduled to air only on January 20 (I know!) – is kind of hitting us over the head that Felicity is the one in the grave, but let’s stop and think about this rationally for a second.
It is simple math, really. Felicity said so herself that Oliver was going to propose to her three months ago, when they suddenly had to go back to Star City. The flashforward puts that grave scene six months after the events of the premiere. So there. It can’t be Felicity. I know she has been shot, but just the fact that they’re hinting so much that it is her, points us in the opposite direction. And let’s be real here, ARROW does not exist without the Original Team Arrow, but most importantly, it does not exist without Oliver and Felicity. Unless the showrunners want to shoot themselves in the foot, they are not going to kill an insanely popular character, just for the sake of a crazy plot twist.
Of course, I could be wrong; but I am more than willing to bet that – while Felicity will still have a long and difficult journey ahead of her during recovery, from the physical and emotional fallout of the events of last night’s episode – it is not going to be her in that grave. I am absolutely sure.
What did you think? What are your theories? Have you recovered from the shock yet? Hit the comments below and tell me all about it, or come talk to me on Twitter.
Don’t miss an all new episode of ARROW on January 20 at 8/7c on The CW. You can also watch a preview for the January return here.