Oliver's love life has gone through a lot of changes over the years on Arrow. He spent the first season and a half or so bedding just about every age-appropriate woman on the show, but it wasn't until he openly set his sights on Felicity, however, that we really saw how much he changed. The big scary vigilante was monogamous to a relationship that wasn't even there in Season 3, and he was ready to propose by the Season 4 premiere. Some fans were most vocally not thrilled by the big Olicity-centric romantic twists of Seasons 3 and 4, and unfortunately for them, Season 5 may offer up more of the same.
Diggle actor David Ramsay dropped a possible spoiler that could mean Oliver won't be setting his heart or eyes on somebody new any time soon.
David Ramsay's reveal at the Heroes and Villains FanFest in New Jersey (via Fangirlish), shouldn't make a certain faction of fans very happy. Seasons 3 and 4 were the first time that Oliver's attentions in the present were set on one woman for a prolonged period of time, and some fans just didn't like that Olicity was getting so much attention compared to Oliver's past dalliances. There were arrows to be shot and bad guys to be thwarted and comic canons to be honored. Arrow is not and has never been a romance.
It's not hard to see why Oliver's topsy-turvy love life in Season 4 could have been a drag for many viewers. His relationship with Felicity started out the season pretty low-key most of the time, but the show went too far in amping up the melodrama to break them up. The storyline with Oliver's secret kid seemed mostly in service of ending Olicity, and that arc was pretty damaging to Oliver's character in general. The show just wasn't all that good during the melodramatic straits of Season 4, and some of that had to do with how Arrow was handling the main character's romance.
Star Stephen Amell had an amended version of things to tell the crowd, saying that Oliver and Felicity can have a meaningful relationship without being romantically involved, and that they're in a great place right now. But then he went on to make this hard-to-misconstrue claim.
Geesh, even Amell's festival comments are rife with melodrama. And there's no denying that melodramatic romance has always been a part of Arrow. One of the very first things the pilot episode revealed was that Oliver was coming back from the dead after seemingly drowning while on a sex cruise with his girlfriend's sister. The premise was basically a superhero soap opera, and the soapiness clearly did not end even when Oliver's relationships with both of the Lance sisters ended. Now that Sara is on Legends of Tomorrow and Laurel is in the Great Beyond, it's looking like the most logical candidate to continue occupying the love interest role in Oliver's heroic journey is Felicity.
Of course, this is all great news for the Arrow viewers who have fallen for Olicity. Oliver/Felicity is a surprisingly sweet romance that really feels like it was never supposed to happen, especially considering the comics on which Arrow has been loosely based. The Green Arrow's traditional comic love interest has been the Black Canary, while Felicity Smoak's traditional comics role has been as Firestorm's stepmom who happened to be good with computers. Emily Bett Rickards was brought on to play an Easter egg character, but a few seasons later, she became Oliver's lady love.
It's been an unexpected progression that Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards have worked to sell over the years even when the writing has thrown third-party love interests and a surprise illegitimate child in their path. Season 4 clearly didn't end with Oliver being emotionally over Felicity, so it's really not all that much of a surprise that the moony Mr. Monogamy might want to get back together with her.
Only time will tell if, when, how, and why (oh why) Oliver and Felicity might get back together as David Ramsay has said, although we can bet that the debate among fans will go on and on until the show cements things. We don't know too much about the plot of the present in Season 5, so anything is really possible at this point. Who knows? Maybe Felicity will take one look at Oliver's new Arrow suit and remember a few of the reasons why she fell for him in the first place. Check out our breakdown of what we know so far about Arrow Season 5 for a peek ahead.
