After defeating Ra’s al Ghul and preventing the spread of the Alpha/Omega bioweapon, Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak finally got together in the Arrow Season 3 finale and hightailed it out of Starling City so they could enjoy their lives together. Of course, villainy hasn’t been erased just because the two are going out now, and when Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E. come calling, the two lovers will be forced to return to Starling City to deal with these new adversaries. Unfortunately, their relationship is going to suffer as a result.
Despite Oliver’s new moniker and costume, and Felicity’s new position as CEO of Palmer Technologies, both will have a tough time balancing their work and love lives when Arrow Season 4 kicks off, and as executive producer Wendy Mericle hinted to TV Guide, this will put the couple through the ringer. Merciless said:
We really wanted to explore the ups and downs of a traditional TV relationship, like we've established with Oliver and Felicity, and pretty much throw everything at it that we can and see if they'll make it through.
So while the audience won’t see a dramatic breakup between Oliver and Felicity in the Season 4 premiere, things won’t be hunky dory for them in the show’s fourth year. Because Starling City is full of awful people that Team Arrow battles on a regular basis, there will be challenges that the couple has to deal with, so it won’t be all intimate dates and gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes. Whatever specifically happens between Oliver and Felicity in these early episodes, the latter will have a new confidant to play off on an intellectual level: Curtis Holt, played by Echo Kellum. According to Mericle:
He's going to fill the void that Ray left, not as a romantic interest for Felicity, but as someone who is an equal intellectually to her and that we can have fun scenes between her and Curtis Holt in Palmer Tech.
Ray Palmer was last seen in the Season 3 finale caught in an explosion, and while we will eventually see him in Legends of Tomorrow, his whereabouts are currently unknown. Because Felicity (inadvertently) signed those ownership papers in Season 3’s penultimate episode, she is now the new owner of Palmer Technologies, making her responsible for the company that once belonged to Oliver’s family. Curtis has been described as a “technological savant and inventor” who will be working directly under Felicity at the company starting in Episode 2, and will presumably become the superhero Mr. Terrific at some point later.
Arrow Season 4 will debut on Wednesday, October 7 in its normal timeslot on The CW.
