Arrow 520 Review: Olicity Rises

          This episode passed all my expectations.  Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards made every scene spark, what fantastic actors.  There was a level of maturity and depth that came through, and the viewer who has followed Arrow from the first season sees the growth of these two characters of Oliver and Felicity.  It takes good acting to make this happen.

     Olicity: This was indeed an Olicity concentric episode.  Prometheus has caused an explosion that traps Oliver and Felicity in the bunker.  Oliver awakens and calls out for Felicity and finds that she can't move her legs.  The explosion has caused her spinal device to fail.  Oliver thinks he can find a way out through the elevator shaft, and against Felicity's warnings, attempts to find a way out. In doing so, he falls and his back gets punctured.  While Felicity stitches his wound, she tells him that Oliver doesn't trust her.  In the flashback scene, she tells Curtis that Oliver trusts her as Overwatch, but not as Felicity.  This is what hurts her.  In the bunker they finally address all the issues they couldn't or wouldn't face before.  They nearly run out of air and Oliver collapses, and Felicity crawls to him and try to awaken him.  When he comes to, he feels he may die so he confesses to Felicity that he does indeed trust her and he always has trusted her, but it is he himself he doesn't trust.  He tells her what Chase said to him and how he confessed that enjoyed killing.  Felicity tells him that is not who he is.  With all he had to endure for those 5 years before he came back to Star City, he could have become a killer, but he didn't.  He isn't a killer.  Felicity tries to get him to see the Oliver she knows and loves.

Felicity has an idea on how they can explode the door that they need to escape from.  Oliver takes what she has made and then stops him saying, "What if my math is wrong?"  Oliver then says, "Are you Felicity Smoak? Then your math is right.  I loved that line.  It showed complete and total trust in her even when she doubted herself.

Oliver collapses  again and Curtis sends down a shot of adrenaline for  Oliver.  Felicity just takes it and slams into his chest.  Oliver's reaction was perfectly acted and it even made my husband chuckle, because he says that would be the reaction.  (My husband should know since he is a retired firefighter-emt.  Oliver puts Felicity on his bleeding back, and the team hoist them up, but Oliver is weak from blood loss and Felicity falls.  Oliver hangs onto her arm, and Felicity pleads with him to let her go.  She would rather die than have Oliver hurt, but Oliver is never going to let Felicity go again. He hangs on through all the pain and refuses to let her go.  This moment was a turning point in their relationship.  Oliver will never let her go again.  This symbolizes their love.

At Argus and after Oliver has his surgery, Oliver and Felicity talk again. Tears well up in Oliver's eyes as he thanks Felicity for what she said.  She too apologies for now she understands exactly why Oliver did what he did, and she was wrong to walk away.  Oliver needs to know who he really is.  I wanted Felicity to at least kiss his hand or his forehead.   Sorry, writers, but I didn't buy the whole Billy thing that Felicity told Oliver.  Writers, you never made us care for Billy.  You never made us think they had anything remotely special, nor make us sad for his death.  However, you did make me believe that Felicity's revenge stemmed from what Chase did to Oliver.  She knew Chase had done something bad, and she was determined to bring him down.  That's how this reviewer saw the story-line play out.

       The Flashback scene was cute with Felicity trying to do the salmon ladder.   Oliver  and Felicity looked so cute together in those scenes.   It made all the coolness between them in this season make sense.

      Diggle and Lyla:  Their story paralleled Oliver and Felicity's because Lyla didn't think Diggle trusted her.  I think it hurt her to think that she was like Amanda Waller.  Both Felicity and Lyla crossed a line, and both admitted they were wrong.  Tenderness made Lyla give Diggle an accounting of all she has done at Argus, and I think that touched Diggle's heart.  Their love will survive all the trials, because both know there can be no secrets between them.  They are both in the same line of work.

I love how the team comes together to help Oliver and Felicity.  Curtis is becoming mildly annoying to me.  I did love the way he wants and knows that Oliver and Felicity belong together.

I like Rene and hope that he survives the end of the season to come back.

     This well acted episode by everyone, but especially Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards, put the heart of Arrow back together and hope never to be broken again.