"The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak," or, "Why Not All Heroines Need Masks"

On November 5, the long-awaited episode of Arrow entitled “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak” finally aired. After first watch (which will probably be followed by a rewatch or three), I'm fairly certain that it will go down as one of the best in the show’s entire run. Comic, dramatic, and tragic all at once, the episode centers on everybody’s favorite hacker as her troubled past comes back with a vengeance.

Despite being a fan favorite since the first season and emerging as the hero's lady love to in the third, Felicity Smoak was the main character with the least available backstory. Fans knew that she hated kangaroos and loved mint chip ice cream, but we had to fill in an awful lot of blanks for ourselves. The concentrated dose of Felicity as promised in this installment was one that plenty were anticipating even more than last week’s milestone fiftieth.

Fortunately, “The Secret Origin Of Felicity Smoak” was a pretty great hour of television on all fronts. None of the characters were sacrificed on the altar of shoddy plotting. Unlike Oliver’s frankly baffling decision in “The Magician” to alienate the League of Assassins for the sake of protecting mass murderer Malcolm Merlyn, the events leading up to this week’s climax progressed naturally, and Felicity was able to save the day in her own episode without marginalizing the rest of Team Arrow’s roles. Nobody had to look bad for her to look good. Felicity and her mother would likely not have made it to the end were it not for Diggle and Roy taking care of the criminals outside and Oliver defying gravity to destroy the automatic targeting weapons inside. Without the brawn of boys, our brainy girl would not have survived.

And that’s okay.

Too often, women on television are gifted with skills and athleticism in the name of equality. They are given the ability to kick ass alongside the men because it is correct rather than organic...and because they look good in leather outfits. They are Women, not Characters. When done right, female fighters can be amazing. Some of the greatest Arrow action sequences have involved Caity Lotz’s Sara as the Canary, and Nyssa’s role in the battle against the Mirakuru soldiers in the Season 2 finale was—for lack of a better word—awesome. These women were trained killers. They were earned, they were exhilarating, and they were not ridiculous. (R.I.P. Sara. Live forever, Nyssa.)

Unfortunately, Arrow has long had a more difficult time in allowing the non-vigilante ladies to save the day in their own ways, and no character better exemplifies the struggle than Laurel Lance. Established from the very beginning as a lawyer, Laurel’s arena was in the justice system. She spent years in law school, not in a gym. She had a cop for a father and a few self-defense classes under her belt, but Laurel’s worth as a character should have been allowed to remain social and cerebral. Instead, her moments of forced physicality over the seasons have often jarred as gratuitous and contrived, and her character has suffered from the show’s attempts to bring her into both worlds as a legitimate contender.

  

Then there’s Felicity.

In most of the show so far, Felicity has spent her time on Team Arrow coordinating and hacking from the relative safety of the not-so-secret lair. When she does venture out into the field, the general result is either whacky hijinks or kidnapping. She has been a damsel in distress, a sleeper agent, and serial killer bait. She’s afraid of heights and doesn’t like guns. She wears glasses and high heels. She cries. She shamelessly ogles the hot guy and falls unabashedly in love with him. Her dresses frequently have so many cutouts that it’s difficult to imagine how she actually puts them on unassisted. 

And that's okay. 

Felicity Smoak has become the de facto female lead in a comic book show via consistent characterization, and she has never once been an action hero. The worst thing that her first centric episode could have done to her would have been to try to make her more than what she has become on screen. It would be the same problem as Laurel Lance. It would have been film Hermione Granger as opposed to book Hermione Granger. It would have been Princess Leia knowing how to fly an X-Wing. It would have been elevation without evolution.

But it wasn’t.

Just as other Arrow villains have met their dooms thanks to careless zip-tying or unnecessary monologuing, Cooper Seldon made his fatal mistake when left Felicity Smoak unsupervised in a room with a computer. Even if his story had ended the same way as the original Count Vertigo with an overabundance of arrows in his chest and the female lead trembling on the floor, Felicity would have played a role in her own rescue. She excelled in her own arena in a way in which no other individual on the show could have. As it was, that she threw an elbow and pistol-whipped the hacker holding her hostage was satisfying rather than unfeasible. Felicity Smoak was allowed to be a Character rather than a Woman in a combat situation, and so she was a full-fledhed Heroine.

Now, we just need to wait for “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak II: The Hacker Strikes Back.” Hopefully, it will arrive sooner than fifty more episodes. That wouldn't be okay.