Arrow 'The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak' Review: Felicity Fails This City

Arrow Season 3 continued Wednesday night with "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak," an episode that, as the title states, showed us part of how the bubbly IT gal became the person she is today.

Felicity has started to get some more complex material this season, thanks in part to her relationship with Oliver and her new work with Ray Palmer. So a dedicated flashback episode for her was well timed here. Felicity has been dealing with some simmering emotional issues and rising tension for quite a while, and her mother's appearance put her over the edge. Emily Bett Rickards has been doing great work with this deeper material for Felicity, and she particularly excels at the emotional scenes.

The flashbacks in this episode meshed nicely with the present day action, as we got to see the skeletons in Felicity's closet in both periods of her life. The Felicity with black hair and goth clothing was a stark departure from the girl we know today, and she displayed far more sexuality than we've ever seen during the two-plus seasons of Arrow.

Of course, as soon as Felicity said her ex-boyfriend didn't unleash the virus on Starling City, it was fairly obvious that her ex-boyfriend unleashed the virus on Starling City. Cooper Seldon (nice Big Bang Theory reference) lured Felicity's mother to town just to use her as collateral, but the experience ultimately brought the mother and daughter closer together.

It was nice to see Felicity take charge in this episode and save the day almost on her own. Oliver never even fired an arrow at Cooper because Felicity defended herself physically, something we don't see from her too often. The show tied this nicely into her relationship with her mother, as Felicity realized that she has more of her mother's strength in her than she knew.

Thea, too, continues to remain more active, which is a welcome change for a character that spent much of the first two seasons doing little more than complaining and getting in trouble. Say what you want about her hypocrisy or her approach to her brother this season, but at least she's standing her ground and defining her terms. She told Oliver "this is how it's gonna be" and was willing to meet him halfway. The rest is up to him and, thankfully, the two seem to have a mature relationship instead of dragging out the drama. These secrets are still going to blow up in their faces (did you see Malcolm's face on the rooftop?), but at least they are united for now.

Laurel continues to stay on the offensive, too, as she works through her issues revolving around Sara's death. Now that she has opened up to Wildcat, he knows how to train her properly. Laurel is well on her way to becoming the Black Canary, but hopefully the show does not rush it. Sara had years of training with the League of Assassins, perhaps the deadliest group of people on Earth. Laurel has been training in a gym for a month. If she suddenly starts kicking ass, it won't feel genuine.

That ending scene with Roy opens up some seriously interesting possibilities. It feels like misdirection because Roy had absolutely no reason to kill Sara. The only conceivable reason is that he still had Mirakuru in his system and it made him crazy, but that seems unlikely. It's possible the League somehow used Roy as a puppet, which would create a deep storyline for the character as he struggled with that, but hopefully we'll find out more next week.

Notes:

-       Laurel chose black because Black Canary.

-       Oliver smiled multiple times in this episode. Is he ill?

-       That was one enormous bag of popcorn Oliver brought to Thea's apartment.

-       Roy didn't flip in this episode!

-       Ray Palmer has become "guy who enters the room at the worst possible time." I want this to be his character for the rest of the time on the show.

-       Diggle finally got a mask!

-       Oliver and Roy did the "You have failed this city" line in tandem. Adorable.

What did you think of "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak"? Let us know in the comments section.