In its entirety, Arrow follows Oliver Queen after he was stranded on an island for five years when his father’s yacht sank in the sea. After finally returning to Star City (formerly Starling), he is a changed man with a book of his father’s names, wearing a green hood and carrying a bow and arrow to eliminate the evil and the corrupt. Over the course of eight seasons, Oliver grows from a firmly solo operation to having a full team that has included the likes of John Diggle (David Ramsey), Thea Queen (Willa Holland), Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), and of course Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards).
Oliver and Felicity have a complicated on-and-off romantic relationship throughout the entire series, though they eventually bonded in the afterlife after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Oliver’s death. However, the ending fans wanted almost didn’t happen due to the absence of Emily Bett Rickards for most of Season 8, but there’s a reason why.
Back during the announcement of the eighth season of Arrow prior to 2020 and the fact that it would be the series finale, Emily Bett Rickards took to her Instagram account to announce that she would not appear. Since she chose to convey the announcement through a poem, fans were left a bit unsure as to whether or not this was actually true.
However, after speaking in an interview about her character, the actress assured that she would leave Arrow before its last season because she felt that Felicity Smoak’s time in the story was clearly over. The actor went on to say that the show had known this was going to happen for over a year, implying that his departure was amicable.
These statements by Emily Bett Rickards turned out to be true, since she did not appear as Felicity in almost all of Arrow season 8. However, she returned to wrap up Felicity and Oliver’s story in the series finale. The actress would go on to star in an independent romantic comedy called “We Need to Talk” opposite Big Time Rush’s James Maslow, though she has been relatively inactive in the industry since then. Only time will tell what’s next for the famous actress.
