SPOILER ALERT! This article discusses events that occurred in the Arrow Season 6 finale. Please proceed with caution if you have not yet seen the episode and wish to avoid spoilers.
In order to stop Diaz in the Arrow Season 6 finale, Oliver made a deal with the FBI Agent Samandra Watson. The team received backup from the law enforcement agency and immunity for their actions as vigilantes. They teamed up with the FBI to try to take down Diaz and his operation once and for all. While they were able to take down those working for him, especially after, with Felicity’s help, Oliver was able to copy the drive around Diaz’s neck, the Big Bad himself was still MIA by the end of the episode.
That was because Lance took a bullet from Earth-2’s Laurel Lance, and Black Siren decided to use her sonic scream on Diaz. She screamed him off a rooftop, but when the FBI checked the water for his body, they didn’t find him.
While Diaz is still out there, it won’t be Oliver who tracks him down, because part of the deal he made with the FBI involved him admitting to the world that he’s the Green Arrow, in addition to going to prison. Thanks to the episode title, “Life Sentence,” that wasn’t much of a shock.
What was surprising was that Felicity had to find out what her husband did at the same time as everyone else: when Watson showed up at the hospital as they waited for news on Lance’s condition and took him away in handcuffs. It was just the episode before that she was reminding Oliver that they’re married and he couldn’t do things on his own anymore. In his defense, he did tell her he was still learning.
However, he did have a chance to tell her earlier in the Arrow Season 6 finale, while he was busy on what she called his “farewell tour” and talking to Diggle, Rene and Dinah. Instead, he let her believe that part of the deal included giving up being the Green Arrow – not giving it up because he was going to be locked up and couldn’t be the Green Arrow.
Marc Guggenheim, who is leaving the series as co-showrunner/executive producer (but will be serving as an executive consultant in Season 7), admitted to TVLine that Felicity would be right to be angry that he didn’t take time out of that farewell tour to speak with her.
“Oliver is going to have some work to do. … This was a momentous decision that affects not only her but their son, and at the end of the day he didn’t consult her.”
With Beth Schwartz taking over as showrunner, Guggenheim could only offer up his reasoning for Oliver keeping Felicity in the dark, which won’t necessarily be what plays out on screen in Arrow Season 7. As he saw it, “he knew she would talk him out of it.”
Felicity was ready to break Oliver out of prison like he’d broken Diggle out last season, but that was when he told her he was going to supermax. That made him not telling her the terms of his deal even worse. Guggenheim may have been putting it lightly when he told Entertainment Weekly , “there’s going to be some challenges Felicity will have to overcome in light of Oliver making this big, momentous move without consulting Felicity.”
That’s not even taking into account the targets now on Felicity and William’s back since Oliver announced that he’s the Green Arrow, even if they are going into protective custody.
Arrow Season 7 will air on the CW this fall in a new time slot, Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.