Why Felicity’s disability was handled poorly.
~Writren by someone with physical disabilities
So I’ll just start by saying the obvious. Arrow spoilers for s4 and onward!
Felicity is paralyzed in the car crash in the midseason finale of season 4. Obviously, she struggles with this, she struggles to find her place on the team and she even worries that Oliver will leave her due to her paralysis. It’s also said that her spinal cord damage was permanent. She was going to be in a wheelchair *forever*.
Her character arc takes her through this, adapting to team arrow, adapting to running the company-all while in a wheelchair, and trying not to worry about her fiancée and friends risking their lives in the field every day. It takes a huge amount of courage, and progress on her part to make it through this-something that I admired.
However. Her disability is reversed when she receives the spinal implant that fixes her paralyzation. While miracles can happen, this wasn’t the result of a miracle doctor or years of physical therapy-this was a spinal implant from a fictional type of technology that helped her walk again. This completely undos all her development with her learning how to adapt, and feels very off to me. Felicity is a strong character. She adapted to her disability and overcame it. That doesn’t justify simply undoing it for a cheap plot point.
I genuinely enjoyed Arrow for the most part. I still rewatch an episode or two here or there, but this is where I began to drift. I’m not going to outright call the writers ableist or anything, I just think that they maybe should’ve consulted people with disabilities first to see how to best handle it. Or, if they only wanted it to be temporary, don’t give her a permanent condition in the first place.
People are welcome to disagree, but through my rewatching, these are my thoughts!
