My Name is Oliver Queen thoughts
I just wanted to write that I was hoping for a much more divisive ending for Arrow’s Season 3 finale. There’s arguably no push to watch Season 4 (although of course I still will). There were also many dire warnings that the team would be splintered and Oliver’s and Diggle’s relationship would be irreparably changed, but I really didn’t get that sense. This is what I think would have been kind of cool:
- Ray, having signed his company over to Felicity in the previous episode, informs her of this sleight of hand and departs for places unknown. This is probably not forever, but enough to justify his absence for the beginning of Season 4.
- Felicity, instead of feeling all understanding and lovey-dovey towards Oliver, feels just as betrayed as Diggle. (Oliver did kidnap Lyla, after all, a big moral no-no.) She becomes convinced, after the casualties suffered by Starling City, that operating via vigilante may not be the best way to handle things after all and, since she is now president of Palmer Technologies, kicks Oliver out of the improvised “Arrow cave.” She won’t stop him from continuing his own brand of justice, but she won’t be a part of it either.
- Felicity easily brings Diggle to her side and hires him as her new head of security for Palmer Tech. She then extends an olive branch to Captain Lance, telling him that while she doesn’t want to see Oliver arrested, she has swung to Lance’s way of thinking that masks aren’t helping the city. She then goes all Tony Stark and suggests an alternative way: designing hardware based on the A.T.O.M. suit to equip the city’s police force. It was, after, technology that saved the city from worse casualties via the nanites. Felicity thus pledges her support for Starling City the same way Ray had been doing previously for the city and mayor. She and Lance shake hands, and an alliance is born.
- Oliver, meanwhile, still commits to protecting his city, and Laurel and Thea continue to believe in him, thus forming the new, if smaller, Team Arrow. At the beginning of Season 4, however, Felicity keeps beating them to the punch, as the armored police force continues to take down bad guys before the masks can arrive. (They might even be accompanied by an armored Diggle!) Felicity is making Oliver obsolete.
- Of course, things go wrong. A bad guy steals some of the new police armor and puts it to evil uses. Maybe the Bug-eyed Bandit makes a return and hacks into the suits. In any case, something happens that results in the suits terrorizing the city, and Oliver, Laurel, and Thea have to come in and save the day, with assistance from Felicity and Diggle, who are trying to sort the problem. Reconciliation, or at least ending of hostilities, between the two sides (Oliver, Laurel, Thea vs. Felicity, Diggle, Lance) occurs.
I just think it would be really interesting to have a situation where Diggle and Felicity actually serve as antagonists to Oliver, if in a less obviously evil way. Of course, the arc wouldn’t be able to last more than a couple of episodes, like the Danny Brickwell storyline, but it’d make fans pretty eager to see the beginning of Season 4.