Arrow EP Says Felicity Smoak Won’t Become Oracle

It remains to be seen what will happen to Felicity Smoak after she got caught in a vicious assault during the mid-season finale of Arrow. Recent promo clips (big spoiler warning if you click that link) suggest that she’ll be somewhat the worse for wear for her ordeal, perhaps driving her toward a certain heroic identity from the Batman mythos in DC Comics.

But thanks to Arrow executive producer Wendy Mericle, we now know one thing that won’t be in Felicity’s immediate future. Speaking to TVLine, Mericle made it clear that Oliver Queen’s fiancee won’t be taking the Oracle mantle as Barbara Gordon did once upon a time.

According to Mericle, it was an idea considered in the past, but not one we should expect to see play out during Season 4.

"That’s something we definitely talked about [doing] with Felicity in the beginning…. But yeah, it will not be Oracle, sadly. People have to tune in to see what happens."

Of course it could be that Felicity won’t be around long enough to take on a code name. There’s still the not insignificant matter of that grave we saw during the season’s very first episode, after all.

More likely, the Arrow team simply decided it wanted Felicity to blaze her own trail just as she’s been doing during the series’ entire run to date. Given the divided reaction to the idea of her becoming Oracle on the internet, that’s probably for the best.

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One thing we do know is that the fate of Felicity and the fallout from the attack that injured her are going to be major focuses of the next new episode of Arrow, “Blood Debts,” which airs Wednesday, January 20 on The CW.