Arrow: Season 3, Episode 5, The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak Review

By Chris Murray

Warning this article contains Spoilers for this episode.

Arrow - Series 03.Episode 05 "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak"..Willa Holland as Thea Queen and Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen...© Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Ok hands up who saw the twist of this weeks villain a mile off? yeah me too. It was a pretty good episode though! If not a little different from what we usually see from the show. This week we delved deep into not Oliver's history but Felicity Smoak’s. In fact speaking of which, we barley see Oliver this week other than a few scenes.

As the title of the episode suggests, we learn a lot more about Felicity’s back story. These are done in the way of the flashbacks we are so use to seeing. Its a nice change that it’s one of the supporting cast this time.

Early on in the episode, we get our first glimpse of Felicity’s younger more goth self… Yes, Felicity used to be a Goth. Not that it detracts from anything at all though. She's still great. The whole episode is about her becoming who she is now through all she's been through. We get an early look of the friends she hung around with back then too. They call themselves “Hacktivists”.

It seems at this age Felicity is still very much a smart cookie. They almost succeed in hacking into some government database. But as we see Felicity takes the higher ground and prevents her boyfriend from doing so. This scene very much plays a big part of the episode later on. Its a shame though because as soon as a particular scene happens, it becomes blatantly obvious as to who's behind it. If you didn't pick up on this then you really should have!

Felicity’s mother is introduced early in this episode and features throughout. She's dressed very precariously in what looks like a very revealing undergarment. I have know idea why. I think she's a stripper or something? Anyway I felt this was a strange appearance. The initial scene itself I found was quite hilarious however. At first I wasn't entirely sure where they were going with this character, but it becomes clear as to why later on. I don't think she will be a recurring character though.

Ray Palmer is featured slightly this week too. The few scenes he's in are pretty good. Nothing major, but there was one scene in particular that suggests something potential quite big towards Palmer’s alias. Theres nothing set in stone yet regarding this though, so i’m largely speculating this is what it could actually be.

Other than the odd scrap between Queen and Roy tracking down potential suspects, there wasn't to much in the way of action scenes this week. Well, there was one pretty sweet one with Oliver and large auto turrets. But again it seemed way more to do with building the back story’s to characters. I might have had a different opinion on the episode if it was someone else. But because Felicity is such a good character, its perfectly enjoyable. Laurel we see is still training. Presumably (most definitely) to avenge her sister also.

The final scene shows something very interesting though. It’s still up in the air as to who murdered Sarah lance. For a while I thought it might be either Malcolm Merlin or Someone from the League Of Assassins. But what this scene shows is quite the opposite. I certainly wasn't expecting it. The show so far has done a very good job of making you guess who it is that has actually killed The Black Canary. I’m now officially clueless! Thats probably a pretty good thing.

Arrow - Series 03.Episode 05 "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak"..Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak...© Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Arrow: Season 3, Episode 5, The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak Review

Warning this article contains Spoilers for this episode.

If you need a little help Chris can help you catch up with The Flash & Arrow

The Flash: Season 1

Episode 1, Pilot/City of Heroes Review

Episode 2, Fastest Man Alive Review

Episode 3, Things you can't out run

Episode 4, Going Rouge Review

Episode 5, Plastique Review

Arrow: Season 3,

Episode 1, The Calm Review

Episode 2, Sara Review

Episode 3, Corto Maltese Review

Episode 4, The Magician Review

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