#arrowspec

Written for voubledision, who has waited very patiently for this analysis to be finished. Here you are, lovely, and thank you for the inspiration!

(What do you think of Laurel’s … face when she sees/meets Felicity both times?)

First Encounter -- Episode 1x21: The Undertaking

I think Laurel was shocked that this strange woman suddenly appeared asking for Oliver. And from the non-public area of the club, too.

Not just any woman appeared, but an "atypical" choice of woman for Oliver to have around. (Which might, possibly, mean he is more serious about this new woman than normal. At least in Laurel's mind.)

Laurel was emotionally vulnerable here. Without Tommy, Oliver was her strongest link and support to that relationship. To find him possibly not as free for her needs as she might subconsciously wish -- well that was most likely a surprise to her.

Laurel still felt for Oliver. Whether it's the love that some comic-diehards believe or simply reliance upon an old, familiar relationship, the fact is that Laurel still felt something for Oliver. So she was probably unconsciously combative with the new person who might compete for that support and attention Laurel wanted and needed in that moment.

Laurel could probably tell Oliver actually wanted to follow Felicity for whatever she was going to discuss, rather than stay and continue the discussion of Tommy and relationships with Laurel. While Oliver and Felicity didn't actually have a secret romance or something, Laurel didn't know that, and it must have seemed odd to her that Oliver was so close to this woman.

I also feel like this dependence on someone else, this learning (learning about the router from Felicity, supposedly) on Oliver's part, made Laurel feel like he didn't need to rely on her as much as she subconsciously thought. Now, I'm not saying Laurel was being manipulative or stringing Oliver in her life or that she needed him to make her a whole, independent person. Because I don't believe that's true. I just think she had a slight need for Oliver's newfound strength since he came home. Especially now that her relationship with Tommy was such a mess. Remember in the previous episode, Home Invasion, Laurel admitted that Oliver had truly changed and she was glad to see it. So she saw some semblance of how dependable he had become (for her, at least) and she needed that now that Tommy appeared to be entirely undependable.

Second Encounter -- Episode 2x04: Crucible

In the first place, I doubt Laurel ever forgot that awkward meeting at Verdant several months prior. A lawyer as good as Laurel is supposed to be, wouldn't forget someone who appeared to have some small amount of authority in Oliver's life.

Laurel would also know Felicity as being Oliver's EA, I'm sure. Doubtless she has paid attention to the Queen family in recent times. So she knew that this tech-smart woman who only "set up Oliver's internet router" had a lot more trust than Oliver might have claimed previously.

Laurel has been having a really rough time after the breakup with Tommy, losing Tommy, feeling guilty for sleeping with Oliver, blaming the hood, getting kidnapped by the doll maker, nearly dying in a terrible way, realizing she was a part of the reason Tommy died, her drug and alcohol problems, the new job, losing all of her work at CNRI... Yeah, this woman has had it really rough since the undertaking. So even as annoyed as she was by everyone asking her how she was doing, Laurel was probably comforted by the fact that Oliver cared enough to know she's wasn't doing so hot and asked about it at the investors party.

Laurel was actually kind of opening up to Oliver and he was being a good friend to her in that moment, just letting her vent a bit. Then Felicity appeared and this same woman who inadvertently ended the last heart-to-heart with Oliver, had now inadvertently ended another. Laurel was a bit inebriated as it was, frustrated and disturbed by the turns in her life lately. And when she finally got some of it off her chest, the same woman interrupted. To inebriated and agitated Laurel, this probably seemed like a nasty little habit of Felicity's.

Also, if Laurel hadn't caught wind of those Oliver-and-Felicity rumors the entire QC staff (and probably half the city) passed around, I would be surprised. Now, Laurel stated to Oliver (in City of Heroes) that they shouldn't be together. But she was a flat out mess by the time of Crucible, and if the one man she had grown to somewhat trust again was a source of comfort and support, I doubt she would be above a bit of drunken, frustration-fueled jealousy when he was dragged away so willingly. More because she was fraught with tension, confusion, loss, and grief than because she was genuinely feeling the green monster towards Felicity.

Major Women In Oliver's Post-Island Life

Notable Comparisons

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Part 1: Instinct

In Ep. 1x07: Vendetta, Oliver left Moira (his own mother) bleeding on the sidewalk so he could chase down the assailant.

BUT

In Ep. 2x03: Broken Dolls, Oliver stayed with Felicity until Diggle arrived. Only then (when someone he trusted with Felicity's safety was present) did Oliver chase after the attacker.

Part 2: Choice

In Ep. 2x01: City of Heroes, the Fake Hoods' leader had Thea (Oliver's own sister) held at gunpoint. The man was going to kill her. But Oliver shot him in the shoulder, rather than killing him.

AND

In Ep. 2x03: Broken Dolls, Laurel would most certainly have died at the dollmaker's hands, but Oliver did not kill the attacker. He pinned the man to something, intending him to go to prison.

BUT

In Ep. 2x07: State V. Queen, Felicity was not going to die. She would have been drugged, and required the antidote (which QC created the same night). But at the mere hint of her being harmed in any way, of her feeling pain, Oliver killed the Count instantaneously.

With Moira, Oliver's instinct was to chase the attacker, not to sit with his bleeding mother.

With Thea, Oliver sat indecisively aiming at the man right up to the moment he shot the arrow. And it wasn't the threat to Thea that made him snap, so much as it was the man's remarks (however unknowingly he said them) about Oliver being a killer to exact justice.

With Laurel, Oliver made no move to kill Barton Mathis. He chased the man and chose to pin him down rather than kill him.

With Felicity, Oliver's instinct was to stay with her and protect her, Oliver was not indecisive about his aim towards the Count, and Oliver chose to kill him rather than pin him down.

This kept floating in my mind, so I had to make another little analysis about it. And here we are.

(A.K.A. Yes, I Defend Oliver. No, I Don't Care.)

Okay, this has been driving me crazy, so I have to put this up. This has some logical reasoning about Oliver's love life and some not-so-popular rationalizations in relation to that.

Many people complain about Oliver being a manwhore since he came back from the island. I've tallied up his "dalliances" since returning home to Starling City. They are in chronological order based on the general episodes over which each occurs.

Laurel Lance (Season 1, Episodes 1-6, generally)

As much as Oliver missed Laurel (according to his own words to Tommy in Season 1: Episode 1) Oliver and Laurel did not sleep together in those early days. (She was still angry, for starters.) They kissed the night of his 'prison' party and then Laurel left with the claim that they couldn't be close like that. End of discussion. No sleeping together. No "dalliance" to be had.

Helena Bertinelli/The Huntress (Season 1, Episodes 7-8)

A.K.A. the first woman Oliver actually slept with since returning home. Wow, he's such a manwhore that he didn't sleep with anyone for a few months after his return.

These two were seeing each other. No kidding Oliver slept with her. He was attempting a relationship with her. He wasn't just sleeping with her because she was a willing one-night-stand. No matter how flawed his thinking was about the reality of her attachment to him, Oliver genuinely cared about Helena and thought he could have a full-fledged relationship with her.

McKenna Hall (Season 1, Episodes 15-17)

A.K.A. the second woman (there is a trend here, folks) Oliver actually slept with since returning home. Echoing my points about Helena... Oliver and McKenna were dating. He slept with her as part of their relationship.

Oliver tried (within the confines of keeping his vigilante secret) to have an honest relationship with McKenna. Again, this was not a one-night-stand just because Oliver wanted to get laid. He genuinely cared about McKenna, he was scared for her when Helena shot her, and he was hurt when McKenna ended their relationship.

Laurel Lance (Season 1, Episodes 21-22)

A.K.A. the third woman Oliver actually slept with since returning home. Make no mistake, in Darkness At The Edge Of Town, Oliver was very wrong to go encourage Tommy and then run to Laurel that same night.

Here comes the unpopular opinion, ladies and gentlemen!

Read ahead at your own risk.

But Laurel chose to sleep with Oliver, too. Did she know about Oliver encouraging Tommy? No. Did she make any encouragement to Tommy about their relationship and then trash it by sleeping with Oliver?

Well, yes, actually. Laurel went and talked to Tommy, she told him she thought they should be together. Then, after Tommy & Oliver both revealed/confirmed Oliver's lingering feelings, Laurel went to talk to Oliver about it and said she still felt for him, too.

We never see a scene in which she clarifies this with Tommy. And that's because Laurel never did. (I'm completely certain that the writers/producers would have included such a scene in the show. They focused too much on the Oliver/Laurel/Tommy triangle to not include a scene like that.)

Yes, Tommy knew Oliver loved Laurel. He also believed that Laurel loved Oliver. But he never told that to Laurel. Tommy told her about Oliver's feelings. And he told Laurel that she and Oliver "belonged together," which could mean a lot of things. It could mean he thought their personalities melded better, or that they had too much history to overlook, or they needed to make their old relationship right again. The express meaning was vague, and so Laurel could not possibly have known that Tommy knew she still seemed to care for Oliver so strongly.

Laurel should have been honest with Tommy (like Oliver advised her in The Undertaking, by the way). She should have told him she was conflicted about her feelings for both of them. Instead, the next time Tommy saw Laurel, she was in Oliver's arms.

Think about that for a minute. Tommy saw Laurel only TWO more times before the finale. The first time was when Laurel came to him at Merlyn Global and expressed a desire to restart their relationship. The second time Tommy saw her was when he watched Oliver and Laurel ready to hop in the sack together.

Of the FINAL TWO TIMES Tommy saw the woman he loved, one she declared her love for him and the other she slept with his best friend. Don't you think that was a little confusing and heartbreaking for Tommy? Not only did Oliver push him towards Laurel and then betray that, but Laurel herself neglected to tell him her feelings had so significantly changed since the last time they talked (A.K.A. the time Laurel said she still loved Tommy).

Tommy died for Laurel. He died because he loved her more than anyone or anything else and he needed to protect her, to save her. And that same woman, who seemingly loved and wanted him more than anything, had last been seen kissing another man. Tommy's best friend, in fact.

Now, I think Oliver honestly came to believe Laurel was his one true happy ending somehow. After he ruined his first relationship with Laurel, the obviously unproductive outcome to his relationship with Shado, and the mess that happened with Helena and McKenna, Oliver was reaching for some kind of lasting happiness, some form of redemption for the hell his life became.

And there was only woman Oliver knew who embodied both a long-lasting relationship and forgiveness for his sins. Laurel Lance. Why? Because of two reasons:

Laurel was the longest somewhat-happy relationship Oliver ever had. According to information in The Undertaking, they were together longer than five years by the time Oliver and Sara cheated together.  By the way, if this span of time doesn't clue us into the fact that Sara knew what she was doing by going with Oliver on The Queen's Gambit? Then let's reference this fact about flashbacks from both seasons of the show: Whenever the flashbacks reference Oliver & Sara's bedroom scene on The Gambit, they tend to include this quote from Sara: "Laurel's gonna kill me." As in, I know this is wrong and Laurel is going to be upset when she finds out. I won't even get into the whole spiel that happened between Mrs. Lance and Sara while the latter was packing for the Gambit trip, because that is a whole other essay waiting to happen.

As far as forgiveness goes? Laurel was the embodiment of that because Oliver seemed to view his time on the island as penance for that specific choice. For ruining his relationship with Laurel, and for inadvertently leading Sara to her supposed death, Oliver believed he deserved his suffering. If that was Oliver's ultimate sin -- cheating on Laurel with Sara -- then Oliver's ultimate forgiveness (at the time of Darkness At The Edge of Town, at least), would be for Laurel to forgive him, start a new relationship with him, and for that relationship to be successful and last for the rest of their lives.

In conclusion, while sleeping together in Darkness At The Edge Of Town was a wrong choice for both Oliver and Laurel, it was still not a simple "dalliance" or a one-night-stand. Oliver thought he could have forever with Laurel at that point. Was he thoughtless and selfish for betraying Tommy? Absolutely.

But he was not just sleeping around because he wanted sex. He was going in on a relationship basis. Hoping to hang on to the one relationship that he believed (at the time) could embody true, long-lasting happiness for him.

Isabel Rochev (Season 2, Episode 6)

A.K.A. the fourth woman Oliver actually slept with since returning home. (Mind you, it's been approximately a year to a year-and-a-half since Oliver returned home the first time.) This is the one relationship that is actually a true one-night-stand. But I still wouldn't call it a "dalliance" by any means.

Should Oliver have slept with Isabel Rochev?

Well, on a grand scale of 'no' to 'he's a stupid selfish heartless idiot' I will go with a simple 'maybe not.'

I say this because of the following:

Oliver was, at this point in time, a very free and single human being. He wasn't cheating on anyone. He wasn't breaking any prior promises or commitments.

Oliver genuinely believed he had control over the situation with Isabel. He still believes it, as a matter of fact, otherwise he would not have told Felicity that 'it didn't mean anything.' I don't believe this was a mere reassurance in a relationship sense, I think Oliver was also trying to convince Felicity that he had everything under control in regards to Isabel's ever-looming takeover of the company versus their one-night-stand. Felicity obviously knows this has the potential to give a certain power to Isabel, and she is disappointed in the fact that Oliver doesn't see it in the the same vein of logic.

Isabel Rochev is willing to use anything possible to get power. She wants Queen Consolidated for her own and she wants it no matter what it takes. This particular scene with Oliver was a part of her attempt to gain a foothold against the most trusted person in Oliver's life at Queen Consolidated. Felicity Smoak is that trusted person.  It could have been anyone. It could have been Walter Steele if he'd stayed at the company. It could have been the janitor named Joe or the financial head of department named Cheryl. Whoever it is that Oliver trusts most at Queen Consolidated, Isabel Rochev would use them and anything about them to wrest power of the company from Oliver. Fact is, Isabel Rochev doesn't care about the 'who' in this equation. All she cares about is the 'how.' As in, 'how much does it take to break the trust between Oliver and this other person?' So she uses anything she can to do so. Remember, this is the woman who used Oliver's college-dropout past and his lessening billions against him at their first meeting. When the fake-hoods came into QC and broke up the meeting, Isabel laid blame at Oliver's feet for his mother's involvement with Malcolm Merlyn. She used his lessening billions against him again when he tried to help Alderman Blood with the guns campaign. While it would seem the last incident was all to save Queen Consolidated from going bankrupt, Isabel also subtly dug away at Oliver a little. A tiny little moment meant as another tiny step in her plan to gain the company by either ruining Oliver or making him back down first. Isabel degrades Oliver when necessary to her cause, but when it no longer works, she turns to flattery and carefully spoken understanding (as she did in Moscow). And rumors about the assistant sleeping with the boss? The only reason Isabel used that against Oliver and Felicity was to insert herself in that dynamic. Because, as said above, Felicity is the person Oliver trusts most at Queen Consolidated. If Isabel's one true goal is to break Oliver's hold over the company, then first she has to break down the bonds between him and that company. Starting with the person he trusts most. Like I said, it could have been anyone. No matter who it was, Isabel would have used every scrap of gossip and negativity to destroy Oliver's bond with that person. Isabel doesn't understand what Felicity and Oliver share, because she doesn't know about the vigilante side to their lives. So she uses the biggest thing she knows about. In the case of Felicity, the biggest and most hard-to-squash gossip is that Felicity slept her way into her position as Oliver's EA. So Isabel attempted to use it against them, to try and gain power. Isabel was NOT JEALOUS. In any way, shape, or form. She was angry because Felicity is the one who has Oliver's ear (and vice-versa). Oliver obviously trusts Felicity much more than he trusts Isabel. And if the CEO has someone that trustworthy whispering in their ear, then Isabel has a much larger and longer fight on her hands.

After all of this analysis, the fact remains that in approximately a year-and-a-half, Oliver has slept with a grand, manwhoring total of FOUR women. THREE of which were relationships that he genuinely wanted to continue on a serious basis.

That means Oliver "just slept around" one time. ONE TIME. He doesn't hop into the sack with every woman that comes along anymore, otherwise we'd see a lot more women on the show in temporary appearances -- sneaking out of his room or the mansion. We'd see Oliver dealing with the repercussions of that in addition to his many other social faux pas. (Like missing the benefit he discussed with Alderman Blood.)

While other people in the show often think Oliver is still the same philandering idiot, it's only because he hasn't given them any overt, obvious displays of how much he has changed. It's not because he's actually been sleeping with a whole hoard of women in his spare time, but because he allowed that appearance to linger in others' eyes as a means of diversion from his nightly work.

Parallells: 2x06 Keep Your Enemies Closer & 2x07 State V. Queen

Lyla Michaels & Felicity Smoak

Lyla says 'You came for me', stunned that John is there for her, that he came to save her. She reaches out to touch him, almost making sure he's really there.

Felicity says 'You were shot' and it's almost as if she's saying 'You were shot because you came for me'. She reaches out to touch Oliver just like Lyla reached for John, concerned and amazed. Like she can't work past the surprise of what's happened yet.

Lyla and Felicity never expected to be saved like this. They never expected John and Oliver to come to their side regardless the cost. The realize the importance of their relationships with these men. And vice-versa.

John Diggle & Oliver Queen

John looks Lyla right in the eye, and tells her (reassures her) he is never going to leave her in danger. John always will come to save her, he always will protect her.

Oliver looks Felicity straight in the eye and assures that it's nothing. Oliver essentially says that saving her is everything. It will never be less important than anything else. He will always protect her.

John and Oliver reassure Lyla and Felicity that nothing is more important than they are. Not family, not society, not time, not distance, not physical wounds. It's nothing compared to protecting them. Always.