The couple has been through the ringer this season -- but did the 'Elseworlds' body swap bring them back together for good?
Turns out, all Oliver Queen needed to do to mend his marriage was become someone else.
The CW's Elseworlds crossover continued with a special episode of Arrow on Monday, and after Barry (Grant Gustin) and Iris (Candice Patton) did their best to reconcile their relationship amid the bizarre Arrow/Flash body swap, it was Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity's (Emily Bett Rickard) turn to find their way back together -- a somewhat taller task, given the recent strains on their relationship.
The couple has been through the ringer this season -- and truly, in the six that preceded it as well -- steeling themselves through Oliver's imprisonment and Diaz's threats to their family, but after Oliver learned the depth of Felicity's anguish over his time away, it was time for him to lay it all on the line. And he did, reassuring his teammate-turned-wife that "love is too small a word" to describe his feelings, no matter what the world has in store for them.
"You will always be the love of my life," he assured. "People change. That never will."
"They're in a good place," Arrow EP Beth Schwartz told reporters last week of the couple's emotional scene. Despite the fact that Felicity's hypervigilance following Oliver's release spooked the couple into contemplating a pseudo-separation in last week's midseason finale, Schwartz assured fans that the pair is back on solid ground -- for now, at least.
"I think it worked out, actually, really perfectly," she added of their reconciliation in the crossover episode. "Just the fact that he became a different person, literally, in the crossover, and she's become a different person, he was able to understand her journey, which made for a perfect time for him to realize that he might have been overreacting in episode 8. It was a nice resolution, as well."
In October, Rickards spoke to ET's Leanne Aguilera about Felicity's arc this season, after the mastermind hacker broke ranks with Team Arrow to join forces with the FBI and seek vengeance on Diaz amid Oliver's imprisonment.
"I think her original mindset is a little broken, 'cause it's been sort of jaded and deconstructed, if not completely destroyed," she explained of the character's tumultuous season. "I think the danger is in, has it been completely destroyed, or is it repairable?"
"That is pretty much her arc for the season is deciding where now she believes justice and her morals lie, and whether or not she can accomplish that by being the person she was. Or does she have to accomplish it now by being the person that she has made herself into?"
The Arrow installment of the Elseworlds crossover also featured an appearance by Amell's real-life wife, Cassandra Jean Amell, who starred as Nora Fries -- known in the DC Comics 'verse as the wife of Batman villain Mr. Freeze and in some runs, a villain in her own right, Lazara.
"She’s just an interesting character," Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries said of introducing the character as an inmate at Arkham Asylum. "There’s so much Batman mythology out there available to people. Our thought was, let’s do something that’s familiar but also a little newer. That was the kind of the vibe we were going for with Nora."
"If you’re a Batman person, you know who she is but you’ve never really seen her have her own moment, you know? That’s kind of what we were going with that."
And of course, Nora had to have a moment where she faced off against Oliver. "It seemed like the obvious thing," Dries said with a laugh.
"You kind of have to do it, right?" Flash EP Todd Helbing added of pitting the real-life couple against each other in a super-powered fight scene.
The Elseworlds crossover concludes on Tuesday -- with an epic battle where "the fate of the world is literally at risk" -- in a special episode of Supergirl at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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