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Did Felicity Smoak receive too much hate? Emily Bett Rickards speaks out on the backlash she received for her role in Arrow.
With the age of the Arrowverse now over, it’s almost hard to look back at how big of an institution Arrow was in the DC community. The shared universe had a very passionate and vocal fanbase, for better or for worse. And there’s perhaps no better example for the “worse” of it than the conversation around Emily Bett Rickard’s Felicity Smoak.
Felicity Smoak became one of the most controversial characters in DC history during Emily Bett Rickard’s tenure on Arrow. The character was the center of a ton of controversial decisions, namely revolving around her relationship with Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen. And while there were valid critiques to make regarding how the showrunners handled her character and their relationship to the comics, this often manifested in online harassment toward Rickard herself.
Arrow Star Speaks About Online Hate
Like most actresses in massive fandoms like DC, Emily Bett Rickards has mostly strayed away from talking about the backlash she received for playing Felicity Smoak publicly. However, now five years from the series finale back in 2020, the actress spoke out on what it was like to come face-to-face with one of the internet’s loudest fandoms in Arrow.
“I think that criticism is passion, and all that passion is good. When I was on Arrow, I quickly realized how passionate comic book fans can be,” The actress told TV Insider. “At one point, I had to have a really long talk with my therapist, asking, ‘Okay, so what is all this energy? I don’t really understand it.’ As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how special that is. Like, aren’t we allowed to get passionate about these things that we care about?”
It’s good that Emily Bett Rickards was able to take the very passionate criticisms from DC fans in stride following her time on Arrow. While Felicity Smoak may have been the poster child for bad fan engagement on the Arrowverse, other actresses in other major franchises like Star Wars haven’t been so lucky in standing up to the backlash they’ve received. So any good light from these types of stories is something much needed.
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