diff --git a/packages/aws-cdk/lib/deploy.ts b/packages/aws-cdk/lib/deploy.ts
index 95f45e8d93299..75cc91b025c94 100644
--- a/packages/aws-cdk/lib/deploy.ts
+++ b/packages/aws-cdk/lib/deploy.ts
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ export const deployStacks = async (stacks: cxapi.CloudFormationStackArtifact[],
     stack.dependencies
       .map(({ id }) => id)
       .filter((id) => !id.endsWith('.assets'))
-      .every((id) => deploymentStates[id] === 'completed');
+      .every((id) => !deploymentStates[id] || deploymentStates[id] === 'completed'); // Dependency not selected or already finished
 
   const hasAnyStackFailed = (states: Record<string, DeploymentState>) => Object.values(states).includes('failed');
 
@@ -57,4 +57,10 @@ export const deployStacks = async (stacks: cxapi.CloudFormationStackArtifact[],
   if (deploymentErrors.length) {
     throw Error(`Stack Deployments Failed: ${deploymentErrors}`);
   }
+
+  // We shouldn't be able to get here, but check it anyway
+  const neverUnblocked = Object.entries(deploymentStates).filter(([_, s]) => s === 'pending').map(([n, _]) => n);
+  if (neverUnblocked.length > 0) {
+    throw new Error(`The following stacks never became unblocked: ${neverUnblocked.join(', ')}. Please report this at https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues`);
+  }
 };
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/packages/aws-cdk/test/deploy.test.ts b/packages/aws-cdk/test/deploy.test.ts
index 600f47531dd95..9a8a83b0d1c13 100644
--- a/packages/aws-cdk/test/deploy.test.ts
+++ b/packages/aws-cdk/test/deploy.test.ts
@@ -110,6 +110,14 @@ describe('DeployStacks', () => {
       ],
       expected: ['C', 'D', 'A', 'B'],
     },
+    {
+      scenario: 'A -> B, A not selected',
+      concurrency: 1,
+      toDeploy: [
+        { id: 'B', dependencies: [{ id: 'A' }] },
+      ],
+      expected: ['B'],
+    },
   ])('Success - Concurrency: $concurrency - $scenario', async ({ concurrency, expected, toDeploy }) => {
     await expect(deployStacks(toDeploy as unknown as Stack[], { concurrency, deployStack })).resolves.toBeUndefined();
 
diff --git a/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/app/app.js b/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/app/app.js
index 8c6a722bdb674..131e759e10495 100755
--- a/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/app/app.js
+++ b/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/app/app.js
@@ -279,6 +279,9 @@ class DockerStackWithCustomFile extends cdk.Stack {
   }
 }
 
+/**
+ * A stack that will never succeed deploying (done in a way that CDK cannot detect but CFN will complain about)
+ */
 class FailedStack extends cdk.Stack {
 
   constructor(parent, id, props) {
@@ -400,7 +403,11 @@ switch (stackSet) {
     new LambdaHotswapStack(app, `${stackPrefix}-lambda-hotswap`);
     new DockerStack(app, `${stackPrefix}-docker`);
     new DockerStackWithCustomFile(app, `${stackPrefix}-docker-with-custom-file`);
-    new FailedStack(app, `${stackPrefix}-failed`)
+    const failed = new FailedStack(app, `${stackPrefix}-failed`)
+
+    // A stack that depends on the failed stack -- used to test that '-e' does not deploy the failing stack
+    const dependsOnFailed = new OutputsStack(app, `${stackPrefix}-depends-on-failed`);
+    dependsOnFailed.addDependency(failed);
 
     if (process.env.ENABLE_VPC_TESTING) { // Gating so we don't do context fetching unless that's what we are here for
       const env = { account: process.env.CDK_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT, region: process.env.CDK_DEFAULT_REGION };
diff --git a/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/cli.integtest.ts b/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/cli.integtest.ts
index 77832d9df2a45..89477861966d1 100644
--- a/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/cli.integtest.ts
+++ b/packages/aws-cdk/test/integ/cli/cli.integtest.ts
@@ -143,6 +143,29 @@ integTest('automatic ordering with concurrency', withDefaultFixture(async (fixtu
   await fixture.cdkDestroy('order-providing');
 }));
 
+integTest('--exclusively selects only selected stack', withDefaultFixture(async (fixture) => {
+  // Deploy the "depends-on-failed" stack, with --exclusively. It will NOT fail (because
+  // of --exclusively) and it WILL create an output we can check for to confirm that it did
+  // get deployed.
+  const outputsFile = path.join(fixture.integTestDir, 'outputs', 'outputs.json');
+  await fs.mkdir(path.dirname(outputsFile), { recursive: true });
+
+  await fixture.cdkDeploy('depends-on-failed', {
+    options: [
+      '--exclusively',
+      '--outputs-file', outputsFile,
+    ],
+  });
+
+  // Verify the output to see that the stack deployed
+  const outputs = JSON.parse((await fs.readFile(outputsFile, { encoding: 'utf-8' })).toString());
+  expect(outputs).toEqual({
+    [`${fixture.stackNamePrefix}-depends-on-failed`]: {
+      TopicName: `${fixture.stackNamePrefix}-depends-on-failedMyTopic`,
+    },
+  });
+}));
+
 integTest('context setting', withDefaultFixture(async (fixture) => {
   await fs.writeFile(path.join(fixture.integTestDir, 'cdk.context.json'), JSON.stringify({
     contextkey: 'this is the context value',