Well that was a fun four nights!
I’m not sure about you folks, but the CW basically took over our evening viewing with their “Heroes vs. Aliens” crossover event that took the general plot of the classic “Invasion” crossover and applied it to Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
I don’t have a ton of organized thoughts about this event by and large, except to say that I found it much more effective and enjoyable than the few other times the network has rolled out a crossover within its shared universe. It’s definitely a huge step-up from the episodes that set-up Legends last year, for example.
Here’s a few other things that crossed my mind, some spoilers, so don’t venture any further till you watch the whole thing:
- Supergirl‘s episode, thanks to the wonders of scheduling (between the election and the holiday), had to act as the midseason finale. It was basically a “red skies” entry moreso than a proper first chapter. On the other hand, it was a great capper for what has turned out to be a pretty great second season of the show – definitely the best of the four current shows right now.
- Once the actual Dominator storyline began, I was impressed with how effectively Berlanti, Guggenheim, Adler, Kreisberg, Klemmer and the rest of their team were able to combine the concerns of each series into a surprisingly streamlined effort that gave me some Whedon Avengers vibes…with the caveat that it’s on a restricted television budget. Also, basically everyone got something to do at some point or another! With a cast that big, that’s surely much harder to manage than it seems.
- Arrow‘s 100th episode was a fun spin on the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Perchance to Dream” as well as “For The Man Who Has Everything”. It both celebrated the milestone of the series, bringing back many of its key players, while also finding a way to rope in the cast that sticks out the most in such an otherworldly encounter. Sure, Wild Dog’s changing opinion on metahumans was maybe a bit too quick for my taste, but on the whole, this was one of the best episode of Arrow in quite some time.
- Utilizing Barry’s mucking with the time stream as the emotional hook of The Flash‘s contribution to the four-parter, and then revealing it as the entire reason for the Dominators re-emergence on Legends of Tomorrow was inspired.
- Cisco’s anger at Barry started to grate after four straight hours of it. But it looks like we’re finally coming out the other side of that one.
- I could have used more Kara in the finale, and I thought Ollie’s reasoning for sidelining was a bit specious, but then again his mea culpa was effective and Supergirl got a few nice little moments in the celebratory scene.
- Citizen Steel’s helmet is really stupid looking, and Nick Zano is a good looking guy, the rest of his costume is fine, but why cover his face up?
- That Ray Palmer line/meta-joke about Kara “looking like my cousin” was A+
Kudos to all involved! This might be the Arrowverse’s finest moment, but that’s just one guys opinion, what did you all think? Let’s talk about it!
Would have been better if Kara said Ray reminded her of her cousin.
I watch Flash and Supergirl, so I found myself a bit lost on the Arrow and Legends plotlines. In my opinion the Flash episode was the best of the bunch, in that I thought it balanced the action/character beats very well, along with providing a nice superhero slugfest action sequence. I’m sure the Arrow episode was great for people who watch that show, but it barely moved the whole “Invasion” plot forward so to me seeing all these old characters from the history of the show seemed almost a distraction. The Legends episode was FULL of story (indeed, I think you could have watched only the Legends episode and not missed much from the Invasion plot) and had some nice action sequences, but I thought the plot very haphazard with a less than satisfying resolution. (The aliens give up their invasion due to nerve pain?) I did love Victor Garber’s daughter plotline (he’s an amazing actor,) and was glad to (hopefully) see the backside of the Cisco hates Barry story. So I give them kudos for a very ambitious crossover, and I was impressed by how they managed to balance all the characters in the Flash and Legends episodes. That it held together at all was amazing. I only wish the ending was more satisfying.
I only watch The Flash and never got hooked on the other shows. This whole crossover was beyond painful for me as I did not understand anything regarding the other story lines. I feel this was not the best idea personally as I am here to understand what’s going on.
I thought that the Supergirl episode doesn’t count as the single crossover scene is repeated in The Flash. The Arrow episode was interesting, but it seemed like it took so long for them to figure out what was going on. The Flash was great. Legends was awesome.
Citizen Steel’s helmet is nearly comic version perfect so not sure what your deal is with that.
They need to make that warehouse into The Hall of Justice.
Overall, they could have solely focused on the crossover instead of trying to shoehorn in elements of each individual show. That seemed to take away from the momentum of the concept.
That being said, I loved it and it was a great crossover.
I had to visualize the scene 5 times to understand the meta-joke. It was a good one.
I thought it was the perfect homage to comic book crossovers:
* One episode that was billed as a part of the crossover but was actually a “red skies” crossover without any meaningful tie to the crossover as a whole.
* One episode that was an “issue 100” special event getting clobbered by the crossover and being forced to make do with it
* Two episodes acting as bookends – the first one setting everything up and the second where the writers realized that their three part story really needed a fourth part but editorial said no so everything had to be wrapped up quickly, like it or not.
* One major ongoing B-plot (Cisco’s anger at Barry over Time Travel Shenanigans) wrapped up in Someone Else’s Book instead of in the main series.
In retrospect more of the setup needed to be done in The Flash or somehow worked into Arrow because the “final issue” of the crossover was too jam-packed with plot. Not sure what I’d change though – both The Flash and Arrow were well done episodes of each of their respective shows and Legends at least kept the pace moving fast enough that it was only on a second viewing that I truly realized the ridiculous amount of plot they pushed off to the final episode of the series.
(Also a special shout-out for having the final moment of the event be a Special Bonding Moment between Barry and Oliver that happened on neither one of their shows. It would be like a major crossover event having its final issue be in Green Lantern and having the last scene be Batman and Superman sharing a moment without the rest of the group. It makes sense as the end of a Green Arrow/Flash event and it even makes sense in the context of the ongoing CW-iverse storyline, but shoving all of the Legends off their own show for the final scene feels off.)
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