So this week was the big CW Crossover event: Invasion that spanned from TV shows of Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) to The Flash (Grant Gustin) to Arrow (Stephen Amell) and concluded in Legends of Tomorrow. It’s full of Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), Cisco Ramon / Vibe (Carlos Valdes), John Diggle (David Ramsey), Ray Palmer / Atom (Brandon Routh), Sara Lance / White Canary (Caity Lotz) and more heroes. How was it? What did we think? Well, check out our review below…
SPOILERS!
Quick summary: Aliens invade the CW Earth-1. The Flash first spots the aliens named the Dominators. He elists the help of Supergirl from Earth-38, Team Arrow & the Legends of Tomorrow to help fight back the Dominators. All chaos ensues yet the heroes win. Yay!
We’re going to break down our thoughts based on each episode, so let’s begin with…
Supergirl “Medusa” Season 2, Episode #8
Robert: This episode was just kinda okay but it really didn’t have almost ANYTHING to do with the big crossover event except for some brief moments of alternate wormholes we’ve seen on The Flash appear on and off until Kara walks into her apartment to see Barry & Cisco there. The best part was when Barry asks Kara how he helped her once and if he ever needed help, Kara’s reply was AWESOME. No questions. No small talk just “What are we up against?” Very powerful. Very Superman-like. Very Awesome!
Robert: Now the rest of the episode seemed to be continuing the Supergirl main storylines of Cadmus releasing a virus to kill only aliens on Earth-38 (that’s Supergirls Earth) plus Cyborg Superman & Martian Manhunter (White Martian version) have a pretty awesome battle. Best part of that was Cyborg Superman escapes like all good villains should. There were some nice moments with Kara’s sister and the new Maggie Sawyer on the police force finally getting all lovey dubey. Sadly, I am finding Supergirl’s version of CADMUS very boring & stale. It’s like a bad rewrite from Smallville’s attempt at something similar. It’s very small, it’s very dark, it’s very meh. Mommy Luthor doesn’t work for me either especially with the sister Luthor playing bad cop, good cop (for now). Again, we’ve watched this before in Smallville. Something different PLEASE!
Next up…
The Flash “Invasion!” Season 3, Episode #8
Robert: Alright. You want aliens? You want chaos? You want crossover? THIS is the meat of the whole Invasion event. As I said, Barry literally runs into a crashing alien ship of The Dominators who take off & somehow out run Barry because he’s all like “ALIENS?! ALIENS?!”. Now after that, Barry puts together a team which has The Flash, Green Arrow & Supergirl as the main core. From here all the teams (Flash & Arrow) join forces to work together and prepare for what The Dominator aliens are going to do next. What happens next is VERY comic book like and I loved it. The Dominators trick the super hero team who attempt to go save the President & get all brainwashed to fight FOR The Dominators. This leads to the heroes turning on Barry & Oliver. Why them? Well seems Barry decided to tell everyone about Flashpoint, about changing the timeline and it leads to some dissension among the heroes. Barry & Oliver stayed behind while the rest got caught by the trap. This leads to a great Flash & Green Arrow vs the rest of the assembled heroes. Of course, given this is The Flash, the rest of The Flash supporting cast needed air time so the side story of Wally West becoming Kid Flash allowed for Wally to help save The Flash but got injured in doing so. Fortunately, The Flash figured out how to use Supergirl to fight against the control over the heroes and clear this minds of The Dominators control but just before they could take a moment to breath, all the non-meta heroes are teleported away by The Dominators leading to the next episode of the crossover in Arrow!
Robert: Phew. That was a lot to cover. Now, was it a great episode? Yes. It was by far, one of the very best Flash episodes they’ve done given all the various talent assembled. They juggled both The Flash storylines AND the big Invasion crossover story very well. It’s obvious that there’s chemistry with Barry, Oliver and Kara. They all worked so well together in all their scenes although not only did Felicity & Cisco have top scenes, Diggle came out to join in with wonderful little moments & jokes. All in all, this was a powerful episode and important to solidfy the FArrow-verse for years to come.
Onto…
Arrow “Invasion!” Season 5, Episode #8 – the 100th episode of Arrow
Robert: In a blink Oliver finds himself back at Queen Manor where everyone is alive and living a completely different life. A life without Green Arrow and where John Diggle is the Hood working with Felicity. Where Oliver is about to marry Laurel Lance. Of course, this is because Oliver & the rest of the non-meta humans are captured and stuck inside pods aboard a Dominator spaceship. This is all a shared mental hallucination. Of course, since it’s Ollie, Digs & Thea, they figure it out, collect the others and have to FIGHT their way back through old Arrow villains to a central point in the hallucination to break free. Also the rest of Team Arrow work on alien tech that they got from The Flash’s first alien ship encounter. This leads Team Arrow, The Flash & Supergirl to take on Cybergirl (yes, that’s her name & it’s a tie to Teen Titans & Cyborg) who’s stealing more alien tech for herself (for some unknown reason). They take her down, use the tech to find our captured heroes. The heroes get free, find out about something The Dominators are planning, get a spaceship, try to escape and just when they’re about to be blown to bits, the Legends time/spaceship swoops in and saves them after getting their location via Team Arrow.
Robert: This may have been the VERY best episode of Arrow ever and that’s tough because it built on all the best parts of 5 years of Arrow into it’s 100th episode. The moments where Oliver & crew would have fragments of their current life hit them was well done, their reactions of Olie & Thea dealing with their wonderful life vs leaving to return to reality was heartbreaking and almost as powerful as Oliver walking away from Laurel on their wedding. Powerful & touching which was a VERY good mix of the Invasion plot and the combined 100 episodes of Arrow together. Again, Diggle stands tall and shows that without Dig, the show would NOT be as strong as it is. I’m sad this wasn’t a 2 hour episode as I feel more time with all the characters stuck in the shared hallucination of the Queen’s perfect life would have been very enjoyable. The show wasn’t rushed, I thought more time could have been spent on that alternate world. The one thing that bugged me and ALWAYS does on this show is the soap opera like moments where two characters have a heart to heart moment and make a powerful decision (like Thea wanting to stay in the shared hallucination) then after commercial, that’s completely forgotten (Thea joins the rest of the captured heroes to fight against the share hallucination as villains). Bugs me.
Robert: The Team Arrow / Wild Dog & Supergirl / Cybergirl scenes seemed like the only downside to the episode. Cybergirl’s motivations weren’t even clear, what? She wanted or needed the alien tech? I dunno, seemed like just have a some reason to find the captured heroes in a long convoluted comic book way. On that & the Wild Dog & Supergirl / Flash moments worked. Fingers crossed there’s more to the Cybergirl & Teen Titans to come on either The Flash or Arrow. I’ve always thought that Team Arrow (Ragman, Wild Dog, Arsenal & Mr. Terrific) would make a great Teen Titans spin-off show! Do it CW, give us another comic show to watch on Fridays! Also Arrow didn’t continue the Prometheus story line with Arsenal which was nice. Wait. Arsenal wasn’t even in the ep. Hmm…
That said, this was a great part of the Invasion story-line, the heroes manage to get some juicy Dominators information and onto the conclusion in…
Legends of Tomorrow “Invasion!” Season 2, Episode #7
Robert: Alright. So Legends of Tomorrow is the conclusion of The Invasion! story-line and what a great job it does. The heroes figure out that The Dominators are up to something big & decide since the aliens captured heroes, they’d go back in time to the 1st moment The Dominators were “filmed” on Earth-1 & capture a Dominator to find out what the big plan is although that Dominator is in the PAST & the plan is happening in the future but let’s not get hung up on time travel on this show, right? So the Legends go off to grab a Dominator with Cisco & Felicity as Tech Support back-up because hey “TIME TRAVEL!” & they become important (like always) as the Legends get captured by a government Agent Smith & Men in Black types. Felicity & Cisco scower the Legends ship for weapons to help free the heroes and as they’re about to leave, they here Agent Smith torturing the Dominator. Being heroes, they go back to save the Dominator, lead by Cisco and then instead of taking the alien, they give him/her the ship the future captured heroes took & let it escape (now wouldn’t some Dominators who do inventory be like “Wait a sec, we already have ship AHYH9881-081 right here! What the Shmeg?!”) in hopes that somehow helps them… Yeah, I didn’t get that either. Anyways they return with some Dominators tech, Cisco & Citizen Steel “vibe” using the tech to talk to the EXACT same Dominator (guess it was his tech?) and find out about a “Meta Gene” bomb that the Dominators plan to use on all Meta’s on Earth-1 to destroy them before the Humans & Meta’s decide to dominate the Universe. Like a preemptive strike against Meta’s and Humans. Of course, this gives the heroes time to plan something, build weapons to annoy the fnck outta the aliens and try to stop the bomb. Firestorm turns the Meta bomb into something “harmless” which seems like water and saves the Earth while the rest of the heroes fight the aliens (all in one spot in downtown Vancouver / Star City / Central City) to distract them or such.
Robert: I enjoyed parts of this episode and on the whole, it did feel like one of the 80’s Invasion comic books where the story didn’t REALLY matter as much as the scenes with characters and big action moments. On the whole, that’s kinda a good summary of Legends of Tomorrow where I enjoy the interactions of the characters and their growth / depth more so than the stories themselves. Especially in regards to the villains. I did like the whole Dominators, Cisco & Steel parts where they’re like “We saved you!” and the Dominator’s like “You’re Meta’s may one day destroy the universe so Fnck you! We gonna nuke the shit outta your Meta’s then go for some space burgers. Dominators OUT!”. Serious, that’s what happened, just re-watch. Space burgers on the Dominator who got away. The show is fun & it lived up to that overall.
Robert: Overall this was a very strong crossover event that had such a HUGE & GREAT comic book feel to it. All I can say is MORE PLEASE! Although that said, NOT too much. Once a year is good otherwise like in the comics, we will get burn out.
Bits & Pieces
- Felcity & Cisco – Wicked Tech Support!
- The Freaking HALL OF JUSTICE is some Star Labs warehouse that Barry owns now?! #YEahBuWHA?!
- Ray Palmer / Brandon Ruth saying “She looks just like my cousin!” at Kara was the best tiny moment that had me laugh aloud.
- The #YeahBuWha moment has to be JSA Vixen standing with all the other heroes with the new Earth-1 President on a big stage as they’re thanked for their help. I hope the current Vixen fighting in Detroit has an upcoming scene like “WHAT THE FUQ?!” while she watches that on TV.
- Mick / Heatwwave & Supergirl FTW!
- Ragman & Mr. Terrific and continued conversations about Faith & Science is fun.
- Diggle after The Flash swwops him away. Felicity the same after time-jumps on Legends. Fun fun!
- Diggle on Supergirl after she uses her heat ray to make her family logo / Superman shield logo
Next on The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow
Supergirl (sorry no Supergirl promo)
Flash feels the Wrath of Savitar & brings Jay Garrick in for some help on their mid season finale..
Arrow mid season finale with full of traitors & Prometheus (my guess – Oliver’s Dad)…
A Legend has an icy return on the mid season finale next week…
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