Crisis on Earth-X review
Dec. 6th, 2017 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthI’m going to do the DC-CW big crossover event as its own review post, including some pre and probably (definitely) post overall thoughts.
Pre-viewing thoughts
-I’ll probably end up watching these one per night, I really liked the way that worked out last year. Especially if I end up feeling the need to do a lot of reactions thoughts as I go. I’m also kind of salty that Arrow had to get moved; it’s probably the show I care about the most deeply at this point (Legends may be my favorite episode to episode, but I’m more emotionally tied to Arrow...except when Rip is on Legends).
-Speaking of, a while back I had ideas for a Legends s2 AU story; I won’t go into details about how it would have been structured, but I suspect you’d all bet that Rip was going to be in the whole thing (basically, I was still trying to work out how to get a Turncoat equivalent into it). But that thought made it easy to get my head around something here: Rip will probably never be in the big crossover events. Much as I want Rip around way more than he is or will be while Darville has this weird sometimes thing going on, Rip is a huge problem for interacting with this generation of heroes as a whole. Also, Rip should really hate Barry, he’s way more trouble than he’s worth (but if Rip could find a way to even out some Flashpoint issues from the Time Bureau, namely that whole Sara Diggle issue...and no, I will not let it go.)
-This will depend on what the actual plot ends up being, but I’m going into it judging tumblr fans for their attitude towards this event. Look, if you personally are triggered by dealing with Nazis, no judgement if you don’t want to watch it; but being against heroes fighting Nazis doesn’t make sense to me; nor does people hating the fact that in this alternate universe some of the heroic characters will have been on the bad guys side. It’s an alternate universe people, that’s how a lot of AUs work. Now, this may do something or say something that I’ll agree deserves a side-eye (although all the shows and especially Supergirl are such PC soap boxes – even though I mostly agree with them I get annoyed at the preachiness – that I have a hard time thinking it’s going to go that way), but tumblr wants to be offended so they’re going in offended.
-I am not looking forward to four episodes involving Barry. I fucking hate Barry. I’ve never actually had strong feelings about Iris, and generally take the attitude that she can do whatever makes her happy, but I am going to say that she could do better. I miss Eddie.
1. Supergirl
This is a very weird episode. I’m not surprised I can’t judge it on its own, I suspect this entire special is meant to be judged as an event rather than any individual episodes, but let’s cover some of the weirder aspects.
-This is not a Supergirl episode; it is part 1 of Crisis on Earth-X. While Kara and Alex both have things going on they are very much not in focus.
-Speaking of, I wanted Alex to go and flirt with and maybe hook up with Sara last season, now not so much. I don’t really feel like Sara’s character is being developed here either, although I suppose it does fit into my headcanon that Sara likes girls that she’s somehow...useful to in hooking up with. Mostly that takes the form of liberating women in history, but here she’s helping Alex get over Maggie. But I still don’t feel like we’re in her head as to why this hookup happened. It’s not enough to say that Alex has much focus in the episode, but we’re far more in her head why this hookup happened.
-Bringing up the musical episode kind of hurts this one. Because that whole guardian angel getting Kara and Mon’el back together really worked out great for them. They did obvious work in required cameos by most of the Supergirl characters in the very beginning, since this was technically a SG ep.
-But so many characters aren’t here that it’s distracting. With the exception of Zari, all the Legends should really be here. Nate was working with Wally and presumably Iris etc. over the summer, why isn’t he here? What about Ray who’s known Team Flash longer than any of the Legends except Martin? Where’s Diggle? How about Lyla who’s worked with them semi-regularly even after Barry erased their daughter from existence?
-Literally everyone is out of character in the opening montage. Up to and including the Domintor that Kara was fighting since it doesn’t seem to have even tried to use its mind powers.
-Also what were the Legends doing in their scene? They’re supposed to be fixing time aberrations not randomly playing Robin Hood. And why was Martin acting like he was captain for some reason?
-I could have sworn the memory eraser flashy thing only erased time anomaly memories not just anything it would be convenient to erase.
-Have people forgotten that the last time Oliver proposed to Felicity he got down on one knee in front of a whole holiday crowd with a heartfelt speech and everything? I can understand in character and out going a different way this time, but I feel it should be acknowledged that he is doing it so differently this time. Also I really wish Felicity’s rejection had made some acknowledgement of how much they rushed things last time and not wanting to do that again, but since I think this is going to end with them rushing again of course they couldn’t do that.
-This actually occurred to me back in the Girls Night ep, but I suppose we’re just supposed to assume Cecile has been brought up to speed on everything and is just okay with it? Oliver’s past with killing people? Mick Rory the quasi hero? And now Singh (who was sitting on the bride’s side rather than the groom’s...huh) doesn’t connect the dots?
-I actually didn’t hate Barry much this episode. But I still have a bad reaction to the fact that it ends up being the Star Labs crew who solves the Firestorm issue. I can just about grit my teeth and say that it does fall more under their skill set than the Waverider gang’s, but it still feels like no one else is allowed to be better than the Flash people. Especially since if it was their skill set that made the difference, why couldn’t they do more for Martin after Ronnie died? Also, since when can anyone mix up superpowers on demand?
-On a related note, the fact that X-Oliver and X-Kara are the baddies with...X-Wells. Not X-Barry of course, because Barry is never allowed to look bad even on an alternate Earth. Even Supergirl can be cast as bad (when that doesn’t make much sense if she still started life the same way on Krypton, why would her morals not be the same when she got to Earth?) but Barry must always just be a hero I guess.
-Unless that’s supposed to be X-ThWells, in which case I think the writers have forgotten that s1-Wells was ThWells and not just Earth-1-Wells. Which would be weird since just last episode Flash they clearly remembered that that was ThWells. It was only the best scene in the episode.
-Why exactly haven’t they taken the mask off the captured guy at the end? What logic are they operating on here that they wouldn’t want to run facial recognition?? For that matter, how have they not already guessed these people come from another Earth and that that’s a parallel Kara that was fighting Kara? It’s not like these people don’t know about parallel Earths, they have characters from one as part of the wedding ceremony.
-Also, I’ve got a bad feeling for one day away from retirement Stein. I also kind of feel like someone forgot Martin and Jax have a psychic connection at several points this episode.
2. Arrow
I will say this episode felt a little less weird than I thought part 1was. It wasn’t devoid of weirdness but there was a little less of it.
For example, it’s still not real clear why the rest of the Waverider crew isn’t here. We were sort of told they’re in the stone age, and one can guess from that that there was some kind on anachronism that they’re dealing with but I still don’t understand why in character they aren’t here; if not everyone could come why would Sara?
Also, why aren’t we getting scenes between Oliver and Sara, and Felicity and Sara for that matter? I do understand that Barry and Iris most at the same relationship status as Oliver and Felicity, so they have the ability to see things from a similar perspective, but I miss Oliver and Sara interacting, and she’s known them longer.
BTW, Barry has not known Felicity for five years. They even say Tommy died over four years ago, then turn around and say Barry’s known them for five? Learn to do math.
It also bugs me that they could bring Tommy back for this but not for a cameo in the 100th ep last season. What was the purpose of that again? Aside from perhaps the fact that I know there were people who speculated last season that Tommy was somehow Prometheus and to play with that.
How did X-Oliver manage to beat everything they threw at him at Star Labs? It’s pretty well established that our Oliver at least teds to lose pretty hard against metas, and while he can usually win at training and such, they leave a lot of powers out of that.
Where is ARGUS in this? Are they still confused over how King Shark escaped for the terrible montage at the beginning of last episode?
Since when are there 52 or even 53 Earths? I could have sworn we saw a lot of other versions on a couple universe hopping bits. And if I’m wrong on that, I still don’t understand how Kara would be the one to know that? Why not one of the characters who actually travels between dimensions as a regular thing?
All that out of the way, I still have some things I want to talk about. Weirdly I like the fact that X-Oliver and X-Kara are a thing. I think the two of them have always had decent chemistry that under other circumstances could have been explored and makes sense to play with without the contexts of the regular versions of them. And X-Oliver is still a little bit Oliver, in that his first loyalty is to the people he loves It’s why Oliver can never really commit to a no killing rule, because as soon as you put a gun to the head of Felicity or Thea or John or William or Star City or the world, killing is at minimum on the table.
I don’t know how I feel about it being regular Thawn (I’m not actually sure if it’s ThWells, ThWells is a very specific iteration of Thawn that had lived for years as a good guy trying to save the world and being a distant then present father figure for Barry, Thawn wearing Wells’ face doesn’t make him ThWells). I’m not even sure Earth X is Eobard’s style; it’s not...not his style, but I still think he’s mostly here so they don’t have anyone comparing Barry to a bad guy. I do suspect this will work in to why they’re actually on Earth 1, if their greater goal was Kara’s heart why would they be coming for her on Earth 1? But there is supposedly a grander mission at stake and in that I can see Eobard pointing them at Earth 1 for whatever it is.
So let’s talk about the shipping issue. Here we get more explanation from Felicity on why she’s resistant to going down that road again and...I think I buy it. Felicity has always shied away from dealing with the things she doesn’t want to deal with (while not really letting anyone else do that) and a lot of what happened between her and Oliver in s4 she maybe hasn’t dealt with. And now that they’re back around that place they started before it fell apart the fear that they’ll mess it up again is coming back.
I find Oliver to be a little...harsh and kind of whiny over it. I think it’s at least partly a consequence of them dealing with this in the crossover as opposed to on Arrow, even though this is the Arrow part of the crossover (and it’s more about Arrow that the SG part was about her). I think he would be hurt, or at least stung, no matter the circumstances, and I’m not sure exactly what I think it would have been in a normal episode, but most everyone always ends up a little off model in the crossovers. They are recognizable as their characters but not exactly how they would have been in their regular series. Maybe Oliver just needs to go to someone besides Barry with his concerns, Digg is always good for that, and I still find myself wanting Sara’s opinion.
I really wish Tommy’s presence had had more relevance. No, it’s not really Tommy, but I still wish it had more impact. More shock from the characters who knew him (I am glad they remembered that Sara would have known Tommy), more reaction to watching him die again, more trying to make excuses for the man this Tommy became because they (mostly Oliver) want to think this can end well even with their experience with Black Siren (maybe trying to play villain matchmaker). It just doesn’t have the impact it should that we see Tommy again for the first time since s3 at all, and for the characters since s1 (hell, for Sara since before Lian Yu, unless she remembers Doomworld, they tend to seem confused about that).
I’m going to wait until we see the rest of the crossover before I really comment on my feelings regarding the Alex/Sara hookup. I think I’ll have things to say, but I can wait and see what it actually does for the characters. I do like what’s going on with Alex, it’s the first time she’s been single and sexually active in her life and she’s not sure what to do with that, plus she’s still very much in the rebound stage which she’s never really gone through before. But that’s interesting for Alex; if they don’t actually do anything with Sara’s character I...have things to say.
3. Flash
Man, could this have been less of a Flash episode? This is an Arrow episode to the core. Does Barry even have more than a dozen lines here?
That said, it may be the best part of the event so far. It’s clearly the darkest before the dawn chapter, but it takes a lot of time for character interactions while we get there.
However, do we think education has gotten that bad that Jax wouldn’t know that Nazi’s labeled people they didn’t like? Keep in mind, Jax is also a time traveler, and has fought Nazis before, not at the concentration camp level but I feel like he would know more than this. I especially find it kind of weird that the black guy wouldn’t pick up on that.
This is the first episode that feels like Sara is an actual character. And when I say it’s like an Arrow episode, that’s part of it. Sara feels like Sara, and maybe even more like Arrow-Sara than Legends-Sara. We’re dealing with her reaction to seeing X-Quentin, referencing Nyssa for the first time in ages, having her state straight out that she’s bi, going in depth about how she feels about Laurel’s death (while Legends certainly doesn’t forget, it’s been a while since it was more than a passing thing). And her hookup with Alex finally has some story relevance beyond Alex’s development. It shouldn’t mean as much to Sara as it does to Alex, Sara enjoys fairly casual sex that Alex has never been able to enjoy before, but it’s good that it has a point in the story and that they actually talk now.
Using Quentin this way is...rough. I hope we see Sara and our Quentin before they jump back on the ship, because I need to see that at this point.
This seems to be the episode that is most playing with the AU part of this and giving us bits of a lot of AU versions of characters. Logical since it’s set on the other Earth so they can just win into X-Winn and X-Len/Leo, X-Felicity, X-Quentin, as well as actually have it be plot relevant that X-Oliver is so high up. We also get Kara and X-Kara interacting; and even if I still question what happened to cause X-Kara to not have her Kryptonian roots tell her not to support the Nazis, if I can get past that this does feel like if Kara had taken a very different path in life.
Damn Oliver and X-Felicity was a scene I probably should have expected. As soon as they said they had a present, it was obvious where it would go, but in my head I just assumed X-Felicity didn’t exist so hadn’t expected her to show up. Then I also kind of expected her to shoot him at the end so I clearly had no ability to predict how those scenes might go.
Not that Oliver was ever doing a very good job faking being X-Oliver, but he definitely lost any ability to fake it when it came to Felicity. Also probably a reminder that the Jewish love of his life is presently having to fight Nazis back home too.
I do get that they needed to keep the team locked up this episode so that there can be a triumphant full team action next episode, but I find myself questioning how Felicity couldn’t hack them out, either from the door control itself or the time room.
I feel like they’re saying something with having Eobard talk about how Felicity doesn’t show up in his history. I’m not sure what they’re saying exactly, but it feels like they’re saying something. I’m not even sure if they’re saying something worrying or if it’s meant to be intriguing, but it sounds like something.
I can’t decide if they’re saying something by having X-Len/Leo be with a man (I don’t want to presume gay or bi at this stage). They could be setting up to canonize Mick/Len, it’s already practically canon; or is it could just be a consequence of wanting something different for Leo to do here than just be a chance to have a Captain Cold show up.
As for Martin...he was ‘one day away from retirement’-ing so hard that it’s almost surprising they pulled the trigger on it. That blatant a setup almost signals they’re not going to actually kill Martin. We’ll see, it’s not like this verse is shy about killing characters and certainly Laurel got a lot of ‘one day before retirement’-ing in her last episode; so I may well have to say next that episode that I was just being too optimistic, but for now I’m less worked up than I would have expected.
4. Legends of Tomorrow
So they did go through with killing Martin, but they didn’t do it right away, so...I don’t know that either surprises me. And to people who are complaining, they started signposting that they would end up killing Marin almost a year ago so this really doesn’t feel like something that was forced by the executives for the sake of the crossover. It was emotionally affective, and kind of manipulative here, but it can’t be said they didn’t say they were going this way.
I don’t know if I liked this episode or not, I am going to sit with it for a few days before I do a post about my post event thoughts, but right now I’m not sure how I felt about it as a whole either. This episode had some of the weird pacing of the first one, in reverse since it’s wrapping things up rather than building towards them. I definitely have things I want to address though.
To start with though, this was probably the closest any of these episodes have come to being a part of the show they theoretically fell in line with. Since the rest of the Legends only show up here, and get to be solidly heroes in it, plus the emotional core of most of the story is Martin and Jax so it feels more focused on the Legends than the other teams. Up until the end, when the Legends leave (even though Ray is the person we actually knew to be ordained before this) and we have several minutes of episode focused down to the main couples from the other shows.
I will have more to say on that last part, but I also really want to complain about Cisco flying the Waverider. Have Jax fly the Waverider into combat, remind us that Gideon is probably doing 90% of the work, I’d almost be willing to have let Harry fly (with Gideon’s help) since he does come from a more tech advanced Earth and is enough of an eccentric dimension-hopping scientist that I’d believe he has some initial skill; but I do not buy that Cisco would be the pilot. And there’s no need for that since his big hero moment is not in piloting but in going and saving the strike team on the other ship. Half the Legends can only fly the ship under optimal conditions because Gideon is doing a good chunk of the work.
I did love the “General, would you like to step outside,” moment, that was pretty cool. It doesn’t quite make up for how the Earth X-ers had a ship that looks so much like the Wavrirder, even with an X-AI.
Literally as I was writing this I thought; hey remember how we were told a couple episodes back that the Waverider only has one bathroom? That’s a lot of people to hang out on the ship with only one bathroom.
It’s funny how little Barry was the focus of this crossover. It helped me like it more, but his mere lack of presence is going to make going make to the way things work on Flash even sillier. Because Barry is not a leader. This extended group ad a whole defers to Oliver, even the people who barely know Oliver see him as the leader. With Sara as the captain, and Felicity calling the plays, and Kara as the most necessary and moral center. Even The Ray (just to set him apart from Ray) is calling more of the shots than Barry.
Barry is also a moron for letting Thawn go. It occurred to me as they were chasing each other around, that Barry never actually beat Thawn, Eddie beat Thawn. It would have been fitting that he be taken out as Iris is getting ready to finally get married after her former fiancée died trying to stop Thawn. But, Barry lets him go; I’m not even arguing the he definitely should have died, Barry isn’t a killer and as much as he’s an asshole I actually don’t dislike that he isn’t a killer. But lock the fucker up in the darkest ARGUS basement, don’t just let him go. Anyone else he kills is now Barry’s fault, I hope Barry’s prepared to live with that.
Oliver on the other hand, is at peak Oliver. Sure, he’ll threaten the weakened Kryptonian because he knows exactly how well that will motivate her husband; said husband currently being about to kill the love of Oliver’s life. And then he absolutely will kill his evil doppelganger while the man is shell shocked over the death of his wife. Sure the show gives him a little out in that X-Oliver kind of turned into it, but Oliver absolutely killed his nemesis in this while Barry let his go. These people threatened people he loved, they were dead, that’s still Oliver. Heroing in the abstract he can do without killing, but cross the line and he’ll hardly hesitate. This feels far more in character than his speechifying to Chase that he totally wouldn’t kill anyone at the end of last season.
I would question why Leo is hanging around Earth 1, but I think the answers are obvious. They want to get a few more guest spots out of Miller, but they don’t want to pay him to do work on the Ray tie-ins. He doesn’t appear to be going with the Legends so I don’t think he’s sticking around to help Mick deal with his grief over Len, and god damn you show if you attempt to revive Snart/Sara I will get pissed off really quickly. Also, I get the impression Leo wouldn’t really like our Mick very much, he’s far too good for our Mick. If Leo is hanging around Central City I don’t care one way or the other; I’ve already decided to take another step away from Flash after the winter break, and I never cared that much for Snart and Team Flash anyway.
At least we got a little bit of Oliver and Sara, I miss them sometimes.
This does seem to be setting up for Sara to pursue a relationship of some kind. On one hand I’m a little annoyed, I have issues with the way the show treats Sara’s sexuality, but I also kind of don’t like Alex seeming a little judging that Sara enjoys casual sex. But ignoring that, I’m also trying not to get my hopes up. I could definitely see this being a starting point and we see over most of the rest of the season Sara kind of rejecting a lot of the opinions around her and realizing that she’s had feelings for Rip for a while once he reenters the story + they manage to start working together again. But while that’s what I would write, it doesn’t feel like what the show would write, so them setting up Sara for a real relationship makes me nervous since it might not be the ship I want.
Also, they’ve called Gideon as Gideon in front of Team Flash several times now; I guess we’ll go on pretending they didn’t see Thawn’s Gideon in s1. The show didn’t let Gideon do a whole lot here, but I guess it’s not surprising.
I am sort of OT4-ing Nate/Ray/Amaya/Zari, I can’t decide who I actually pair up in that set and they work all together. That scene with the four of them sitting around together made me realize that pretty clearly.
And now the ending. I want to like it so much more than I actually do. Both in execution and in concept. I’m glad we won’t have another round of wedding stuff going on so Barry and Iris just get married, that’s good. But neither of them really seem happy, which makes sense seeing as they got done going to a funeral, but that’s bad because I’d rather see happy weddings. They do get there once they get into the moment but it doesn’t start off that way.
Also, I don’t know whether one’s ability to marry people last indefinitely, but Andy and Carly would gotten married more than a decade ago. Also, maybe don’t remind Digg of that since Andy is kind of a sore spot and he ended up dating Carly for a while.
As for Oliver and Felicity, the way it’s rushed makes me nervous. It also annoys me that William isn’t there. At least Digg is there; his math may be wrong about how long he’s been shipper in chief, but if they got married without him that would be super rude. And a little annoyed on Iris and Barry’s behalf that Felicity wouldn’t let Digg pronounce them before deciding to double this wedding (also, they haven’t done the other stuff required to make it official). But the rush of it seems like bad news to me, the show broke them up so messily before because they decided they couldn’t have a happy central couple; then they kept them apart for a season so messily because they couldn’t repair the relationship naturally, as trying to it would be clear there was no reason not to have a happy central couple. So if I don’t trust that the show will let them be a happy central couple they have no one to blame but their own messy writing.
To be fair, since they doubled the wedding, I do understand why Ray couldn’t be officiating, that would have been kind of weird.
Wrap-up
So I’ve gone a few days, and wasn’t really thinking much about this series, and I think that’s pretty telling. Nothing really stuck with me, and that’s not what I should be feeling. However, I want to talk about something that’s been spinning around in my mind for a while.
The DC-CW folks are trying very hard to recreate the experience of reading comic books for those of us who don’t actually read comics. The yearly big crossover event is something I understand is pretty common in comics, and that those big events often feel the need to kill characters off sounds like something that happens a lot. Weirdly, this understanding first strongly resonated with me in the terrible gun control episode on Arrow last year, it completely felt like one of those PSA comics Linkara talks about from time to time, that’s kind of in continuity but doesn’t really concern itself too much with continuity or characterization since people mostly just need to spout bits of the information being spread. And last year’s crossover was definitely the same kind of mess as this year’s, considering all the things that should have been issues following the Invasion that are never mentioned again, and I don’t expect this one to be followed through on that much either (I hope to eat those words at least on the character front, but we’ll see).
So we have the problems of a comic book crossover event combined with the problems of television production. Which is to blame for the fact that a lot of the characters don’t get a lot to do? Which is really to blame for Martin’s death? Which is to blame for the weird pacing of the storyline? The mostly out of character opening? The lack of resolution to so many setups that will probably never be addressed again?
Legends obviously can’t avoid dealing with at least some of the fallout from this. One of their main characters is dead and that upsets things for all, but especially one. of the remaining characters. One problem for that show is the timing, they have to have some big mid-season episode combined with the fallout of Martin’s death which seems like a tall order. It is however, weirdly in keeping with the Legends’ beginning that they don’t die grandly. Doesn’t mean it’s not heroic, but it’s quiet and the world won’t remember, the way the Legends’ fates were always supposed to unfold.
And for Arrow and Flash they’re married off their main couples, so there will probably be follow-through on those fronts.
I’m not one of those people complaining about the concept here, but I am still going to say that the story is kind of a mess. By necessity the problem comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere; it appears, messes up the lives and stories of our characters that we care about to varying degrees, then is over and...well, we’ll see if it was worth it.
At least now we can get away from the crossover and back to the regular stories. Really, while I understand the point of the crossovers, I don’t know that I’ve ever really liked them (though never for quite the same reasons each time).
Pre-viewing thoughts
-I’ll probably end up watching these one per night, I really liked the way that worked out last year. Especially if I end up feeling the need to do a lot of reactions thoughts as I go. I’m also kind of salty that Arrow had to get moved; it’s probably the show I care about the most deeply at this point (Legends may be my favorite episode to episode, but I’m more emotionally tied to Arrow...except when Rip is on Legends).
-Speaking of, a while back I had ideas for a Legends s2 AU story; I won’t go into details about how it would have been structured, but I suspect you’d all bet that Rip was going to be in the whole thing (basically, I was still trying to work out how to get a Turncoat equivalent into it). But that thought made it easy to get my head around something here: Rip will probably never be in the big crossover events. Much as I want Rip around way more than he is or will be while Darville has this weird sometimes thing going on, Rip is a huge problem for interacting with this generation of heroes as a whole. Also, Rip should really hate Barry, he’s way more trouble than he’s worth (but if Rip could find a way to even out some Flashpoint issues from the Time Bureau, namely that whole Sara Diggle issue...and no, I will not let it go.)
-This will depend on what the actual plot ends up being, but I’m going into it judging tumblr fans for their attitude towards this event. Look, if you personally are triggered by dealing with Nazis, no judgement if you don’t want to watch it; but being against heroes fighting Nazis doesn’t make sense to me; nor does people hating the fact that in this alternate universe some of the heroic characters will have been on the bad guys side. It’s an alternate universe people, that’s how a lot of AUs work. Now, this may do something or say something that I’ll agree deserves a side-eye (although all the shows and especially Supergirl are such PC soap boxes – even though I mostly agree with them I get annoyed at the preachiness – that I have a hard time thinking it’s going to go that way), but tumblr wants to be offended so they’re going in offended.
-I am not looking forward to four episodes involving Barry. I fucking hate Barry. I’ve never actually had strong feelings about Iris, and generally take the attitude that she can do whatever makes her happy, but I am going to say that she could do better. I miss Eddie.
1. Supergirl
This is a very weird episode. I’m not surprised I can’t judge it on its own, I suspect this entire special is meant to be judged as an event rather than any individual episodes, but let’s cover some of the weirder aspects.
-This is not a Supergirl episode; it is part 1 of Crisis on Earth-X. While Kara and Alex both have things going on they are very much not in focus.
-Speaking of, I wanted Alex to go and flirt with and maybe hook up with Sara last season, now not so much. I don’t really feel like Sara’s character is being developed here either, although I suppose it does fit into my headcanon that Sara likes girls that she’s somehow...useful to in hooking up with. Mostly that takes the form of liberating women in history, but here she’s helping Alex get over Maggie. But I still don’t feel like we’re in her head as to why this hookup happened. It’s not enough to say that Alex has much focus in the episode, but we’re far more in her head why this hookup happened.
-Bringing up the musical episode kind of hurts this one. Because that whole guardian angel getting Kara and Mon’el back together really worked out great for them. They did obvious work in required cameos by most of the Supergirl characters in the very beginning, since this was technically a SG ep.
-But so many characters aren’t here that it’s distracting. With the exception of Zari, all the Legends should really be here. Nate was working with Wally and presumably Iris etc. over the summer, why isn’t he here? What about Ray who’s known Team Flash longer than any of the Legends except Martin? Where’s Diggle? How about Lyla who’s worked with them semi-regularly even after Barry erased their daughter from existence?
-Literally everyone is out of character in the opening montage. Up to and including the Domintor that Kara was fighting since it doesn’t seem to have even tried to use its mind powers.
-Also what were the Legends doing in their scene? They’re supposed to be fixing time aberrations not randomly playing Robin Hood. And why was Martin acting like he was captain for some reason?
-I could have sworn the memory eraser flashy thing only erased time anomaly memories not just anything it would be convenient to erase.
-Have people forgotten that the last time Oliver proposed to Felicity he got down on one knee in front of a whole holiday crowd with a heartfelt speech and everything? I can understand in character and out going a different way this time, but I feel it should be acknowledged that he is doing it so differently this time. Also I really wish Felicity’s rejection had made some acknowledgement of how much they rushed things last time and not wanting to do that again, but since I think this is going to end with them rushing again of course they couldn’t do that.
-This actually occurred to me back in the Girls Night ep, but I suppose we’re just supposed to assume Cecile has been brought up to speed on everything and is just okay with it? Oliver’s past with killing people? Mick Rory the quasi hero? And now Singh (who was sitting on the bride’s side rather than the groom’s...huh) doesn’t connect the dots?
-I actually didn’t hate Barry much this episode. But I still have a bad reaction to the fact that it ends up being the Star Labs crew who solves the Firestorm issue. I can just about grit my teeth and say that it does fall more under their skill set than the Waverider gang’s, but it still feels like no one else is allowed to be better than the Flash people. Especially since if it was their skill set that made the difference, why couldn’t they do more for Martin after Ronnie died? Also, since when can anyone mix up superpowers on demand?
-On a related note, the fact that X-Oliver and X-Kara are the baddies with...X-Wells. Not X-Barry of course, because Barry is never allowed to look bad even on an alternate Earth. Even Supergirl can be cast as bad (when that doesn’t make much sense if she still started life the same way on Krypton, why would her morals not be the same when she got to Earth?) but Barry must always just be a hero I guess.
-Unless that’s supposed to be X-ThWells, in which case I think the writers have forgotten that s1-Wells was ThWells and not just Earth-1-Wells. Which would be weird since just last episode Flash they clearly remembered that that was ThWells. It was only the best scene in the episode.
-Why exactly haven’t they taken the mask off the captured guy at the end? What logic are they operating on here that they wouldn’t want to run facial recognition?? For that matter, how have they not already guessed these people come from another Earth and that that’s a parallel Kara that was fighting Kara? It’s not like these people don’t know about parallel Earths, they have characters from one as part of the wedding ceremony.
-Also, I’ve got a bad feeling for one day away from retirement Stein. I also kind of feel like someone forgot Martin and Jax have a psychic connection at several points this episode.
2. Arrow
I will say this episode felt a little less weird than I thought part 1was. It wasn’t devoid of weirdness but there was a little less of it.
For example, it’s still not real clear why the rest of the Waverider crew isn’t here. We were sort of told they’re in the stone age, and one can guess from that that there was some kind on anachronism that they’re dealing with but I still don’t understand why in character they aren’t here; if not everyone could come why would Sara?
Also, why aren’t we getting scenes between Oliver and Sara, and Felicity and Sara for that matter? I do understand that Barry and Iris most at the same relationship status as Oliver and Felicity, so they have the ability to see things from a similar perspective, but I miss Oliver and Sara interacting, and she’s known them longer.
BTW, Barry has not known Felicity for five years. They even say Tommy died over four years ago, then turn around and say Barry’s known them for five? Learn to do math.
It also bugs me that they could bring Tommy back for this but not for a cameo in the 100th ep last season. What was the purpose of that again? Aside from perhaps the fact that I know there were people who speculated last season that Tommy was somehow Prometheus and to play with that.
How did X-Oliver manage to beat everything they threw at him at Star Labs? It’s pretty well established that our Oliver at least teds to lose pretty hard against metas, and while he can usually win at training and such, they leave a lot of powers out of that.
Where is ARGUS in this? Are they still confused over how King Shark escaped for the terrible montage at the beginning of last episode?
Since when are there 52 or even 53 Earths? I could have sworn we saw a lot of other versions on a couple universe hopping bits. And if I’m wrong on that, I still don’t understand how Kara would be the one to know that? Why not one of the characters who actually travels between dimensions as a regular thing?
All that out of the way, I still have some things I want to talk about. Weirdly I like the fact that X-Oliver and X-Kara are a thing. I think the two of them have always had decent chemistry that under other circumstances could have been explored and makes sense to play with without the contexts of the regular versions of them. And X-Oliver is still a little bit Oliver, in that his first loyalty is to the people he loves It’s why Oliver can never really commit to a no killing rule, because as soon as you put a gun to the head of Felicity or Thea or John or William or Star City or the world, killing is at minimum on the table.
I don’t know how I feel about it being regular Thawn (I’m not actually sure if it’s ThWells, ThWells is a very specific iteration of Thawn that had lived for years as a good guy trying to save the world and being a distant then present father figure for Barry, Thawn wearing Wells’ face doesn’t make him ThWells). I’m not even sure Earth X is Eobard’s style; it’s not...not his style, but I still think he’s mostly here so they don’t have anyone comparing Barry to a bad guy. I do suspect this will work in to why they’re actually on Earth 1, if their greater goal was Kara’s heart why would they be coming for her on Earth 1? But there is supposedly a grander mission at stake and in that I can see Eobard pointing them at Earth 1 for whatever it is.
So let’s talk about the shipping issue. Here we get more explanation from Felicity on why she’s resistant to going down that road again and...I think I buy it. Felicity has always shied away from dealing with the things she doesn’t want to deal with (while not really letting anyone else do that) and a lot of what happened between her and Oliver in s4 she maybe hasn’t dealt with. And now that they’re back around that place they started before it fell apart the fear that they’ll mess it up again is coming back.
I find Oliver to be a little...harsh and kind of whiny over it. I think it’s at least partly a consequence of them dealing with this in the crossover as opposed to on Arrow, even though this is the Arrow part of the crossover (and it’s more about Arrow that the SG part was about her). I think he would be hurt, or at least stung, no matter the circumstances, and I’m not sure exactly what I think it would have been in a normal episode, but most everyone always ends up a little off model in the crossovers. They are recognizable as their characters but not exactly how they would have been in their regular series. Maybe Oliver just needs to go to someone besides Barry with his concerns, Digg is always good for that, and I still find myself wanting Sara’s opinion.
I really wish Tommy’s presence had had more relevance. No, it’s not really Tommy, but I still wish it had more impact. More shock from the characters who knew him (I am glad they remembered that Sara would have known Tommy), more reaction to watching him die again, more trying to make excuses for the man this Tommy became because they (mostly Oliver) want to think this can end well even with their experience with Black Siren (maybe trying to play villain matchmaker). It just doesn’t have the impact it should that we see Tommy again for the first time since s3 at all, and for the characters since s1 (hell, for Sara since before Lian Yu, unless she remembers Doomworld, they tend to seem confused about that).
I’m going to wait until we see the rest of the crossover before I really comment on my feelings regarding the Alex/Sara hookup. I think I’ll have things to say, but I can wait and see what it actually does for the characters. I do like what’s going on with Alex, it’s the first time she’s been single and sexually active in her life and she’s not sure what to do with that, plus she’s still very much in the rebound stage which she’s never really gone through before. But that’s interesting for Alex; if they don’t actually do anything with Sara’s character I...have things to say.
3. Flash
Man, could this have been less of a Flash episode? This is an Arrow episode to the core. Does Barry even have more than a dozen lines here?
That said, it may be the best part of the event so far. It’s clearly the darkest before the dawn chapter, but it takes a lot of time for character interactions while we get there.
However, do we think education has gotten that bad that Jax wouldn’t know that Nazi’s labeled people they didn’t like? Keep in mind, Jax is also a time traveler, and has fought Nazis before, not at the concentration camp level but I feel like he would know more than this. I especially find it kind of weird that the black guy wouldn’t pick up on that.
This is the first episode that feels like Sara is an actual character. And when I say it’s like an Arrow episode, that’s part of it. Sara feels like Sara, and maybe even more like Arrow-Sara than Legends-Sara. We’re dealing with her reaction to seeing X-Quentin, referencing Nyssa for the first time in ages, having her state straight out that she’s bi, going in depth about how she feels about Laurel’s death (while Legends certainly doesn’t forget, it’s been a while since it was more than a passing thing). And her hookup with Alex finally has some story relevance beyond Alex’s development. It shouldn’t mean as much to Sara as it does to Alex, Sara enjoys fairly casual sex that Alex has never been able to enjoy before, but it’s good that it has a point in the story and that they actually talk now.
Using Quentin this way is...rough. I hope we see Sara and our Quentin before they jump back on the ship, because I need to see that at this point.
This seems to be the episode that is most playing with the AU part of this and giving us bits of a lot of AU versions of characters. Logical since it’s set on the other Earth so they can just win into X-Winn and X-Len/Leo, X-Felicity, X-Quentin, as well as actually have it be plot relevant that X-Oliver is so high up. We also get Kara and X-Kara interacting; and even if I still question what happened to cause X-Kara to not have her Kryptonian roots tell her not to support the Nazis, if I can get past that this does feel like if Kara had taken a very different path in life.
Damn Oliver and X-Felicity was a scene I probably should have expected. As soon as they said they had a present, it was obvious where it would go, but in my head I just assumed X-Felicity didn’t exist so hadn’t expected her to show up. Then I also kind of expected her to shoot him at the end so I clearly had no ability to predict how those scenes might go.
Not that Oliver was ever doing a very good job faking being X-Oliver, but he definitely lost any ability to fake it when it came to Felicity. Also probably a reminder that the Jewish love of his life is presently having to fight Nazis back home too.
I do get that they needed to keep the team locked up this episode so that there can be a triumphant full team action next episode, but I find myself questioning how Felicity couldn’t hack them out, either from the door control itself or the time room.
I feel like they’re saying something with having Eobard talk about how Felicity doesn’t show up in his history. I’m not sure what they’re saying exactly, but it feels like they’re saying something. I’m not even sure if they’re saying something worrying or if it’s meant to be intriguing, but it sounds like something.
I can’t decide if they’re saying something by having X-Len/Leo be with a man (I don’t want to presume gay or bi at this stage). They could be setting up to canonize Mick/Len, it’s already practically canon; or is it could just be a consequence of wanting something different for Leo to do here than just be a chance to have a Captain Cold show up.
As for Martin...he was ‘one day away from retirement’-ing so hard that it’s almost surprising they pulled the trigger on it. That blatant a setup almost signals they’re not going to actually kill Martin. We’ll see, it’s not like this verse is shy about killing characters and certainly Laurel got a lot of ‘one day before retirement’-ing in her last episode; so I may well have to say next that episode that I was just being too optimistic, but for now I’m less worked up than I would have expected.
4. Legends of Tomorrow
So they did go through with killing Martin, but they didn’t do it right away, so...I don’t know that either surprises me. And to people who are complaining, they started signposting that they would end up killing Marin almost a year ago so this really doesn’t feel like something that was forced by the executives for the sake of the crossover. It was emotionally affective, and kind of manipulative here, but it can’t be said they didn’t say they were going this way.
I don’t know if I liked this episode or not, I am going to sit with it for a few days before I do a post about my post event thoughts, but right now I’m not sure how I felt about it as a whole either. This episode had some of the weird pacing of the first one, in reverse since it’s wrapping things up rather than building towards them. I definitely have things I want to address though.
To start with though, this was probably the closest any of these episodes have come to being a part of the show they theoretically fell in line with. Since the rest of the Legends only show up here, and get to be solidly heroes in it, plus the emotional core of most of the story is Martin and Jax so it feels more focused on the Legends than the other teams. Up until the end, when the Legends leave (even though Ray is the person we actually knew to be ordained before this) and we have several minutes of episode focused down to the main couples from the other shows.
I will have more to say on that last part, but I also really want to complain about Cisco flying the Waverider. Have Jax fly the Waverider into combat, remind us that Gideon is probably doing 90% of the work, I’d almost be willing to have let Harry fly (with Gideon’s help) since he does come from a more tech advanced Earth and is enough of an eccentric dimension-hopping scientist that I’d believe he has some initial skill; but I do not buy that Cisco would be the pilot. And there’s no need for that since his big hero moment is not in piloting but in going and saving the strike team on the other ship. Half the Legends can only fly the ship under optimal conditions because Gideon is doing a good chunk of the work.
I did love the “General, would you like to step outside,” moment, that was pretty cool. It doesn’t quite make up for how the Earth X-ers had a ship that looks so much like the Wavrirder, even with an X-AI.
Literally as I was writing this I thought; hey remember how we were told a couple episodes back that the Waverider only has one bathroom? That’s a lot of people to hang out on the ship with only one bathroom.
It’s funny how little Barry was the focus of this crossover. It helped me like it more, but his mere lack of presence is going to make going make to the way things work on Flash even sillier. Because Barry is not a leader. This extended group ad a whole defers to Oliver, even the people who barely know Oliver see him as the leader. With Sara as the captain, and Felicity calling the plays, and Kara as the most necessary and moral center. Even The Ray (just to set him apart from Ray) is calling more of the shots than Barry.
Barry is also a moron for letting Thawn go. It occurred to me as they were chasing each other around, that Barry never actually beat Thawn, Eddie beat Thawn. It would have been fitting that he be taken out as Iris is getting ready to finally get married after her former fiancée died trying to stop Thawn. But, Barry lets him go; I’m not even arguing the he definitely should have died, Barry isn’t a killer and as much as he’s an asshole I actually don’t dislike that he isn’t a killer. But lock the fucker up in the darkest ARGUS basement, don’t just let him go. Anyone else he kills is now Barry’s fault, I hope Barry’s prepared to live with that.
Oliver on the other hand, is at peak Oliver. Sure, he’ll threaten the weakened Kryptonian because he knows exactly how well that will motivate her husband; said husband currently being about to kill the love of Oliver’s life. And then he absolutely will kill his evil doppelganger while the man is shell shocked over the death of his wife. Sure the show gives him a little out in that X-Oliver kind of turned into it, but Oliver absolutely killed his nemesis in this while Barry let his go. These people threatened people he loved, they were dead, that’s still Oliver. Heroing in the abstract he can do without killing, but cross the line and he’ll hardly hesitate. This feels far more in character than his speechifying to Chase that he totally wouldn’t kill anyone at the end of last season.
I would question why Leo is hanging around Earth 1, but I think the answers are obvious. They want to get a few more guest spots out of Miller, but they don’t want to pay him to do work on the Ray tie-ins. He doesn’t appear to be going with the Legends so I don’t think he’s sticking around to help Mick deal with his grief over Len, and god damn you show if you attempt to revive Snart/Sara I will get pissed off really quickly. Also, I get the impression Leo wouldn’t really like our Mick very much, he’s far too good for our Mick. If Leo is hanging around Central City I don’t care one way or the other; I’ve already decided to take another step away from Flash after the winter break, and I never cared that much for Snart and Team Flash anyway.
At least we got a little bit of Oliver and Sara, I miss them sometimes.
This does seem to be setting up for Sara to pursue a relationship of some kind. On one hand I’m a little annoyed, I have issues with the way the show treats Sara’s sexuality, but I also kind of don’t like Alex seeming a little judging that Sara enjoys casual sex. But ignoring that, I’m also trying not to get my hopes up. I could definitely see this being a starting point and we see over most of the rest of the season Sara kind of rejecting a lot of the opinions around her and realizing that she’s had feelings for Rip for a while once he reenters the story + they manage to start working together again. But while that’s what I would write, it doesn’t feel like what the show would write, so them setting up Sara for a real relationship makes me nervous since it might not be the ship I want.
Also, they’ve called Gideon as Gideon in front of Team Flash several times now; I guess we’ll go on pretending they didn’t see Thawn’s Gideon in s1. The show didn’t let Gideon do a whole lot here, but I guess it’s not surprising.
I am sort of OT4-ing Nate/Ray/Amaya/Zari, I can’t decide who I actually pair up in that set and they work all together. That scene with the four of them sitting around together made me realize that pretty clearly.
And now the ending. I want to like it so much more than I actually do. Both in execution and in concept. I’m glad we won’t have another round of wedding stuff going on so Barry and Iris just get married, that’s good. But neither of them really seem happy, which makes sense seeing as they got done going to a funeral, but that’s bad because I’d rather see happy weddings. They do get there once they get into the moment but it doesn’t start off that way.
Also, I don’t know whether one’s ability to marry people last indefinitely, but Andy and Carly would gotten married more than a decade ago. Also, maybe don’t remind Digg of that since Andy is kind of a sore spot and he ended up dating Carly for a while.
As for Oliver and Felicity, the way it’s rushed makes me nervous. It also annoys me that William isn’t there. At least Digg is there; his math may be wrong about how long he’s been shipper in chief, but if they got married without him that would be super rude. And a little annoyed on Iris and Barry’s behalf that Felicity wouldn’t let Digg pronounce them before deciding to double this wedding (also, they haven’t done the other stuff required to make it official). But the rush of it seems like bad news to me, the show broke them up so messily before because they decided they couldn’t have a happy central couple; then they kept them apart for a season so messily because they couldn’t repair the relationship naturally, as trying to it would be clear there was no reason not to have a happy central couple. So if I don’t trust that the show will let them be a happy central couple they have no one to blame but their own messy writing.
To be fair, since they doubled the wedding, I do understand why Ray couldn’t be officiating, that would have been kind of weird.
Wrap-up
So I’ve gone a few days, and wasn’t really thinking much about this series, and I think that’s pretty telling. Nothing really stuck with me, and that’s not what I should be feeling. However, I want to talk about something that’s been spinning around in my mind for a while.
The DC-CW folks are trying very hard to recreate the experience of reading comic books for those of us who don’t actually read comics. The yearly big crossover event is something I understand is pretty common in comics, and that those big events often feel the need to kill characters off sounds like something that happens a lot. Weirdly, this understanding first strongly resonated with me in the terrible gun control episode on Arrow last year, it completely felt like one of those PSA comics Linkara talks about from time to time, that’s kind of in continuity but doesn’t really concern itself too much with continuity or characterization since people mostly just need to spout bits of the information being spread. And last year’s crossover was definitely the same kind of mess as this year’s, considering all the things that should have been issues following the Invasion that are never mentioned again, and I don’t expect this one to be followed through on that much either (I hope to eat those words at least on the character front, but we’ll see).
So we have the problems of a comic book crossover event combined with the problems of television production. Which is to blame for the fact that a lot of the characters don’t get a lot to do? Which is really to blame for Martin’s death? Which is to blame for the weird pacing of the storyline? The mostly out of character opening? The lack of resolution to so many setups that will probably never be addressed again?
Legends obviously can’t avoid dealing with at least some of the fallout from this. One of their main characters is dead and that upsets things for all, but especially one. of the remaining characters. One problem for that show is the timing, they have to have some big mid-season episode combined with the fallout of Martin’s death which seems like a tall order. It is however, weirdly in keeping with the Legends’ beginning that they don’t die grandly. Doesn’t mean it’s not heroic, but it’s quiet and the world won’t remember, the way the Legends’ fates were always supposed to unfold.
And for Arrow and Flash they’re married off their main couples, so there will probably be follow-through on those fronts.
I’m not one of those people complaining about the concept here, but I am still going to say that the story is kind of a mess. By necessity the problem comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere; it appears, messes up the lives and stories of our characters that we care about to varying degrees, then is over and...well, we’ll see if it was worth it.
At least now we can get away from the crossover and back to the regular stories. Really, while I understand the point of the crossovers, I don’t know that I’ve ever really liked them (though never for quite the same reasons each time).
