State of the Superheroes: Crossover Aftermath

By starrymag | December 5, 2016

By: Cammien Ray

 

Supergirl is the resident alien, The Flash might be a villain in his own story, Arrow is a hallucination, the Legends of Tomorrow team somehow didn’t blow up Earth and that’s what you missed on the four night CW DC crossover event! Actually, that’s not all you missed and that’s why I’m here to catch you up. This review isn’t necessarily spoiler-free, but it is more focused on letting you find out any relevant remaining effects of what happened to your favs during the crossover, in case you missed any bits. So if you:

• Watched only your show and want to know what happened elsewhere
• Are considering watching some/all of the parts you missed and want to know what to expect
• Want to understand the context of some clips you’ve seen from the other shows you don’t watch

…then this should help, without really getting in too deep with many episode-specific plot points.

SIDE NOTE: You can, of course, read the whole thing, but if you’d just like summaries or just bits on the characters you know, those are noted for you. Also, all in the order of when they aired so you can quickly jump to a episode summary or a character summary as needed.

 

If you’re here for Supergirl characters:

• Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) goes to The Flash world to beat them up because they need an alien to train them. The running thread in this and subsequent parts of the crossover is she believes in Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and is generally adorable and stronger than the other heroes combined.
• On Arrow, Supergirl is not really a part of the action at all aside from a very brief take-down, perhaps in keeping with their limited-alien aesthetic.
• By the time we get to Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl is back with the team, despite Oliver (Stephen Amell) being resistant. Through her work in the alien take-down, she eventually becomes integrated with the rest and there’s a lovely nod to her and Felicity’s (Emily Bett Rickards) aesthetic similarities with a “it’s like looking into a mirror” comment. Cisco (Carlos Valdes) presents her with tool for dimensional travel so future crossovers are more likely.

If you’re here for a quick Supergirl crossover episode spoiler-summary:

The only crossover content was forty seconds of Barry and Cisco showing up in Kara’s lovely bright apartment and asking for help. Upon later review, this was actually just a scene from The Flash episode that aired out of order at the end of Supergirl. Beyond that, there is no crossover content in the Supergirl episode and it’s not at all accurate to even call it a crossover episode, though it was a solid episode on its own aside from that.

Long term ramifications of Supergirl’s crossover experience is she’s now met everyone, is liked by everyone and can crossover anytime.

 

If you’re here for The Flash characters:

• On Supergirl, Barry and Cisco show up in a cheery scene in Kara’s apartment to ask for her help. It’s the first time Kara and Cisco meet and beyond those forty seconds there is no crossover content on Supergirl at all.
• Once The Flash characters arrive on Arrow, we’re really mostly just down to Cisco who honestly did quite a lot of the crossing-over throughout. He worked with Felicity and Arrow newbies to examine some alien tech, track a spaceship and the usual alien stuff.
• On Legends of Tomorrow, there is a large arc centered on the aliens beings, specifically after Barry (due to Flashpoint) and the heroes from other shows rally around to both protect him and encourage him. They show that he perhaps is not a villain who will destroy the universe, as the aliens claim. The Flash team is more fully represented in this episode with Cisco helping Felicity run tech for those in the field and perhaps having a bit of in-the-field action himself with a gun. Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) also shows up on this episode, working with Stein (Victor Garber) in his lab and providing some support as he connects with his newly-found daughter.

If you’re here for a quick The Flash crossover episode spoiler-summary:

Aliens invade. Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) informs Team Flash that the aliens have popped up a bit before, but not much info about them is provided beyond that. Barry assembles the Arrow and Legends teams along with Supergirl and introduces everyone in an empty warehouse. Stein shows Barry that future-Barry has a message to trust no one. Everyone but Diggle continues to Barry trust without any particularly clear reason why, despite him not joining the mission to save the president. Almost everyone gets abducted in the end, so we proceed.

Long term ramifications of The Flash team’s crossover experience: Barry probably won’t get dragged for Flashpoint quite as often and he and Cisco (and Caitlin) are all friends again.

 

If you’re here for the Arrow characters:

• Oliver, Diggle, Felicity and Thea (Willa Holland) crossover to The Flash into an unnamed warehouse. Oliver believes in Barry, Felicity gives calming advice to Cisco and Diggle (David Ramsey) drags Barry for messing up his family. Also, Oliver then ditches Diggle to support Barry, again for no apparent reason as Oliver was just told by future-Barry not to trust Barry.
• On Legends of Tomorrow, the Arrow team has returned from their hallucinations and is back to a bit of a leadership position, both in the field and at tech. There are some great moments here with Oliver and Diggle encouraging the other heroes, with Felicity running the 4-team mission and a nice celebration with the full line-up at the end.

If you’re here for an Arrow crossover episode summary:

The episode split time between the team kidnapped by aliens and those not. Oliver, Diggle, Thea and Legends members Ray (Brandon Routh) and Sara (Caity Lotz) are kidnapped by aliens and stuck in an It’s-A-Wonderful-Life-style alternate universe hallucination where no one has died and everything is vaguely better for some of them. Left out of the good life though is Diggle, who in this different universe carries military baggage and is now The Arrow himself. While the team left behind (Felicity, the newbies and Cisco from The Flash)  try to figure out where the aliens are keeping them, the kidnapped Oliver and company have to break through their hallucination and leave it. Once they do, they realize they’re on a spaceship hurtling towards Earth.

Long term ramifications of Arrow’s crossover experience: Oliver is reassured that he wants the hero life, Diggle now knows about his child being swapped and Felicity realizes she can run multi-team missions pretty well.

 

If you’re here for the Legends of Tomorrow characters:

• When arriving in The Flash world, Sara found Kara hot upon first meeting her. Stein stumbles upon visions of a daughter, visits her and leaves immediately, with Caitlin in tow. Mick (Dominic Purcell) is generally repugnant towards Supergirl. Plus, there is tons of action and fighting.
• On Arrow, we see the Legends represented only by the non-superpowered members who were taken by the aliens: Sara and Ray. In that alternate universe or shared hallucination, they primarily functioned in the context of their previous slots on Arrow: Sara as a member of the hallucinated Lance family and Ray as a fiancé to hallucinated-Felicity. They defeat some hallucinated villains and return back to their proper state of mind, which happens to be on an alien spaceship.

If you’re here for a Legends crossover episode summary:

The full team comes face-to-face with the aliens and the ramifications of what’s been done with the aliens in the past come back to haunt them. Plus, after traveling to the past they gain more information about the aliens and their mission. Eventually, through a series of battles, captures, torture bits, explosions and full-team missions, the aliens leave. There are some long-term effects still possibly around to be dealt with post-crossover (Stein’s daughter, residual Flashpoint components, etc.), but the 4-show event is resolved for now.

Long term ramifications of the Legends of Tomorrow crossover experience: Stein’s daughter might become a situation, Sara has some closure on familial deaths, Mick now knows Supergirl can kick his ass and so much more!

 

 

Overall, the crossover won’t change any one show too terribly much going forward. So, if you missed bits of episodes where characters from your show were involved, you’ll be able to go into the midseason finale week without having any major confusion about what they’re all now working on/fighting towards/etc. The crossover left them all pretty much where we found them, but with a bit more general team unity in most cases.