After five of their members escaped capture, it’s time for the assembled heroes to fight back against the invading aliens, the Dominators. It’s the finale of this season’s massive crossover as the heroes take on the aliens.
Previously, on Arrow…
Previously, on The Flash…
Previously, on Supergirl…
This was the one episode of the crossover where the stars of the show took a real back seat, as the combined star power of all four shows kind of overpower the cast of Legends of Tomorrow. The finale of the crossover still manages to advance some of the ongoing story on Legends, though, so it’s not a complete throwaway.
Let’s deal with that first.
We learned earlier this week that Prof. Stein, when the Legends team went back to 1987, talked to his younger self and convinced him to “go all the way to Pound Town,” as Jax put it, and had a daughter with Clarissa. Now, as she’s closing in on 30 years with her dad, Stein is meeting her for the first time. After everyone gave Barry Allen grief for creating Flashpoint, Stein is a little uneasy about the time aberration, but tells Jax he doesn’t want the rest of the team to know, because he doesn’t want to lose her. I’m sure that’ll end well.
Speaking of time aberrations, Commander Steel, Vixen and Heat Wave take Felicity and Cisco back to 1951 to try and kidnap a Dominator, based on some footage Steel shows to the group.
The three Legends snag a Dominator, but they all get captured by… we’ll just call them Men in Black, since they clearly are supposed to be shady government types who deal with the weird and wacky. Cisco and Felicity save the team, who also take the Dominator with them and send the alien back to his race. The decision to spare the Dominator, Cisco figures out, leads to the 2016 Invasion, meaning Cisco created his own aberration – VibePoint? – which hopefully leads to him taking it easy on Barry going forward.
Barry, by the way, is the one the Dominators came for, wanting to take him out for causing Flashpoint – he was showing a display of force, the Man in Black from 1951 aged 65 years tells us. Barry agrees to give himself up to the aliens to avoid a war, but Oliver, Kara and the rest of the team won’t let him.
The rest of the episode is taken up by the brawl between the heroes and the aliens, which the heroes win through teamwork, technology and ingenuity. The fight featured all the costumed heroes fighting alien Dominators on a rooftop. We live in a golden age of geekdom, this is clear. Everyone goes all out, Firestorm transmutes a metabomb into water, Flash and Supergirl show off their speed and Vixen uses the powers of an elephant.
The aftermath of the brawl sees the heroes being honored by the new president; Kara convinces the president to create a Department of Extranormal Operations on this Earth, sending the shady G-Men who were causing the problems to be reassigned to Antarctica; Cisco gives Kara a means of traveling between worlds to make crossover episodes a bit less cumbersome; and Oliver and Barry have a beer.
And it all happens in the HALL OF JUSTICE FROM SUPERFRIENDS! Definite geek-out moment every time it appeared on screen. It’s almost a perfect recreation. It even has the pool! So cool.
The line of the week, by the way, definitely goes to Ray Palmer. While talking to Felicity (who calls Kara while out of costume, “Like looking in a mirror”), Ray says, “Hey you know what, she kind of looks like my cousin!” Palmer is, of course, played by Brandon Routh, who portrayed Kara’s cousin, Kal-El in the 2006 flick, “Superman Returns.” Great little moment.
Overall, the crossover was a ton of fun, and I kind of want them to do crossovers like this all the time. Maybe next time, do it on Earth-38, so we can include Superman and Martian Manhunter, too! Hopefully, the back half of the season isn’t a total let down after this crossover!