In the first of two crossover episodes (that, seemingly, aren’t really a two-parter), The Flash does a masterful job both joining itself to Arrow, but also reminding the audience why the shows are so different.
Major plot points of the episode, many of which will veer into spoiler territory, follow, so be warned.
1. The shared world really feels unified now
While it was never hard to squint and see how the two shows were sharing a universe, this episode represents the first time that The Flash really felt like the sister show it really is; even when Felicity guest starred, it felt like she was walking onto the Flash set – like when one of the Golden Girls would show up on Nurses (holy shit am I dating myself – I watched them with my grandma, I swear I’m not 140 years old).
This episode, however, had some of the darkness of Arrow without giving in to the fatalistic attitude that sometimes permeates that program. Ollie tries to toughen up Barry, and he’s not wrong – but he still comes off as the heavy here. Ollie, and his more militaristic approach make sense, and are acknowledged as being effective, but are rejected whole hog by just about everyone on the show that wasn’t Ollie, Diggle, or Felicity.
However, instead of that drawing a line between the two shows, it actually strengthened the relationship between the two, as it illuminates just how much of each show is defined by its main character. The Flash seems like a ball of optimism because that’s Barry; Arrow is brooding and sexy, because that is Ollie. Even the show’s supporting characters are starting to reflect each other – I actually never put together until just now that both shows feature the fathers of the initial love interests as police chiefs, or that both shows featured task forces going after the titular hero.
2. The Rogues suffered this week
Sure, Rainbow Raider (or Prism, as Cisco wanted to call him) is only a minor villain in the Flash pantheon, he got significantly less screen time, motive, or character development than any other freak of the week on the show thus far. On one hand, I appreciate the show’s commitment to making the crossover more than just a one scene interaction, but because of the extended nature of the crossover, we got almost nothing about…sigh…Roy G. Bivolo. At least they didn’t have to say that name too many times, as we’d have all missed important dialogue over our groans.
On the same token, we saw Captain Boomerang’s weapon of choice show up, and aside from a Cisco/Felicity geek out, and a Cisco destructive throw, almost nothing was made of that. Maybe tomorrow?
3. Diggle and Joe, the skeptics
I thought Diggle being freaked out by Barry’s speed was actually a pretty funny and effective touch – again, we are used to Barry on this show, so his speed seems normal. It was great to see someone be as freaked out by his speed as we would be if we showed up in that world.
Similarly, Joe, the cop, would be dismissive of vigilante techniques, much like Quentin Lance was in the first season of Arrow. Again – these are part of the same world, and the world has all sorts of people. It only makes sense that we would run into archetypes on both shows.
4. A rather abrupt ending
A few weeks ago I had some serious DVR issues, and recordings would skip ahead, sometimes missing minutes of the action. That is how the end of tonight’s episode felt – Barry and Ollie worked out their differences, cut to commercial, come back and BAM! Bivolo is in their jail, and Team Arrow is hitting the road. This would be one thing if Barry wasn’t guest starring on tomorrow’s Arrow, but he is. The show set up some long-term seeds (like the mother of the maybe some day sort of Connor Hawke frequenting the same coffee shop as Barry), but it pretty much wraps up this issue in a nice little bow. So, what will happen tomorrow? I honestly have no idea.
Continued below5. Firestorm!
We knew he was showing up – we knew it was coming soon (plus, Robbie Amell sort of spoiled it today on Twitter), but it was still pretty cool to see in the flesh. I am sure that we will be getting more information soon, but for now we know a few things about Ronnie Raymond: he’s got a serious case of the shakes, he can unleash a pretty serious flow of fire if he wants to, and he’s pretty angry.
While none of that is exactly earth shattering, it is a lot of fun.
See you tomorrow for more crossover goodness!
