Now in night three, the “Invasion” crossover continues on Arrow. This was sort of an odd installment, as it was also the 100th episode of the show, and so featured a lot of returning characters, and only focused tangentially on the crossover itself. It also featured some amazingly cheesy moments, and more than a few that tugged at the heartstrings.
1. Arrow’s Flashpoint
This episode was clearly Arrow‘s attempt to give the show something similar to what The Flash did with “Flashpoint.” This shows an alternate world where Ollie never cheated on Laurel, where he never got on the boat with his father, and where he was just plain Oliver Queen, not the Green Arrow. And while it was nice to see folks like Laurel and his parents show up, the episode felt, in a lot of ways, like the show was doing this for nostalgia’s sake, and not for any real storytelling reason.
My biggest problem with this crossover is that it was billed as a four-night event, and so far, it has been one and a half nights out of three. Only The Flash really focused on the Dominators for any real time – Supergirl had literally less than 2 minutes of crossover, and Arrow probably featured 10-15 minutes, tops, on anything that wasn’t happening in the shared hallucination. And while the hallucination had a lot of interesting wrinkles, showing how Ollie’s decisions have ripples all over his world, it ultimately didn’t do anything.
The closest it got to having anything of note happen was the idea that Thea wanted to stay behind and live in that hallucination forever, and even that was abandonded without much fanfare. There could’ve been a big, emotional scene between Ollie and Thea, about her choosing fantasy over reality, but it was essentially a short scene that Ollie caved on. When Thea decideds to leave, there is barely a mention that she was going to stay.
Again, I know why this made sense for Arrow‘s 100th episode, but it could’ve been achieved in a dozen different ways – Ollie could’ve been knocked unconscious, and this is his dream as he’s out cold. It could’ve been a literal dream; it could have been a vision of the future given to him by a visiting mystic. Instead, the episode didn’t get its full opportunity to really dive into that alternate reality, nor did it give the crossover its full attention.
2. That fucking CGI
I get that they couldn’t get Tommy (Colin Donnell) and Roy (Colton Haynes) back for this episode, but did they really need to do the world’s worst CGI to have them appear to Ollie? There was no still image of either character they could have dug up and given it the same dreamy affect? It looked like an N64 rendering of each character, and totally took the viewer out of that supposedly emotional scene.
It wasn’t quite Livia Soprano bad, but it was pretty distracting.
3. Wild Dog hates metas
I know that comics and comics related media love showing heroes as stand-ins for any opressed group, and so if that is the case, there has to be bigots who dislike that group. But Wild Dog is someone who wants to help people, he believes in goodness and justice – so, wouldn’t metas who work for the common good be automatically accepted? It is weird to me that he would have to see them save his ass before buying in to the concept of good metas.
Also, The Flash did pretty much the exact same thing with Julian, oh, a week ago? It feels cheap and short-sighted.
4. The cheesiest escape of all time
Sometimes, I think that the writers of these shows forget that you can simplify crazy ideas to something far more manageable. Let’s try this on for size: the Dominators have a secret base on Earth, maybe a warehouse in Whogivesashitville where they can keep the heroes. By putting them on a spaceship, all it does is ask the viewers to either totally shut off their brains or go through the calculus of reasoning that the aliens can create false gravity, replicate Earth’s atmosphere, and not care about security measures.
Continued belowAll of that was done so that they could not fly an alien space craft, and have the Legends make a save in their timeship. The Legends still could’ve made the save on Earth, and it wouldn’t have the weird image of Thea Queen walking around in a space tunic, trying to escape the aliens from every sci-fi novel cover from the 1950’s.
5. Despite the flaws, the episode had some heartbreaking moments
Look, despite my gruff, sarcastic exterior, I’m a big softy who loves Christmas and cries at songs all the time, much to his wife’s embarrassment. I was genuinely moved at points in this episode, especially at Ollie’s hug with his parents, and his tearful goodbye with Laurel. The show has done a weird thing where, only after her death, has it decided that Laurel and Ollie were the real love story of the show, after focusing on Ollie and Felicty for years (not that I blame them – Amell and Rickards have insane chemistry, far more than Amell and Cassidy have). But the love, at this point, seems not so much romantic as just the sort of love that comes from a lifelong friend.
Ollie has lost so many people since we first met him – his parents, his best friend, his ex-girlfriend – that the losses can seem overwhelming when presented in an episode like this. Ollie’s life must be constant regret, and that regret fuels his heroism. This episode did a nice job of showing that, and made Ollie, a character who often seems like the least interesting part of his own show, much more relatable and focused.
So, while the episode didn’t quite do what either a crossover episode or a 100th episode really should, it was still fun, and was a worthwhile use of my 60 minutes.
What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
