Hi folks! Welcome to our yearly Arrowverse crossover conversation. On writing duties this year’s team include our three regular reviewers: Ramon Piña (The Flash), Mike Mazzacane (Arrow) and Elias Rosner (Supergirl). Together this trinity of writers talk about the second hour of ‘Elseworlds’ which featured the debut of Ruby Rose as Kate Kane as the DCWverse Trinity journey Gotham City for the first time.
Ramon: Hey guys how do you feel about this episode? First of all, I felt like it was another Flash episode with the awesome Arrow action scenes.
It had that distinctive humor of Cisco and Barry.
Elias: That it did but I felt it was the opposite. It had flavors of Flash but was firmly in the tone of Arrow. I mean, did you SEE all those shadows?
Honestly, I hope this kind of tone works its way into mainline Arrow. It doesn’t need to be heavy but some of the lightness would be welcomed.
Ramon: Well, I see your point, I think you are right. Also, although we really didn’t see much of Batwoman, this was the right tone for introducing Gotham City.
Mike: That was going to be my first Q. Overall I thought it was once again another good episode on its own. I guess there isn’t a way for you to do a grounded Arrow-like macguffin hunt for a multiversal artifact, so that stuff felt more Flash like. From an emotional perspective it felt like classic Arrow (not talking to Felicity about your feelings), and aesthetically Bamford and whomever did cinematography kept in the Arrow world. Overall a solid blending of the two. (edited)
Arrow gets a bad rap IMO for being dour and without humor, it just doesn’t lean into it more and often plays more as sight gags than word play.
Elias: That’s true. Although, I will contend that when Arrow allows itself to loosen its grasp on the grim and gritty (namely with Ollie’s gravel voice,) it also allows its characters to grow because it places them in a different mode and allows these characters to show sides of themselves they wouldn’t otherwise.
It also gives Stephen Amell the chance to flex his acting muscles and not just his regular ones.
That said, I appreciated the dynamic between the teams this week, namely with the aforementioned not telling Felicity thing. I was going to flip my lid if they played that off like the right move or didn’t bring it up
Mike: Did anyone miss the New Team Arrow crew in this one? With everything I get why they weren’t roped in but I’m sure Rick Gonzalez would’ve come up with something snappy about those odd Red Skies they had.
Elias: I was wondering where they all were! The writers probably did it to keep things paired down but it would’ve been nice to see Wild Dog, even if it was just for a small scene
Ramon: Like when he spoke to Felicity, I’m guessing with a little inspiration of the Flash experience and costume, even when he first didn’t want to tell her about the whole body swapping thing, I feel like, it was necessary for him to open up with her, and the slight change of mood in the crossover allowed that.
That’s what I was thinking about when I first said about it being a Flash episode, where the hell everybody went?
I guess they followed the same idea of keeping out the Legends out of this, it’s harder to do a crossover with a lot of characters involved.
Elias: They hid because the Crisis lightning is making villains appear out of thin air
Seriously, why was Jerico here?
Mike: Because Manu Bennett was busy/he’s good now? If they really wanted to go deep they should have gotten the guy from “Star City 2046” (Jamie Andrew Cutler)
Elias: Ha! Probably. But this is the kind of thing that gets me about these crossovers & the lack of connectivity to the main seasons. This would have been the perfect opportunity to set up some background mentions of Jericho throughout the last couple episodes of Arrow and then this would have been a resolution to that plot point, even if it doesn’t have a bearing on the overall arc of the season, it’s a nice way to connect it in a way that doesn’t feel like we’re missing something.
Continued belowI know you disagree with me Mike so I promise not to bring it up next week (unless they do something stupid and bring back an evil Mon-El)
Mike: I only liked Mon-El in Supergirl season 2, and then he was written off never to return. Just like how there wasn’t an Last Airbender movie.
Ramon: this crossovers seriously make a continuity mess! And I’m guessing that with all this reality-rewriting, every show is going to be permanently affected some way or another.
Elias: Or they’ll just kind of ignore it like last time. Still, it’s provide the characters a lot to chew on. Like with Barry taking on more of Ollie’s qualities in that first Gotham fight
Mike: Their arc this episode was interesting in how it kinda hinted at a sort of inherent essence to each character that allowed them to function as Green Arrow and Flash. Getting to see them face each others worst fear was both a nice action sequence and manifestation of what it “would” be like for them both.
Ramon: I liked how Oliver gave Barry the Arrow Suit and he immediately knew it was action time, he is having some initiative that he doesn’t usually has with Team Flash, where almost every choice is made with the team.
Yes, I loved that fight! It was not action for the sake of seeing them throwing punches, they both got to live what the other one feels and fears.
Elias: That was surprisingly effective scene, although it did feel a bit more on the nose than we needed by this point in the crossover. Specifically in relation to the repetitions of dialogue between Thawne & Merlyn.
Ramon: The writing staff did not hide the purpose of this scene. No subtlety.
Mike: Side note: Tom Cavanagh going slight red in his hair to echo Matt Letscher, was great. And this is a scene right before they have Supergirl and Batwoman drop “World’s Finest” I think on the nose is the only way to go here. Just go for the smile moment.
Elias: Scenes like that really felt like the best of Arrow while the Arkham main fight felt like some of the weaker aspects — wave after wave of faceless baddies that need punching.
That’s fair. Gotta take the fun while I can
Mike: So what did everyone think of Chicago-Gotham v2?
Elias: I hated the intro
It felt like Star City reskinned
But when they actually got to street level, the city clicked more
Ramon: They did not hide the inspiration from Nolan’s Batman, Chicago-Gotham, Batwoman’s drop in the van…
Mike: For a ghost city, it was surprisingly populous.
Elias: And surprisingly shiny
Ramon: I laughed at the excuse for mentioning Gotham this late on the Arrowverse timeline. “This city is damned, that’s why we NEVER talk about it!”
Mike: Yeah after the stuff Star City has been through, and they made it look real bad actually, that was kinda funny. But also stuff you can just develop in the pilot.
Elias: Same! And Ollie’s insistence that The Batman is a myth because he was the first vigilante. The red-lighted gargoyles were a nice touch though.
That still doesn’t excuse the presentation here. Gotham should, and could have, been much more grimy. Much more gothic and crowded. It looks too new, too modern.
Ramon: This is speculation, but I think that this was an experiment for the Pilot, they will try to balance that trope, light in the city for Kate Kane dealing with corruption as a citizen, darkness for Batwoman.
Mike: Well if there is one thing TV has shown me, Toronto will be able to look like whatever they want it to. Supposing they also shot enough exteriors in Chicago.
Elias: It might havealso been my TV but were the night & Arkham shots difficult to see? I swear I couldn’t make out any of the faces in Wayne Tower.
Mike: It all looked fine on my set. It wasn’t an Daredevil“Upstairs/Downstairs” situation for me.
Ramon: I did not have that problem, but I watched the episode with the lights off.
Mike: Well now that we’re in Gotham, how did y’all feel about Ruby Rose and the introduction of Kate Kane?
Continued belowElias: The introduction of Kate was better than the introduction of Batwoman by far.
Her aesthetic was bang on for how they presented her and while we didn’t get nearly enough time with either Kate or Batwoman, what we got has me sold. I also got the feeling that she was low-key flirting with Kara
Ramon: I don’t like Ruby Rose’s acting abilities, but they wrote the character exactly for her, I think: a bad girl who likes to be flirty.
Ramon: Kate Kane’s introduction was great, with those camera angles making her look different from the rest of the cast.
Elias: I think what I’m most disappointed in, and this is a feature of the crossover as a whole, is that these introductions should have happened yesterday, giving us three episodes worth of time to get to know Kate and to introduce her in full. To give us more than just, she’s Bruce’s Cousin and is Batwoman. Nothing that really makes Kate Kane, Kate Kane has been put on the page just yet and that’s frustrating.
Mike: Overall I’m pretty much sold on Rose and a Batwoman show based on this. It wasn’t like a Hoechlin-Superman intro, but that also isn’t really a character so much as extended reverent too Donner Superman. She was perhaps a bit stiff, but Caroline Dries seems to have a solid handle on what her take with the character can be with more time actors grow. See Stephen Amell. I really loved the scene between Kate and Kara in the office, it’s the kinda scene I’m surprised hasn’t happened in the comics (that I know of.) The costume moved well, this is all future stuff but I want them to share the Arrow stunt team.
Elias: They also balanced the stupid superhero voice well. I was afraid when she first dropped down that she’d keep the Bale/Amell growl but it loosened up by the end.
Mike: I bummed she didn’t say “I’m Batwoman,” did they ever actually call her “Batwoman” in costume? But that’s also a total pilot moment kinda spot.
Elias: I can see her growing into this role ala Amell instead of dropping into the role like Hoechlin & Gustin.
And yeah, they really missed that opportunity, didn’t they? I don’t think they ever did call her Batwoman. Just “not Batman.”
Ramon: Mike said it yesterday, I seems like Batwoman is only going to be part of this episode, they didn’t want to spoil everything that can work in a Pilot.
Mike: I did come around on her theme a bit more, it in the lead up to the costume in a tree reveal was effective and makes sense why it was composed that way.
Elias: I still wasn’t sold on it but, then again, I wasn’t sold on Arrow’s theme for a while. And speaking of things that are only in this one episode, what a waste of John Wesley Shipp!
I get the feeling that the creative team has had a tough time balancing the desire to have a Barry, Ollie, Kara bonding crossover with the grander-scale story they’ve got brewing for the trailers.
Ramon: Is he impeded to run for health reasons or something? We had only seen him doing short scenes with a lot of CGI.
Elias: I can see that.
Ramon: Well, so far this feels totally focused on Barry and Oliver, with Kara… balancing their riffs at each other?
Mike: If this were allowed to be British style feature-length episodes with limited commercial breaks, maybe they’d have the time budget (and actual budget) to go grander. That said they are doing a much better job of telling a thematically and emotionally more interesting story than Extra-Dimensional Nazis and Aliens!
Elias: Too true. That’d certainly help some of the pacing.
Mike:So the Monitor believes a Crisis is coming, do y’all want to speculate on what particular brand of Crisis now or tomorrow?
Elias: As far as Kara is concerned, she hasn’t been wasted as in past crossovers.
Final Crisis. No doubt in my mind.
Ramon: As Monitor revealed, this is preparation for a Crisis, maybe the next crossover? So, given the grandioseness of what’s coming, this is focused on their relations before everything falls apart.
Continued belowElias: Guggenheim has said as much about this crossover being a set-up for next year’s.
Ramon: Also, I have been thinking about the future of the Arrowverse, do you think about any of the series ending? A Crisis might be a good opportunity to refresh CW’s slate.
Mike: I think with the right budget and time slot, they could have a lot of fun with a Final Crisis adaptation, not from like a straight plot perspective but using the “Miracle Machine” could work.
Mike: I could see Arrow wrapping up this season or next, regardless of Crisis. Flash is still the top rate show on the Network it isn’t going anywhere. My thing is that I don’t look at them using a Crisis event to refresh things like comics do to reset things. This is TV, just cancel some shows and start new ones.
Elias: It would be a good place to end Arrow & Flash. As much as I enjoy them, and Arrow has gotten better, I’ve always contended Arrow should have ended at season 5.
Elias: I would love to see the Ultima Thule and Mandrakk appear. It might also help iron out some of the more, shall we say, impossibly dense aspects of the original. Or they could go the way of “The Multiversity” and go ultra-meta.
Ramon: Would you like to see Final Crisis as a miniseries, Defenders style?
Elias: That might be an interesting idea for that, Ramon.
Mike: I’d hope so or the event would have to be roughly 2 weeks and 6 episodes. I just don’t see how you do it from a production stand point to stop multiple shows for months on end and start them back up.
Elias: Midseason replacement would be the way to go.
Everything reaches their finale and then a stinger, unique to the show, plays and it’s like, come back for “FINAL CRISIS,” a 3-week, 2 episode a week event!
Ramon: Yeah, that might be logistically difficult. Also, an off-season mini could work, after every series wrap their seasons.
Elias: Great minds think alike.
Mike: So Joh Deegan turned into an Evil Superman, smart move actually. I’m bummed he didn’t keep the mullet.
Ramon: We are solving Guggenheim’s problem for him, haha.
Elias: Haha, yup.
Wait? When did he do that?
Mike: At the end when he turned Ollie and Barry into the Trigger Twins, I’m pretty sure that’s the new Deegan.
Elias: I thought that was just Tyler Hoechlin in the “Death of Superman” Costume?
Mike: Visually it is but the way he talked made it sound like he turned himself into a God aka Superman
Ramon: Mee too, but that makes sense, after all, Monitor told him to think better.
Elias: Hmm, that makes sense. We’ll get clarification tomorrow.
Again, this kind of stuff really should have been the bulk of the crossover.
Ramon: I see now why is it called Elseworlds, they meant to explore three different “worlds” each episode.
Mike: Any favorite Easter eggs in this episode?
Ramon: Definitely David Ramsey being John Stewart on Earth-90
Elias: Mark Guggenheim as an inmate at Arkham and Merlyn, Jericho and Diaz as the cops arresting the Ollie & Barry as the Trigger Twins
Mike: Mine is more a hunch, but the casting call for what sounds like Col. Jacob Kane mentioned he ran a security firm called “The Crows” which looked like the logo on the van in the Gotham City Alley before they get arrested.
Elias: The corner of Nolan & Burton was also a nice touch
Ramon: This episode was especially full of Easter eggs.
Mike: Did anyone recognize Psycho Pirate? We can’t have a Crisis without him
Elias: Yup! He was disappointing and wasted in exactly the way I was worried he’d be.
Ramon: Yeah, totally wasted.
Mike: I thought he was supposed to be Sports Master at first.
Elias: Oh shit, I forgot that was a real villain. Also, although this isn’t an Easter egg, I loved the way Barry looked constantly smug whenever he got to mess with Ollie
Elias: Everyone at Arkham was devoid of any real character, aside from Deegan, and that was a bummer
Ramon: Grant Gustin was really having fun, messing with Ollie in the series and I’m sure that with Amell IRL.
Continued belowRamon: Well, It was risky to show basically anybody from Arkham, because they will definitely be used in Batwoman
Elias: This being a backdoor pilot for the pilot really bothers me precisely for that reason.
Ramon: Come to think about it, why the hell did they use Arkham if every single villain is untouchable? That’s really annoying.
Elias: Right?! It’d be one thing to have the network say you can’t use these people, a la the Suicide Squad in Arrow but having them named and not showing any of them, and the ones they showed are watered down versions of themselves, is just annoying.
Ramon: “We’ll show you Victor Fries…’s gun! How fun is that?”. Well at least Caitlin said “bitch” to someone.
Elias: And we got to “meet” Nora Fries. . .I think.
Mike: Yeah that was a confusing execution moment, why not just let her be a random inmate at that point. Since the whole point is to get to the showdown with Frost.
Ramon: Maybe Mr. Freeze will blame Killer Frost for Nora’s disease? Adding some connection between series?
Ramon: A random inmate would have been easier.
Elias: Despite all of that, I did enjoy the mystery of “what happened to The Batman?”
And yes, I will continue to call him that just like everyone called Green Arrow, The Arrow for three seasons.
Ramon: It’s a good justification for not showing him before.
Mike: I thought they laid that one on a bit too thick, his absence adds texture to Kate but the constant mentioning made it seem over done because the name “Batman” is treated with such reverence by WB. DCWverse is at its best when it’s acting like its own thing and not explaining why some bigger character isn’t around.
I still wish they’d just gone with the “Bombshell” inspired origin of Batwoman and Bruce for this.
Elias: I feel that. Were we to have gotten more from Gotham and Batwoman, the absence would have been more fitting.
Totally.
Kara knowing about Bruce because Earth-58 actually has the trinity (presumably) was the strongest connection to him and I wish they had done a little more with that.
Ramon: I would have liked a moment where she or Superman said something like “yeah, I hope the one in this earth is not as annoying as ours”, kind of telling the audience that he is not Arrowverse’s taboo.
Mike: It seems like we’ve hit everything, any final thoughts or something we’ve missed?
Elias: All that nerd banter, the Felicity conversation that is best left to the main season, and speculation about tomorrow night is all I can think of
Ramon: Can Supergirl’s X-Ray vision see tattoos? Why was she spying on Kate Kane’s body?
(I mean, that’s all I can think of.)
Elias: I guess so. Her X-ray vision is strangely hard to pin down in terms of what it can and cannot do
When you’ve been issued the challenge to see the tattoos, you gotta take it
Mike: Okie dokie than, so we’ll see each other tomorrow for the final hour of “Elseworlds” right?
Elias: Yep! And we’re finally going to get those Supergirl scenes that were positioned as if they were an opening scene
Ramon: This was a great conversation, see you guys tomorrow!
Elias: See you then!
