SPOILER WARNING!
The first part of DCTV’s mega four-night crossover wasn’t really part of the crossover at all, serving instead to act as the midseason finale for Supergirl and a cameo from Barry and Cisco at the end. Here, the real fun begins as Barry and Cisco drag Supergirl back to their Earth to help them fight aliens in the form of Dominators, creatures that have come to Earth before and now have turned their attention to Earth once again, kidnapping the President of the United States in the process.
It’s a fun episode that is probably the best in the season so far, featuring so many DC characters together and it of course has the added novelty of having Supergirl interact with the cast for the first time. This was one of my most anticipated events of the Fall season and for the most part it delivered, wasting little time on bringing the various teams together. Barry quickly recruited both Team Arrow and the Legends quickly, where he tried and failed to play the team leader after being elected by the group. It was so fun to see the characters interacting here as the show pulled it off very well indeed. It maade the most out of the large extended cast of characters that it had available whilst still managing to deal with various elements like Cisco’s disliking of Barry after he selfishly went back in time to create Flashpoint, and in doing so, killing Dante.
This is the episode where Flashpoint has a knock on effect on the rest of the Arrow and Legends-verse. Dr. Stein discovers that he now has a daughter (although that was caused by a previous time travelling experience, rather than Flashpoint itself), and Diggle found out that he had a daughter in the original timeline rather than a son. All these events backfire and result in Barry being forced to remain behind when a group of characters including Supergirl, Heat Wave and White Canary head into a building to rescue the President, only for them to be brainwashed by the Dominators.
Of course, it isn’t a superhero team-up without the superheroes all fighting themselves and as a result Invasion (2) re-treads the same steps from that of the first crossover between The Flash and Arrow: by mind-controlling a group of heroes and pitting them against another. Barry and Oliver are usually the best at what they do, but there was too many of them around and especially when they had brainwashed Supergirl as well. This was a task that they knew they wouldn’t be able to win, even with the intervention of Wally (much to his family’s disapproval) as he’s still testing his powers and despite being faster than Barry isn’t as skilled or experienced as he is.
It seems like most of Wally’s storyline has revolved around him doing something that his family haven’t told him to do so far. It’s kind of repetitive but his intervention was cool and hopefully, especially now that he’s receiving training from H.R, we’ll eventually get to see him more involved in the series further down the line. It was kind of a shame that this part never reallyclicked and felt out of place with the rest of the crossover, especially when everyone else was all getting their moments to shine, especially with the unexpected but welcome rivalry between Heat Wave and Supergirl.
Whilst Invasion (2) may have suffered from a slow pace, it was perhaps vital in getting the team together and establishing the threat. The Dominators may not be the most memorable of antagonists and were poorly developed, but then the main focus is always going to be on the heroes here and it really wasn’t a surprise to see this happen.
The battle at the end of the episode was easily the highlight of Invasion (2), and though it still manged to be the best episode of the season, it still had a couple of stumbling blocks to overcome in the process.
Be sure to check out the next episode of The Flash next week on the CW, this Tuesday at 8pm.
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