Arrow S04E08 Review: Immortal Men In A Jar

Arrow, Season 4, Episode 8: Legends of Yesterday

This episode is definitely the weaker of the two-part crossover, though it definitely is still a fun romp to watch. There's way too many needless drama with the inexplicable shift to dealing with Oliver Queen's "I'm a daddy" problem, which is complicated by yet another exhaustive love drama fight scene between Oliver and Felicity that I'm so glad is freaking wiped out of the timeline. Also while I don't exactly mind the flashbacks to ancient Egypt to show some parts of the Hawks' origin story, the introdump given by Carter in the present day, as well as the ridiculous information tape, ends up feeling a little too much.

But thankfully, they took the rather tired first half of this episode and definitely stuck the landing, bringing the focus on both Barry Allen and Oliver Queen as characters, and both of them are on absolute fire. Barry's focus on trying to do the right thing, trying to be a good friend to Oliver and recognizing the implications of a second chance, as well as Oliver struggling with his own problems, being good friends in general with Barry and the whole daddy issues thing are great, Olicity fight aside.

And, yes, well, there's the time travel thing. Which I don't really mind -- we know it was going to happen, and the show really puts in effort to show how absolutely brutal a Vandal Savage victory turns out to be. It doesn't need to put in exaggerated apocalyptic shots or whatever. It's just everyone dies and gets burnt into fiery skeletons as Barry outruns the giant magical staff explosion to the past and tries to give everyone a second chance. Yes, it's flimsy to buy that the twofold factors of Oliver being kinda not in the mood and Hawkgirl not being able to sprout her wings led to Savage's overwhelming victory -- but in addition to dealing with those two problems during the do-over, Barry also dealt with a couple more practical things to help them out. They fixed the Cisco-gauntlets. They had Diggle, Black Canary and Speedy come with them Oliver freed the Hawks first before engaging Savage. It's just that, well, the time travel thing would probably confuse anyone not caught up with the Flash as much as anyone not caught up with Arrow would be confused by the Oliver Jr. plot. But whatever.

I honestly like the Oliver Jr. plot a lot more than the Velocity-6 plot. I just wished it was foreshadowed a bit more, either in a Flash or Arrow episode prior to this. As it is it's like one of the writers remembered that Oliver's old girlfriend Sandra Samantha moved to Central City and they were all like 'wait, isn't that where our other show was set?' It's aggravating that after the whole point being made about Barry fixing things in the past Oliver still continues to make the same mistake of keeping secrets and all that jazz, though. Realistic? Probably. Annoying? Absolutely. I don't need this kind of drama, damn it. The thought of more Olicity fighting in the future drains me mentally.

It's a bit odd that they changed the name of Oliver's son from what we assumed to be Connor Hawke (a.k.a. Green Arrow II) into, uh, William. I guess it's to give the writers leeway to include Connor Hawke depending on how the writing of the season goes. He also has action figures of the Flash and Captain Cold... who makes freaking action figures of criminals, I ask you?

The B-team don't get to do much. Laurel shows up in this episode in exchange for losing Team Caitlin, and alongside Diggle just drop a couple of lines here and there before showing up for the finale. Laurel gets to Canary Cry the fuck out of Savage and that's great. Thea, on the other hand, is absolutely comedy gold. She just being exasperated with the 'new normal' and being all 'the only thing I understand is the Indiana Jones reference' is an absolute riot. Equally funny is Barry suddenly cracking in with "whatever you do don't let him train you" as a reference to their first crossover episode and post-character-development Oliver actually looks like he agrees with Barry there.

Equally equally funny is how much of a dick Carter ends up being when he takes charge over Kendra's training. Yes, Carter is a gigantic douchebag, and yes, he may arguably know what he's doing, but I do think that it's hilarious. It does lead to a pretty emotional moment between Kendra and Cisco, though, and while it could've been handled much better, it definitely a nice little conflict to this whole eternal soulmates thing. I think the little sideplot was handled as well as it could, with Cisco being supportive in the end. (Carter is still a tool)

The two confrontations with Vandal Savage is great, with the failure timeline showing just how disastrous and powerful Savage can be if left unchecked, while the success timeline, well, just shows what's basically the Justice League beating the ever-loving crap out of a powerful villain. And I'm down for that. Vandal certainly fits the bill of a powerful crossover villain. He's everything I wished Ra's Al Ghul would've been in Arrow, and far far more.

Merlyn keeps showing up to deliver mysterious and ill-defined and super-complex plot complications, and just acting cool as hell, and his plans make no sense as hell, but he's awesome and he scooped up Dust Savage into a pot, allowing Team FlashHawkArrow to net a victory against Savage while still having the character around for the TV series. Admittedly having them straight-up turn the poor dude into dust was something I didn't see coming since I know of his eventual role in Legends of Tomorrow.

Let's talk a bit about the comic-screen differences and Easter Eggs, yeah? Vandal Savage is revealed to be the court vizier or magician or what have you back in the days of Khufu and Shayera, and is now a composite character with Hath-Set. It's not exactly made clear if Hath-Set was Vandal Savage's initial identity, or if he started his cycle of immortality after the mysterious meteors crashed all around them. It certainly fits into Vandal Savage's traditional backstory of "caveman who gained intelligence and immortality from a mysterious meteorite", though really with the show already establishing how Vandal Savage hangs around historical characters like Julius Caesar, Houdini and all that jazz it's rather odd.

I also like the nice little tie-in to how Hawkman and Hawkgirl are involved with the Nth Metal -- actually named on-screen several times by appropriately enough Cisco -- which are retconned to be the same plot device meteorite that gave Vandal Savage his immortality. In the comics the Nth Metal is the plot device that gives Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman the ability to fly, um, depending on which version or which point in the timeline the story is set in.

Also, Barry steals a meteorite from Keystone City, which I'm pretty sure is mentioned a couple of times before. Keystone City is a city that the traditional city that the Flash operates in the comics. And I'm pretty sure the visual of Barry trying to outrun a wall of blue energy of death is homaging a part of the Flashpoint comics.

Overall, other than the groan-worthy Olicity scenes, it's definitely not a bad episode. The potential for drama regarding Oliver keeping secrets from Felicity DESPITE THE MORALS OF ALL THE PREVIOUS SEASONS is questionable and maybe justifiable if you squint hard enough -- and honestly telling Felicity won't be that harmful -- and could either be a great development or potential for another drama plot tumour.