The Flash, Season 3, Episode 8: Invasion!
 |
| J'onn does not actually appear, sadly. |
Finally! I've put off reviewing the Invasion three-parter for a while due to what a huge undertaking it is. It's a bit hard to really be objective when I'm spending half of my watching time squeeing at the sheer sight of so many DC superheroes assembled to fight... well, weird wrinkly-skinned aliens with no personality. But hey!
I mean, technically the Supergirl episode 'Medusa' is like a mini-tie-in to this whole Invasion business, but so little happened there that's relevant to the Invasion plotline as a whole, and anything relevant -- Cisco and Barry going to Earth-38 to pick Supergirl up -- is mirrored here. You'd think that the anti-alien superweapon featured in that episode would be like this foreshadowing to how they beat the Dominators, but no, that wasn't even brought up as an option.
I'm a bit pissed off that the Flash episode started off with a big spoiler of this episode's third act, though, immediately showing that Flash and Green Arrow are going to face off against a slew of their brainwashed friends... that's a bit of an odd thing to do, really, since without the little prequel thing, the brainwashing, while not exactly unexpected, would've been somewhat of a surprise instead of the whole episode being a buildup to that scene.
As much as I want to sing praises about the episode, though, there are... many things that are weak in the Invasion three-parter. It is very cool just to see the cast of four shows hang out together to fight a common threat, but as it is, the Dominators themselves just aren't that well-written as antagonists. Flash sees a spaceship land, the Dominators pour out and just ignore Flash while running around (which is going to be a major plot hole considering what we learn of them later on), Flash decides to call in Team Arrow for help, and then the Legends team are summoned, while Cisco and Flash pick up Supergirl from Earth-38.
Something that I disliked in a lot of team-up episodes both live-action, on paper or on cartoon is how mind-numbingly slow it takes for our heroes to be banded together. The Avengers didn't really get to become a proper team until halfway through the movie, Batman v. Superman likewise didn't manage to get its two main heroes (and Diana) together until the final battle, Civil War spends half of its screentime just gathering players, Legends of Tomorrow's first episode is all about recruitment... and there's a nice ease to Flash just zooming around, plucking Green Arrow from Star City, Supergirl from another universe, and the Legends team just happened to answer the call very quickly.
A part of me is sad that not all members of the casts of four shows appear throughout the entirety of the Invasion storyline. Green Arrow, Diggle, Speedy and Felicity are the only ones to show up from Arrow, the Legends team are minus Steel and Vixen (who Sara brushes off as newbs guarding the ship), and Supergirl is the only one who arrives from her show. In an ideal universe we'd get a three-parter properly showing a 30+ cast of superheroes instead of picking like a dozen main characters who move through the three episodes while we trade supporting casts... but hey, I'll take what I can get, even if I'm a bit bummed that I don't get to see the Martian Manhunter, Ragman, Killer Frost and Commander Steel fight aliens together.
With that out of the way, though, we do get a pretty cool roll call of every single superhero present in this episode saying their name in Barry's repurposed hangar base, which, while corny as all hell, at least has the justification of them doing so for Supergirl's benefit.
The Dominators are easily one of the weakest part of the three-parter, though. They are a classic alien enemy even in the comics, but even there they were never the deepest or most intriguing of DC's huge roster of villains. They've got their mind-control powers -- which comes into play this episode with the aid of a device -- and some motivation we'll talk about later, but here they're just your average alien invaders. They show up early in the opening, scaring the bejeezus out of Flash, and we get some cool conspiracy-style scenes where Lyla, head of ARGUS, ends up being slightly bamboozled by all these other men in black she doesn't know of, and the president gets kidnapped by aliens right in front of her. But the Dominators take a back-seat as they ambush basically everyone except for Green Arrow and Flash, mind-controlling them and siccing them towards their buddies, leading to a very awesome fight scene I'll talk about later in this review, before abducting a bunch of our heroes.
A good chunk of this episode (that's not awesome superhero-vs-superhero battles) is spent exploring the clash of characters, and here we've got three different casts that work... very differently. Team Arrow is very clinical in their way of handling things, with Green Arrow being very authoritative -- even when he's trying to be nice and allow Barry to handle things. Diggle is just super confused about everything that's going on and his expressions at being told about the existence of aliens, alternate universes and all that nonsense is an absolute delight. The Legends team respect Oliver to some degree (a good part because Sara and Ray worked with Oliver a lot in the past) but are more of a happy-go-lucky bunch of people who wing most of their superheroing. And Team Flash? Well, Team Flash is fractured at the moment, mostly Barry and Cisco.
The whole revelation about Flashpoint has driven a huge, huge wedge between the two, and while it's a bit irritating to watch, it's a very... sensible character development, so to speak? Cisco is being super passive-aggressive against Barry thanks to him accidentally causing his brother's death by his dicking around with the timeline. Cisco isn't enough of an ass to actually withhold his help in this crisis, but he's not going to be friends with Barry, and he's enough of an ass to quickly suggest that Oliver be the leader of their little team, and generally make life difficult for Flash.
There are a lot of other hilarious interactions between the many, many characters too, of course. We've got Diggle just being confused as the most 'mortal' and everyman among the cast, being confused at all this time-traveling alien alternate universe stuff and he's easily the funniest character in the whole crossover. We've got Heat Wave being an absolutely hilarious dick, intentionally egging Supergirl on by calling her the sexist nickname 'Skirt' and just being absolutely unimpressed with Supergirl's powers. We've got Supergirl basically shrugging off everything our heroes throw at her in their little practice match. We've got Speedy -- who's retired from superheroing for this entire season -- putting back her costume on because 'Holy shit guys it's aliens!' Bless you, Thea.
I also like how Barry just pulls Green Arrow and Spartan away from what seems to be an epic fight against the freaking Vigilante... honestly, if Barry bothered to stick around for ten more seconds to knock Vigilante out and apprehend him, we wouldn't have had the big overreaching plotline we would have in presumably the next half of Arrow's fifth season, but hey.
And that's not counting the interactions between the Team Flash dudes as well. Joe and especially Iris are super-against Wally's training with H.R. in trying to become a super-fast superhero, while all Wally wants to do is to participate in this gathering of superheroes. They need all the hands they can get, and someone with as much raw power as Kid Flash around, well... it's a bit of a plot thread that's gone ever so slightly stale at this point, but with the Dominator crisis over their heads it's the perfect time to show that Wally West has what it takes to be the Flash. Well, Kid Flash.
The main conflict, though, still stems over the fallout from Flashpoint, and I for one am very glad that John Diggle's daughter being retconned out of existence is not just glossed over. The Legends team isn't very keen on people who run back in time and fuck the timeline up (even though arguably they cause as much damage while repairing the timeline, like, say, blowing up Japanese shoguns with modern atomic suits), Diggle is very confused about everything that's going on, and Cisco is still pissed off about the whole 'killed my brother accidentally' thing. Another plot thread that spirals out of the whole altered timeline thing is that, well, Martin Stein finally discovers that he has a daughter in this timeline, though that was more of his fault than Barry's.
Stein and Caitlin's short scene shows a very nice moment that demonstrates that way before Martin Stein was a Legend, he was a member of Team Flash. Jax doesn't quite have the same history with Team Flash, what with being shoehorned in randomly one episode, but Stein does, and his chemistry with his old buddies shows through very well.
We also unexpectedly get the mysterious message that Future!Barry left behind for Rip Hunter, which is... surprisingly anticlimactic. Stein and Jax plays it for Present!Barry to hear, but it's just more talk about Flashpoint about how no one can be trusted, and all it manages to do is to cast doubt on Barry's ability to be a leader, and delivers nothing really tangible. Honestly, I expected one of the cast to be revealed to be replaced by a Dominator or something, Skrull-style, but nothing of the sort happens.
We also get the unexpected return of the future newspaper, and apparently something has changed within it -- Iris West-Allen is no longer writing the article! Barry is all confused about what he should do, what he shouldn't do, and Oliver tells Barry something I wished someone would tell him a long time ago: stop second-guessing himself and just do stuff, damn it.
Of course, with Cisco kind of raising tensions, everyone gets pissed off and decides to fuck off and fight the Dominators on their own. Oliver, bless his heart, tries to put his feet down and say that he stays where Barry stays, but the rest of the cast doesn't really care all that much. Oliver and Barry are the two headliners of the Arrow-verse at this point, being basically, well, the equivalents to Superman and Batman in this version of the DC universe, and having the two of them show the strength of their friendship is very well-done in this episode.
And honestly, the show does a relatively good approach with the humongous cast. Wally's sub-plot is the only one where it felt weak, mostly because of how forced the Joe/Iris bit felt. But everyone else does have a time to shine. Barry, Oliver, Cisco, Diggle, Kara, Stein, Mick, Felicity, Caitlin... the only ones who really didn't have memorable scenes are Ray and Sara, and those two more than make up for it in the fight scenes.
What an amazing fight scene, by the way. The show does a very good job at establishing how far off the power curve Supergirl is compared to anyone present (except maybe Flash and Firestorm, and even then in a straight-up brawl the two of them would have a very hard time keeping up) and suddenly having everyone turned evil other than Oliver, Barry and Wally is very awesome. Sucks to be the president, who gets vaporized by the Dominators after his function as bait has ended, but the fight scene is very cool.
Understandably, Oliver goes off to fight the more ground-bound, less powerful characters like Spartan, Speedy, White Canary and Heat Wave, and the very cool scene where the Flash has to face three flying superheroes in Supergirl, Firestorm and the Atom is amazing as well. It's not the best fight ever, but between some of the sweetest fighting choreography (Oliver versus Sara is amazing) and the badass scene where Flash's thunderbolts take down Firestorm and Atom in one shot is amazing. The conclusion basically has Flash goad Supergirl into running after him and destroying the mind-control crystal in the process, which is cool -- I mean, Flash climaxes tend to feature running -- but I really do like the pretty awesome scene of Wally actually coming into play and doing some superheroing of his own, one-shotting three of the mind-controlled superheroes... though at the same time his green-ness and general lack of combat expertise is shown as he quickly gets blindsided by Supergirl.
So yeah, the Dominators might be pretty boring and faceless enemies, but the treat of having the superheroes fight each other in what's easily the most epic showdown this side of the CW-verse is well enough the admission fee, and I am far more invested in the whole personal crisis that Barry is facing compared to the whole alien invasion plotline, which honestly seems to take second billing to everything that's going on.
Justice League Roll Call:
- Superheroes: The Flash, Green Arrow, Supergirl, Speedy, Spartan, Heat Wave, White Canary, Firestorm (Martin Stein & Jefferson Jackson), the Atom, Vibe, Killer Frost, Kid Flash, Overwatch
- Supporting Characters: Joe West, Iris West, H.R. Wells, Lyla "Harbinger" Michaels, Lily Stein
- Villains: Dominators, Creepy Government Dude, Vigilante
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- We get multiple references to past episodes of the CW-verse. Obviously, past team-ups like Flash running to Supergirl's universe by accident, Martin Stein's former role as a member of Team Flash, Ray and Sara being former members of Team Arrow, as well as Barry and Oliver's first two team-ups (Barry being brainwashed by Rainbow Raider; Oliver shooting Barry in the leg as part of a training) all get referenced.
- Apparently everyone's secret identities all get exposed, and hilariously enough some members of the cast apparently didn't know -- Iris, in particular, despite being a main character, has only known now that Green Arrow is Oliver Queen, and her crush on Oliver Queen in season one is brought up again. I mean, they're all buddies now, but freaking HEAT WAVE is standing right there.
- The Dominators in the comics are a race of aliens obsessed with the caste system (the circles on their heads denote how high they are in the hierarchy) and experimenting with the metagene, a gene which functions to give humans superpowers. While they have menaced the Justice League several times, they are primarily cast as antagonists for the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th Century.
- Barry's STAR labs building which they use as a base is a dead ringer for the Hall of Justice from the old Challenge of the Super-Friends cartoon.
- Supergirl's Earth is identified by Cisco as Earth-38, which is in reference to Superman's debut in real life in the year 1938.
- Thea notes how Supergirl is introduced to them as being 'more powerful than a locomotive', which, of course, is a line that's often used to describe Superman.
- Barry being the leader of their not-Justice-League is actually something that's similar where in the comics, the very first incarnation of the Justice League was brought together by the Flash.
- Julie Greer, the author of the future newspaper that replaces Iris West-Allen, is a reporter in the comics associated with interviewing Jay West, Wally West's future son.
No comments:
Post a Comment