‘Heroes vs Aliens’ Crossover Part Two Paves the Way Amazingly

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After a disappointing beginning to the crossover, the second part kicks things into high gear on The Flash. Man, is it good to be a geek right now! Disclaimer: This review may contain some minor spoilers, but I’ll try to keep them to the minimum so you can enjoy the episode yourself.

For starters, one of the more positive things I can say is that most of what we saw in trailers were events covered by this episode’s 12 minute mark. After the courteous pleasantries were done, the main story begins with some Arrow-appointed training: Supergirl vs everybody else. Of course, that’s not all, the initial confrontation with the alien antagonist results in mind-control. The Dominators pit our heroes against each other once more, which is not good for the side without a Kryptonian.

It’s safe to say I enjoyed this outstanding episode very much. To my surprise, even with the massive amount of character interacting, battling, and emoting it never stopped being a Flash episode. In this overarching plot, the focal point never ceased to be the Flash ensemble and its outgrowing characters, like Professor Stein. There was a lot of character development for soon-to-be Kid Flash, Barry and Cisco’s relationship, and even a story point that most of Legends of Tomorrow‘s second season has shrouded in secrecy.

Aside from the terrific quips, my favorite part was seeing Flash face the ramifications of Flashpoint after Firestorm revealed future Barry’s message. Throughout this third season of Flash we’ve seen Barry carry the weight of the time stream on his shoulders. However, it hasn’t had an extensive reaction from everyone in the Arrowverse until now. It was superlative. (Had to crack open the thesaurus because I’m running out ways to praise this episode.)

With roughly only 42 minutes in duration, it’s completely understandable that character interactions were limited, but there were one-liners galore. Each one of the witty one-liners embodied enough of the characters to let the audience know their opinions on everything this universe’s trinity (Flash, Green Arrow, and Supergirl) were saying and/or doing. You might be wondering if there’s anything negative to say about this episode.

It’s minor, but the mind-control involved in the episode carried a screeching sound served as a very obvious, but unnecessary cue that a character wasn’t themselves. Another unfavorable aspect are the actors that don’t get the opportunity to appear in the entirety of this story. Vixen, Citizen Steel, Wild Dog, Mr. Terrific, Ragman, and Artemis got the short end of the stick since they’re not principal cast members of their respective series. Which is unfortunate since it meant Cisco, Felicity, and Winn didn’t team-up for a massive geek out. Also, the events in this episode hint that we might not be seeing HR Wells or Wally for the rest of this crossover event.

I’m curious to see how our heroes will figure out a way to defeat the Dominators. Supergirl did just deal with a virus called Medusa that kills all alien life except for humans and Kryptonians. Also wondering, and this is just for fan-service sake, since we have past Vixen in the present, can Megalyn Echikunwoke make a short cameo appearance for her to meet her grandmother? Can’t have everything, can I?

This episode served to pave the way into this crossover; we’re just getting started. If Supergirl’s episode served as the introduction, this episode gave us the exposition, we still have two episodes to get the conflict, climax, and resolution. Like the ending title card read, the Heroes vs Aliens crossover will continue with the the 100th episode of Arrow and boy am I ready!

Images: The CW