I’m not even kidding; as good as last year’s Invasion crossover was cool, this year’s kicks off it’s two-night spectacular in style with Supergirl and Arrow, even if the casts are so meshed that you can’t even really tell which episode is which.

They don’t bury the lead either as we open on Earth-X itself, with crimson, lightning filled skies that bring to mind the Dark Multiverse worlds from the recent DC Comics event, Dark Nights: Metal. Black and crimson banners fill the skyline along with strange architecture and zeppelins. Oh yeah, we’re in Nazi Country.

A resistance warehouse is attacked and decimated by one lone archer, showing that Earth X’s Dark Arrow is not to be trifled with and he proves that by taking on that Earth’s James Olsen aka Guardian, in a way more beat-up patriotic version of his suit. He unfortunately dies but assures DA that there are more like him, nicely hinting at the upcoming animated Freedom Fighters: The Ray, which serves as a prequel to this crossover.

We catch-up with our main heroes as they’re all discussing the upcoming wedding, with nice location titles using the font of each respective series. It’s a neat little sequence, overall and serves as an introduction to the majority of the players for these first two parts.

During the build-up to the event, we get quite a lot of information dumped on us for those who may not watch every show and to show how all these disparate groups interact and it’s nice to see Barry catch up with Ollie and Kara again. They built up a real bond over the past couple of years and it’s paid off here as Ollie is best man and Kara does a beautiful rendition of Runnin’ Home To You, an original song from the musical team-up, Duet.

Kara’s adoptive sister, Alex, and Sara Lance hook-up the night before the wedding! Alex, rebounding from a recent break-up, and Sara, a notorious puss-hound, make for some nice, awkward comic relief but given how funny this collective cast is, there’s plenty to go around…

Like Mick! Dominic Purcell is frequently the funniest cast member on Legends of Tomorrow and is used to decent effect here, partnering up with Caitlin, most likely as a Snart surrogate. Get the whole fire and ice motif rocking again. They even have a go at Dark Arrow before being jobbed out (along with the rest of Team Arrow).

Back to the wedding where Nazis invade! It makes sense in hindsight since nearly every CW hero is gathered together but this gives the show the ample opportunity to have everyone show off what they do best and it gives one notable absence a real highlight…

While Kid Flash won’t be partaking in the event proper, Wally does get a really slick moment that made me smile and then made me sad because he’s amongst the three other black heroes that are sadly missing from this team-up.

OH! I should make mention of another odd attendant besides the assemblage of heroes and the Nazi gate-grashers. This odd little moment between Grant Gustin and a rather excitable Jessica Parker-Kennedy who is playing an unnamed character but my Spidey-Sense is tingling and I think she’s going to be important. There’s two theories I can offer but I’ll keep them under my hat for now.

Now, I guess I should talk about some of our villains and while Dark Arrow and Overgirl are just married versions of Ollie and Kara (gross, I know), they do make a menacing power couple and there’s a fair amount of affection between the two. The real odd-balls are Metallo, with some of the ropiest CGI this poor stretched production could muster and Eobard Thawne. Our Eobard Thawne. Wearing Wells’ face. I know they make mention of time shenanigans but this is ridiculous. I know they’re only doing the Wells-face again because they’re burning through their budget like no tomorrow and Tom Cavanaugh is up for literally anything but it’s still super weird.

Not as weird as Tommy Merlyn being Prometheus though! Holy shit! This was a swerve and a half and I applaud the writing team for bringing Colin Donnell back to Arrow after 5 seasons of his character being dead! Though I will admit that I didn’t recognise him immediately and only marked out when I heard his name.

I know there’s still a lot I haven’t covered and I’m already pushing 800 words but rest assured, I loved every second of the Supergirl and Arrow parts of this crossover and I can’t wait for tomorrow’s episodes when we’ll see Overgirl try to steal Kara’s heart and the rest of our heroes try to escape from Earth-X alive! Are you enjoying this year’s event so far? Let me know your favourite moment in the comments and I’ll catch you guys tomorrow for The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow!

It’s a brand new day and a brand new crossover between the The Flash and Supergirl and it’s a musical too! Suffice to say that this episode was highly anticipated would be an understatement! So what do I think?

It was a’ight. Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way, this isn’t a fantastic musical episode. It’s a good showcase of each actor’s singing chops but is more akin to an episode of Glee (shocker) than the brilliantly crafted likes of Once More With Feeling, Dr Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog or even the origin of this episode’s villain: The Mayhem of The Music Meister. Speaking of which…

Darren Criss; alumni of the aforementioned Glee, along with both Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist, is not very good in this role. He’s not very charming, steals powers for some reason, he has one song and even that isn’t original. Considering the history of the character and the actor’s inherent charm and talent, I would have loved to have seen Neil Patrick Harris reprise his role as Music Meister. Cool effect on the hypnotic eyes though.

Barry and Kara being trapped in a musical, being forced to play out the plot was pretty entertaining though, barring the 11th hour deus ex machina save and they both give an exceptional performance. Grant’s lip-syncing could use a little work but Melissa is on top form. Their duet, the cutely named original song “Superfriends”, has a lot of humour and energy to it and I enjoyed it.

On back-up vocals are Victor Garber, Jeremy Jordan, John Barrowman, Jesse L. Martin and Carlos Valdes and all of them belt out their performances and elevate their respective songs, even if they are just covers.

In the B-Plot, we get an all too brief team-up between Kid Flash, Vibe and Martian Manhunter and it’s a shame that there wasn’t more interaction time since this is J’onn’s first time on Earth-One.

The curtain call comes far too quickly on this episode, with more focus on talking than singing with the Music Meister exiting stage right. Barry and Kara’s respective relationship problems being solved in a rather simple manner, things being simple in a musical being a running gag in this episode.

While it’s not outstanding, it is a fun diversion to the main plot of each show and gives most of the actors the chance to stretch their lungs. Keeping the theme of magical mayhem, next week promises to reach out and grab ya with Abra Kadabra!

I don’t think that’s hyperbole because while this episode is pulling double duty as the penultimate episode of the crossover and as Arrow’s 100th episode; it pulls it off with aplomb. It’s very much an episode of two halves though so I’ll kick off with the B-plot that continues tying into the Heroes vs. Aliens plot.

While Oliver and Company (nice little reference there, Cisco!) are missing, Team Arrow, and Cisco, rushes to find them by chasing down a piece of tech they need that was recently stolen by one Laura Washington. Not a character I recognise but has more than a passing resemblance to Cyborgirl —  a villainous distaff counterpart to the Teen Titan, Cyborg.

Something they make a big deal out of is Wild Dog’s aversion to metas and aliens, which I find odd because Ragman is essentially a meta though it could be argued he’s just enhanced by the mystical rags soooo… I dunno, it’s resolved by the end of the episode but I figured it was worth mentioning as character growth for Rene.

The most interesting part of the episode is with Ollie, Sara, Thea, Diggle and Ray; all of whom are trapped in a shared hallucination, a seeming perfect world for them. It’s all very For The Man Who Has Everything, a seminal Superman story from Alan Moore, and I love it! It’s so much like that story that I expected the Black Mercy to be involved, much like it was on the Supergirl episode that also homaged that story.

It’s interesting how each person’s ideal life is adapted into this shared dream. Ollie and Thea obviously want their family back (nicely foreshadowed by Ollie’s speech to Barry last episode) but Ollie and Sara also want Laurel back. Ray is engaged to Felicity, who is helping Diggle who is The Hood.

That was an odd branching path until I really thought about it and Diggle wants to be punished/redeemed for what he did to his brother and who does he know that pisses and moans and acts like a grumpy edgelord all the time because he makes piss-poor decisions? Ollie as Green Arrow. It’s funny in it’s own little way.

Flash Fa—Wait, am I allowed to do this for non-Flash shows? Screw it! Arrow Admin: Tommy Merlyn is mentioned explicitly as being absent because he’s a doctor in Chicago. This is a reference to the scheduling conflict Colin Donnell had filming Chicago Med.

Just like For The Man Who Has Everything, eventually our heroes have to break out and it’s a lot less breaking the world and more breaking hearts. There is a nice bit of catharsis for our heroes though, as they face down the projections of those responsible for their traumas and deal with them each in a darkly ironic fashion.

Ollie has Deathstroke, Sara has Darhk, Thea and Merlyn, Diggle and a Ghost representing his brother and Ray with a Deathstroke soldier like the one who killed his fiancée, Anna.

They escape on a stolen Dominator fighter and are picked up by the Waverider and ends on a menacing shot of the Dominator mothership on a direct course with Earth.

This episode is fascinating from a character perspective and does a decent job of continuing the crossover plot line so I’m pretty happy with it but be sure to come back tomorrow as Legends of Tomorrow tags in for the final part of Invasion!

And I feel confident in that opinion because while the movies have been struggling after diving in at the deep end, the CW tv shows have had years to build up a solid roster of characters with unique relationships to each other and we see all of that on display in the first part of Heroes vs Aliens!

I was going to cover the Supergirl episode as well because she’s a major part of the crossover but the crossover plot was the focus of the episode for all of a minute at the end of the episode. A scene they repeat here because it’s the only part that mattered but still a nice connecting point.

Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice! Wait, what? Yeah this is kind of an odd thing to just throw out there. Barry owns a STAR Labs facility that looks like the Hall of Justice? That’s dumb and I’m someone who loves how dumb these comic shows can be. Why introduce this now and not at the end of the crossover?

Because guess what? I don’t buy for a second that shitty aircraft hangar is out back of this immense place. Even the regular STAR Labs looks like a stadium so they can have decent exterior shots but this place is so unreal that I can see it being destroyed.

What does look pretty decent are the Dominators. Yeah, they mostly look like every alien menace ever but they’re competently animated and have the nasty teeth and big dumb red circle on their forehead that defines their race.

Naturally, having all of our heroes in one place has tons of potential for comedy and we get plenty of it from David Ramsey and Dominic Purcell, especially. But one of Diggle’s lines has a rather poignant double-meaning and leads into what I consider to be the primary conflict of the episode.

Barry’s fuck-ups are finally brought out into the open and, naturally, it causes a whole lot of problems with the team dynamic. We see the full extent of the Flashpoint fuckery with Stein’s daughter being revealed, the future news article being written by someone other than Iris and Diggle’s daughter being erased from history and it disillusions most of the assembled heroes. I do like that Kara and Ollie are the only ones to side with Barry, but for vastly different reasons.

The prerequisite heroes vs. heroes fight is a pretty spectacle but nothing truly amazing but this does mark the first time in over four years that Ollie has run out of arrows in a fight.

This first part was exactly what I wanted from it and the other parts promise to deliver on similar amounts of fun, action and drama so be sure to come back tomorrow when we see what happened to the abducted heroes as Invasion Week covers Arrow!

It’s been three days since the world-wide premiere of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and guess what? A 44-minute TV episode showed it up! Why? Well, let me tell you, kids!

Unlike the Man of Steel, Supergirl has been displaying the kind of warmth and sincerity that you expect from any kind of media bearing the ‘S’. I mean, sure, I thought the show was just ‘alright’ to begin with but as it went on, I found the show to be compelling, entertaining and worthy bearing the title of Super. Melissa Benoist is an amazing Supergirl and the cast of the show is definitely on par with the likes of Arrow and The Flash. Speaking of…

TEAM-UP, BITCHES! Since this historic cross-network, cross-dimensional crossover feature The Flash, I just had to cover it for Flash Facts! Much like the crossovers with Arrow, this team-up’s strength doesn’t lie in the superhero action (it’s TV show; there’s time and budget constraints) but in the character interaction and let me tell you…

It. Is. Golden. Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist are amazing to watch side-by-side. Barry’s natural charm and intelligence are a good foil for Kara’s over-eagerness and rookie mentality and this is to the credit of the actors, who seem to have had genuine fun during the shooting of this episode. Doesn’t hurt that both the characters and actors have an abundance of chemistry, making their all-too-brief interactions as memorable as they are adorable.

The rest of Supergirl’s cast also interact well to the visiting speedster (especially Jimmy Olsen’s jealousy of Barry) but the one thing I lament is that we never get to see J’onn and Alex interact with Barry. The overprotective sister and Best Alien Dad could have made for some great comedic moments and throwing the Martian Manhunter into this team-up could only have elevated it. Ah well, there’s always next year!

Overall, Worlds Finest gets a massive recommended stamp if you’re watching The Flash. While it’s short (seriously, why wasn’t this two and a half hours long?), it’s still an immensely enjoyable ride and, hopefully, might encourage more crossover in the audience too.

As an addendum to the meat of the episode, Kara and James finally kiss – only for Olsen to go walkabouts as the mysterious Myriad technology (a sub-plot for the past few episodes) is activated and the citizens of National City become drone-like, marching in formation. What could this mean? Well, I guess you’ll have to tune into Supergirl to find out but I’ll see you guys tomorrow for both S.H.I.E.L.D. Exposed and the proper Flast Facts for this week!

I hate to say this much anticipated crossover was simply alright but it really was. Okay, half of it was simply alright and the other half was entertaining as all hell and in a superhero show, guess which part it is?

The non-hero parts! Seeing the casts interact with one another is the best part of this crossover by far. Just jokes and drama and more jokes, it’s just a delight to watch.

One of my personal highlights is Cisco inadvertently outing Barry to Kendra, meaning the only person who really doesn’t know Barry’s identity is Patty. Her and Wells get little to no play in this crossover when one shoots the other. Also kind of a waste to give Jay his speed back on to get rid of it off-screen! Boo-urns, show.

Okay, so what does this two-parter do in terms of lore? Well, hot on the heels of the introduction of magic proper into Arrow with John Constantine, here come’s the reincarnated Hawks and the immortal Vandal Savage. They’re really accelerating into the rest of the DC universe now and there’s only one way we can go next. IT’S SPACE TIME!

Vandal Savage’s appearance is here to set-up for the Legends of Tomorrow series coming next year (nice nod with the titles of the episodes too) as well as the Hawks’ and Barry/Ollie’s knowledge of Savage. It makes sense the League of Assassins are aware of him. Hell, the Lazarus Pit is probably made of his piss or something.

The Hawks are pretty solid, Kendra establishing herself early doors in Flash and Carter being introduced as a self-assured douche-nozzle. Coming in and stealing Cisco’s girl… What a jerk-ass!

In a surprise move (which is totally ruined by the recap) we get the introduction of Oliver’s son, William. Not much to say about that other than his name should have been Connor. It’s not like this will be an issue for Flash going forward.

The actual team-up itself is kind of one-note and stilted. It’s not the best fight either series has showcased and it left me wanting more, unfortunately.

Overall, it’s a bland team-up fight but the character interactions are just as strong as they were last season so it’s still entertaining. Speaking of entertainment, next week is a Christmas cavalcade of crime as we see the return of two great villains and some schmuck in Running to Stand Still.