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!