Welcome back to recap-palooza! Today we’ll be covering the third and fourth hours of Crisis on Earth-X, the hecka big crossover of the CW DC TV shows. Tonight’s shows were technically The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, but honestly except for the appearance of the Legends, you can hardly tell which is which.
Previously on the Legends of SuperFlarrow crossover, there were Nazis. A fuckton of them. It was the worst. And before we get started here, I want to warn you: there are more Nazis. At a few points, it even starts to feel like emotional manipulation, like unnecessary depictions of the horrors Nazis have bestowed. Or maybe they were necessary, to remind young people watching this show who maybe weren’t paying attention in history class that just because the Neo-Nazis carry tiki torches doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be considered a real threat and stopped at every turn. Because they made it VERY clear who the enemy was. I personally think they could have accomplished all the best parts of these crossovers without literal Nazis, but either way, that ship has sailed so we might as well enjoy them all getting punched to death, yeah?
We open where we left off after the Arrow hour, with Sara, Alex, Oliver, Barry, Mick, Jax, and Stein in a concentration camp. They notice some people have stars or pink triangles on their striped pajamas, and Jax asks a nearby gentleman what he did to earn his pink triangle. The man looks at them and says, “I loved the wrong person.” Alex and Sara exchange looks; they know damn well what the pink triangle stands for.
Gender traitors, the lot of us.
Barry can’t run and Firestorm can’t fuse because the collars they’re wearing are power dampening. Alex doesn’t know why she and Sara have them on if that’s the case, but it doesn’t matter. Alex is getting desperate; she can’t save her sister from here. But Sara promises her that they will save Kara.
Sara’s so attractive she makes power dampening collars look good.
Not able to save Kara is Cisco, Wells, Caitlin and the rest of Team Arrow, because they’re all trapped in the Star Labs cells. Elsewhere in Star Labs, Thawne watches Kara cook under the red sunlamp, saying she’s almost ready to be cut clean open. Kara asks Kara-X why so many people had to die if all she wanted this whole time was Kara’s heart but Overgirl cares not for the lives of others. In fact, she thinks people should be honored to die for her. Truly the opposite of the Kara Danvers we know and love.
Things seem bleak, but worry not, because Iris and Felicity, the ones who were told to hide because everyone thought they would be useless in this fight, are in the air ducts and ready to free their friends and save the damn day.
Would watch a spinoff of these two being PIs or something. I’d name it Smoak in the West.
Back at the camp, there’s a round-up, and the leader of the camp comes in wearing the face of Sara’s father, Quentin Lance. Quentin looks at this woman standing in front of him, blonde hair, blue eyes, and asks why she’s aligned with the impure. And instead of saying, “I didn’t, your fuckwads threw me in here,” or anything else, she looks him square in the eye and says, “Because I like men and I like women.”
She’s not going to apologize for her heart, okay?
Lance says he killed his own daughter for that very same reason, making me feel like it was long enough ago that his own Sara didn’t grow quite old enough to look exactly like our Sara, but whichever way you shake it, it’s fucked up and heartbreaking to watch Sara listen to a man with her father’s face say those things to her.
Lance-X leads our heroes (including our new friend) out of the camp and they try to fight their way out but Alex and Sara figure out why they have collars on too: They’re shock collars. So there’s nothing they can do but follow orders. They line up and a firing squad faces them. Alex whispers a quiet apology to her sister – for not being about to save her. Her dying thought is about protecting her sister. Sara watches her father give the orders to kill them. Ready, aim…
Sara Lance has the best character development from S1 of Arrow to now DON’T @ ME
But before he can say “fire” a cold gun shuts him right up and good old Leonard Snart shows up. Captain Cold knocks out the Nazis, gets them all into a bunker, then releases our new friend’s collar. Now able to use his powers, he flies up into the sky and light-beams the heck out of the Nazis. Once they’re out of commission, the boys lead our friends back to their base.
Meanwhile on Earth-1, Kara-X is passing the time waiting for her and Kara’s skin to soften by mocking Kara for being good and weak, saying that “they” want someone to bow to and worship and who better than she. She’s annoyed that Kara hasn’t taken over her Earth, being the most powerful one on it, saying the powerful should be eliminating the weak, and all that Nazi bullshit.
Even Rachel Duncan wasn’t THIS bad to people with her own face.
And then to round it out, Kara-X tries to single-shame Kara, accusing her of not using the heart she’s about to take. As if love can only be defined one way. As if Kara doesn’t use her heart to its fullest extent every single day, with her sister, with her friends, with complete strangers. Kara’s not too shaken though, and retorts that Kara-X doesn’t even have a heart.
Meanwhile, Felicity and Iris are taking matters into their own hands, taking down Nazis, working together, refusing to be underused anymore!
CHEERS TO FINALLY PASSING THE BECHDEL TEST
They try to free their friends from the holding cells but they’re running into some issues, so Felicity sends an SOS to the leftover Legends and they hope for the best.
Snart and The Ray (not to be confused with Ray The Atom) take the team to their version of Star City and Ray explains that he’s actually from Earth-1, too. He also shows them the schematics for the transportation station they can use to get home. The problem is, it’s dripping with Nazis and also Winn-X wants to blow it up.
Yeah, you read that right. Winn-X.
I made this same face, tbh
Winn-X is very rude, and doesn’t care that these strangers want to go home, he wants to destroy the portal while the three strongest villains of this Earth are on the other side of it. Alex tries to reason with him, Sara explains that they just need time, but the X-Team says it’s just too risky. But Alex says it’s worth the risk. Kara is worth the risk.
I won’t lie, I love that Sara is in 80% of Alex’s shots.
Alex goes off to talk to Winn alone, to explain that on her Earth, he’d die for her sister, that all she’s asking is some time to get home, it doesn’t have to affect the rest of their plan. He yells at her and refuses, saying there’s a doomsday weapon coming their way and he won’t budge, and it’s so weird to see a Winn that’s not so intimidated by Alex he folds at the sight of her pinky finger.
She will never tell Winn that she had to BEG to his counterpart. He’d never let her live it down.
Desperate, Alex starts rooting around for a weapon. Sara sees her and asks her what she’s doing, and Alex says she’ll face a thousand Nazis alone if she has to, she’s going to save her sister.
Amused Sara is amused.
Sara is impressed but says Alex can’t fight Nazis, not alone, and not while she’s so frantically afraid for her sister’s life. And frantic she is; Alex blames herself, says she shouldn’t have gotten so…distracted. Alex tries to express how much she cannot lose her baby girl, but Sara gets it.
And I’ll admit, since we have Earth-2 Laurel prancing around so I kind of forgot the real Laurel died. But when Sara tells Alex that she understands more than Alex might know, my heart sunk right down to the floor. Sara understands.
Alex’s “shit I got lost in my own head again” face is too precious.
Losing Laurel sent Sara down a dark path, and the pain of it is still with her. Alex apolgizes for not knowing, but Sara points out that they don’t really know much about each other. Besides the fact that they’re both good at punching Nazis, and what they look like naked. Sara takes a moment to call Alex beautiful, because she’s Sara Fucking Lance and she’s classy like that.
If I had half the game of Sara Lance, I wouldn’t be so single.
But she says there’s something else Alex should know about her: She’s the captain of her team, and she protects her team no matter what. And guess what? Alex is on her team. So Sara promises Alex that Kara won’t meet the same fate as Laurel.
And a Canary always keeps her promises.
Alex isn’t really pacified, and says she just wants to get back to Maggie. Sara remembers the first thing Alex said to her and gives her a little advice: She had a Maggie, too. (Her name is Nyssa. No one ever says her name on the show anymore, but it’s Nyssa.) She thinks about going back to Nyssa all the time, but they also were just on different paths. Sara tells Alex to trust her instincts.
Trust my own instincts? That sounds fake but okay.
I can’t express to you how much I loved this scene. This is a DC superhero prime time show amidst a two-day, four-show epic crossover event with 20+ characters and a lot to cover. And they took the time to craft this beautiful scene between it’s lesbian DEO agent and bisexual ex-assassin. Alex and Sara’s interactions after their one night stand could have been all fighting or awkward conversations with no in between. But being queer isn’t the only thing they have in common. They both have a fierce loyalty to their sisters. They both have a fierce drive to fight for what is right and protect their own. They both have loved and lost smart, strong, wonderful women because of circumstances largely out of their own control. Their lives are very different, they themselves are very different, but they have some of the same scars, and they each have a little piece of their hearts that match. Not match in the way puzzle pieces fit together or even the way best friend necklaces nestle perfectly. It’s more like…seeing someone on the subway reading the same book as you. Or finding out someone else always watched Buffy from the time they were eleven and it helped shaped who they are. It doesn’t mean you’re automatically a good romantic fit, it doesn’t mean you have to be part of each other’s lives forever, but it means you have something in common that goes deeper than just having the same number of siblings.
And side note, I love how through all of this, through this emotional exchange, even through the flirting, there’s no residual romantic feelings. Would Sara kick Alex out of bed if she wanted to go for it three more times? Probably not. But neither of them are hung up on the other, nothing is imbalanced about where they stand with each other; all of Alex’s spiral feelings are directed inward. Even as she calls Sara a distraction, she blames herself for BEING distracted, she doesn’t blame Sara for distracting her. I could write a thesis on why Alex Danvers and Sara Lance are the perfect queer woman friendship duo, but we have a lot more Nazis to punch.
Also, somehow, this scene of two queer women processing their feelings all over the place isn’t even the gayest thing that happens in this second half of the crossover. Because back at the rebel camp, Ray and Snart are sort of arguing about whether or not to defy the General to get through the portal, and then, THEY KISS. ON THE MOUTH. I love this version of Snart and happily welcome him as one of us.
So they convince Winn-X to give them an hour. They plot and they plan and they’re ready to kick some Nazi butt.
Back at Star Labs, the Karas are thoroughly weakened and Thawne is about to cut into our Kara, but then Felicity cuts the power. Felicity and Iris run to Kara and free her while Kara-X is weak and Thawne is looking for them, and they help her to the elevator so they can get her some yellow sun.
Smoaking in the West: The Case of the Lost Sun
Oh, also in that scene, Iris goes, “Come with me if you want to live,” because she’s been hanging out with Cisco too much, and it made me hope with all my heart that they let her be part of the action more often when everyone returns to their own time and place next week.
Unfortunately, our new badass duo doesn’t make it all the way outside with Kara before running into Metallo and getting overtaken.
While planning to get to the portal, Jax pointed out that they — a black man, a Jewish man, two queer women and two queer men and Barry Allen — don’t exactly blend in, but you know who does? Oliver Queen. So Snart drives him to the base and he poses as Oliver-X to get Lance-X to maybe open the portal for them. While he’s faking it, they let a Nazi version of the Waverider through, and also Lance-X has a surprise for him!
It’s Felicity-X. She is alone, and scared, and in her striped pajamas with her Star of David patch. Convicted of feeding starving children, sentenced to be shot in the head by Oliver-X.
Felicity is a hero on every planet, even though she never has superpowers.
And maybe Oliver knows it’s a test, but definitely Oliver doesn’t care, because he turns the gun on Lance-X immediately. The gun wasn’t loaded, because Lance-X didn’t trust him, but he fights his way out anyway, giving Felicity-X a machine gun and a pat on the back on her way out.
Barry comes to join Oliver in the fight and the rest of the team is on their way, but Winn-X decided to go back on his word and has already released the secret weapon. The weapon being the Red Tornado.
At Star Labs, Thawne threatens Felicity and tries to make her turn the power back on. She stands strong, even in the face of Thawne saying that in the future, everyone remembers the Green Arrow, the Black Canary…but nobody has ever heard of Felicity Smoak.
Behind every superhero is a Felicity Smoak.
Which I don’t believe for a second…they probably just call her Overwatch. But before Thawne can kill her for being non-compliant, Kara steps forward, telling Felicity to give over the codes. She doesn’t want anyone to die for her.
Meanwhile at the portal, the team has another big fight, and honestly it was a little weird to see Sara with a machine gun and not relying on her assassin skills, but it’s not weird to see her and Alex team up to take down more Nazis. I will never get sick of it. I could rewatch this crossover every day until I die and I will relish in it every time.
Firestorm decides to split up to hotwire a control pad and turn on the portal the most efficiently, so they do just that, but while Stein is on the way to the console, he’s shot.
As we transition into the fourth and final hour of this crossover, Stein is down, The Flash and The Ray are having a hard time stopping the Red Tornado, and things are looking bleak.
And red. Everything on this damn planet is red.
But Stein is going down with this ship, and he army crawls to the console to finish his task. He gets hit again, but he pulls the lever before collapsing, so the breach is open and the Nazis leftover on the platform are obliterated.
The tides are turning, and Barry and Ray take down the Red Tornado with teamwork, and Sara has Stein and Jax become Firestorm so they can get Stein to the Waverider so Gideon can heal him. And finally, finally, our friends get off this Rao-forsaken world and head back to Earth-1.
Speaking of turning tides, the shift is happening at Star Labs, too, because the rest of the Legends have arrived. Ray uses his Atom suit to save Kara from getting her heart carved out of her like she was in an episode of OUAT. The ladies are here too, don’t worry.
Rawr.
Ray and Felicity are getting Kara to safety when Oliver-X comes in and knocks Ray out. But Felicity Smoak has had enough. She steps in front of Kara, head high, locks eyes with her enemy and says that her grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust so that her life could get ruined by Nazis. So if he wants to murder her friend, he’ll have to go through her. And even if he does go through her, she wants him to know that the resistance will never quit, they will never stop fighting.
Have I mentioned I love Felicity Smoak?
I got chills, I won’t lie. Felicity Smoak is the best part of Arrow and watching her give it to this Nazi asshole who happens to look like the love of her life, no apologies, no trying to reason with him, just a hard no…it was wonderful.
ALSO I MEAN SHE STEPPED UP TO PROTECT SUPERGIRL. Gah, she’s the best.
Lucky for us, Oliver-X doesn’t have a chance to go through Felicity to get to Kara, because Oliver shows up and he has Kara-X and her still-vulnerable neck in his grip.
So Thawne flashes them both away, and the rest of the team takes Metallo down, no problem
Costume change on point.
Firestorm splits in the Waverider, but now they’re both kind of wounded, Jax acting as a kind of human life support for Stein.
Everyone is reunited finally, including Alex and Kara, much to Alex’s extreme relief.
The Danvers girls being reunited filled my lungs with air I didn’t realize they were missing.
Alex apologizes for suggesting a wedding on another Earth would solve their problems, and Kara gives a tired giggle and says at least fighting Nazis put things in perspective. Alex applauds her ability to find the silver lining in this chaos.
Curtis is recruited by Amaya and Zari to help them figure out how to stop the Nazi Waverider and I don’t really have anything else to say about this scene besides LOOK AT THEM.
Unbelievable sights, indescribable feeling.
These two beauts work with Curtis and The Ray to find it, and when they do, they also realize that Overgirl isn’t just dying with all this excess radiation, but she’s going to become a supernova. Because science.
In the med by of the good Waverider, Stein tells Jax that he knows he’s dying, and that he has to use Cisco’s formula to split them and break the Firestorm bond or else they’ll both die. Jax doesn’t want to lose another father figure, but Stein wants to do this, for Jax. Stein says, “Thanks for the adventure of a lifetime,” and even though they had been pretty heavy handed with the “Stein is going to die” imagery since hour one of this crossover (I knew he was doomed the second he said he wanted to teach his grandson chess), I WEPT. Cried a contact right out. I think this whole crossover has me overemotional. But losing a member of the Legends family, and losing a Jewish man to the Nazis, and losing Victor Garber on this show…it was a lot.
And just when I thought I was done crying, Sara comes in and kisses the top of Stein’s head to say goodbye.
AFTER JUST HAVING TO WATCH HER REAL FATHER’S FACE TRY TO KILL HER, A FATHER-FIGURE DIES BUT WHY
Oliver asks Sara how she’s doing and she says she’ll cry at the funeral, and he asks her again, and she answers his real question: She’s not feeling bloodthirsty. She just wants to win. So her and Oliver gather everyone together and have a quick Skype chat with Oliver-X.
We can be heroes, forever and ever.
Oliver-X says they can end this right now if they just hand over Supergirl. Kara probably would do it if anyone asked her, but Oliver doesn’t even pose it as a question.
They are a group that consists of a bisexual woman, a lesbian woman, a Kryptonian immigrant, four women of color, three men of color, one of whom is also gay, two queer men, a woman who arguably has multiple personality disorder but is handling it like a boss, and a Jewish woman who are not backing down. They will fight as long and as hard as it takes. They have been through enough, they’re not going to roll over and let some Nazi scum take over their world. They just wont.
And the white dudes among them stand with them.
Sara steps in front of the team and says they’re going to kick some Nazi ass, for the professor.
O Captain, my Captain
The Nazis march, but our heroes march right back. It’s a powerful shot, and it made my heart race a little to see all my superhero friends all working together.
What I would have given to be on set on this day.
Fighting ensues and it’s one last beautiful dance. Kara challenges her evil twin and Overgirl and Supergirl have one final battle.
I’ll miss your lipstick when you’re gone, but that’s it.
Felicity needs someone to get on the Nazi Waverider to take down its shields, so Frost skates Amaya and Zari in like a bunch of Care Bears riding a rainbow.
Weee!
The ladies work together and take down the shields and Cisco gets them out just before the Nazi Waverider goes down.
Overgirl is starting to implode and Kara panics a little, but Wells tells her to throw her up, up, and away, so Kara does just that. Kara-X explodes, sending Supergirl falling back to Earth.
‘Cause I’m freeee, freee fallin’
Oliver-X is sad about his wife dying but nobody cares because he’s a Nazi. Oliver kills him dead and I know he vowed never to kill anyone ever again, but I hope he sleeps like a baby tonight.
Nate catches Supergirl with the help of some friends so that she doesn’t go splat and dares call himself the Man of Steel but that is neither here nor there.
And so. The battle’s done, and we kinda won. Little by little, the mega-team breaks up and starts to go back to their own worlds. Snart decides he’s going to stay for a little while and kisses his Ray goodbye.
The rest of the team, before saying their own goodbyes, go to Stein’s funeral. Jax is sad he couldn’t bring him home to his family, but Stein’s wife and daughter say that he was his family, too. It’s all very sad. Especially when Sara thanks him for believing in her.
Between this and the discarded glasses, it was Teacher’s Pet all over again
It’s all very sad so let’s move on quickly before I cry out my contact again.
Cut to a more fun scene, where Alex and Sara joke about how funny it is that going their separate ways means going to another Earth and another time, respectively.
It’s probably not safe for two people this hot to be on one Earth anyway.
Alex thanks Sara for putting things in perspective for her; Sara was right, she should trust her own instincts. Alex smiles at Sara and says there has to be someone else out there for her. For Sara, too. Alex says, “for more than just a night” in a way that doesn’t seem to shame Sara for the one night stand thing, but to help Sara see that she’d be a pretty good girlfriend. Sara smiles because she was kinda thinking the same thing.
May we meet again.
And I know a very special time agent that would be just the right girl for the job. Just saying.
Sara says, “Catch you on the other side,” and Alex smiles as she walks away. (Mick asks Sara if she “hit that” and Sara slaps him upside the head, in the most Legends-esque interaction to happen on this crossover. I loved it.)
And thus ends the Sara/Alex arc. I loved the whole thing, from beginning to end, and I think each was exactly what the other needed right now. For Alex, it was a stepping stone to moving on. It was proof that other people out there are gonna wanna get with that. It was an adult conversation with another adult queer woman without too many feelings tangled up in it. It was more understanding than she even knew she needed.
Bonus: Alex Danvers now has something in common with Nurse Ali Liebert, the Queen of France, Guinevere, all of the Salem witches, and Nyssa al Ghul.
This interaction is equally as important for Sara as it is Alex. Sara is used to rocking a girl’s world then immediately disappearing into another time period. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen her connect with a fling on an emotional level after having connect with them physically. Or really talk about her feelings with anyone, to be honest. But she was good at being there for Alex, and she probably liked feeling seen. So hopefully now she’ll seek that out and more, someone who understands her and who she can process feelings with on the regular.
Like all of us, Sara Lance is better for having known Alex Danvers.
After Sara’s gone, Alex and Kara say goodbye to Oliver, Felicity, Barry and Iris. Everyone hugs except Kara and Oliver because they’re as weirded out about their Earth-X counterparts being together as the rest of us. And with warm smiles and a wave, the Danvers girls say goodbye to Earth-1.
“We’ve really got to go, it’s not like I can tell Lena I missed another brunch date because of Nazis.”
Iris and Barry decide that they want to just get married right here and now, and not risk any more interruptions, so Barry scoops up Diggle from Star City and he starts to marry them. Iris is so happy and she even steals Lena Luthor’s line, telling Barry that The Flash is Central City’s hero, but Barry Allen is hers.
Smoak in the West: The Case of the Hijacked Wedding
Yes, it’s true, Iris West’s LITERAL WEDDING VOWS mirrored a thing Lena Luthor said out loud to Kara Danvers. Do with that what you will.
Felicity decides to jump in on this and makes it a double-wedding, so her and Oliver are married at the same time.
And there is blissfully no cliffhanger, because I think we’ve been through enough. So thus ends the crossover. I hope you had fun watching our faves work together, grow together, and punch Nazis together. I know I did.
Valerie, I have no idea how you managed to get TWO of these out in two days, but well done!
I have so many feelings:
1. The concentration camp/firing squad scene hit me HARD. So hard, I was actually shaking. Between explaining what the pink triangle was (I know so many people who had no clue that was an actual thing) to Sara having to face her NaziDad and still having the ovaries to say she was bi, to Alex only thinking about her sister in the end, I was an emotional wreck. I don’t think we really needed the imagery of them standing in front of a pit that was clearly going to be their grave. I had to actually pause the show to be able to breathe again.
2. The conversations between Alex and Sara were so well done. It totally could have just been played as awkward and slapstick, but they gave their conversations some heart. And yes, can we PLEASE just say Nyssa’s name more than one a fucking season? PLEASE?
3. Who did Caity Lotz bribe to get all the great lighting in this episode? Because damn- the woman looks GOOD no matter the shot.
4. I legit cheered at all the heroes doing the HERO WALK as they went to kick Nazi ass. And everyone got their moment to shine.
Now, off to rewatch all four episodes AGAIN.
I loved the Alex/Sara stuff and overall how gay this whole thing turned out to be with more gays added as we went along what a delight.
BUT.
The nazi stuff was like… a lot more than it needed to be while also being not enough. The concentration camp thing did not justify it’s existence as a narrative ploy, I didn’t think. I was not into it, it felt gross and kind of cheaply manipulative.
AND WHY WERE KARA AND OLIVER NAZIS! Will no one explain? And why was Oliver the leader of the nazis? No one else’s counterpart was evil on Earth X apparently, just those two! That requires some exposition! WHY!
But you’re right, Valerie Anne, that lipstick was really great so maybe Kara became a nazi for fashion? And you’re also right that they didn’t need to be nazis for any of this story to work because no point beyond ‘nazis are bad’ was ever really articulated. But they’re getting better at these crossovers, next year maybe they will adopt what I think is a winning formula of 80% inter-show gay activity and 20% Kara hair flips and power landings.
The characters of Oliver and Kara basically grew up in a world where being a Nazi was the norm, so they adapted as such. The writers basically put two of superman’s best comic book arc and used those for supergirl in this crossover(them being the red son and All Star Superman). So thats why Kara was Overgirl. Oliver was Dark Arrow cause they don’t have access to Batman and Earth X was kind of sort supposed to be Earth 3 from the comics
Except the choice to not have any other characters go nazi kind of undermined that premise, I think. It seemed like they wanted to tell a story in which Kara and Oliver had made an active choice to become nazis (and really high-level ones, too). I could totally see why nazis would want Kara on their side and gave her a hard sell (and I could see the resistance doing the same) but I would’ve liked more textual exploration of why these specific characters made this choice no one else made. Kara does have a superiority complex but she also has a lot of empathy and the resistance seemed active and visible on Earth X and like… concentration camps out in the middle of the city seems like it would be troublesome to Kara (and everyone!)? IDK why she wouldn’t go ‘I’m better than this nazi garbage’ instead of ‘I’m better than everyone else and therefore I’m embracing being a nazi’. I wish they’d explored it more in the text because then the context of specifically nazis would’ve made more sense. As it stands it was just a stand-in for ‘irredeemably evil’ which was less interesting.
We don’t know what Krypton-X was like, either (even “our” Kara’s Krypton wasn’t all sweetness and light).
What we do all-but-know is that either Kara-X was sent to Earth-X on her own, not to look after baby Kal-X; or his pod never made it to Earth-X; or he didn’t survive long enough to meet her. Any of which would affect Kara-X’s personality and upbringing.
Also, almost(?) every double we saw who was “Nazi-eligible” was a Nazi.
Exactly. I wish we’d got more backstory! I wanted more context for the choices.
Completely agree. The Nazi stuff seemed heavy-handed and emotionally manipulative without any context behind the “why” of Kara and Oliver. Just because, I guess. I’d hoped that the Supergirl/Overgirl conversation would give us something, but it didn’t.
Thus there wasn’t a good enough reason to show actual concentration camps and future mass graves.
Valerie, I feel so lucky to have your amazing recaps to read! There’s so much I missed not being a regular viewer of any show but Supergirl, e.g. I had no idea that man who spoke with such hateful disdain to Sara was “her” father in Earth-X – how much more horrifying and soulcrushing that interaction I now understand that interaction to be.
I also love everything you said about the way that the Sara/Alex relationship was depicted – that amidst so much action and plot to fit in, they still managed to give us a deeply emotional and real conversation between them that spoke to their similarities without implying that they’re anywhere close to soulmates. They’d be great friends if only they lived on the same Earth.
Anyway, there’s lots more to say, but I definitely need to rewatch this, so for now, I’m just going to thank you again for all your humor and insights :).
I’m actually not a huge fan of great big fight+chase extravaganzas, BUT that part 4 ep was pretty damned engaging — held my attention every minute.
And that first Snart+Ray kiss was sweeter than honey. (I’ve had a soft spot Russell Tovey ever since Being Human. Knowing that he and Wentworth Miller are both gay IRL is sweet, too.) Both my Kid and I audibly SQUEE-ed.
I loved the Alex/Sara stuff that they gave us even though deep down in my heart I know it was absolute fan service.
I’ve been really hesitant to have anything to do with Legends again since the writers discussing Sara’s romantic arc during the press junket at the beginning of the season. I’ve kind of always had a bit of a problem with how they portray Sara’s bisexuality to be honest. She makes out or has sex with a different woman in every town/period of time but I feel like ultimately when they say things like “we are getting back to exploring Sara’s bisexuality this season and “it’s finally time for Sara to have a relationship with someone” they mean to put her with a male love interest. Likely Cold. Not that isn’t true of real life. But as old as I am, I’ve watched a lot of television over the years and 9 times out 10 writers like to have their bisexual characters settle down with men. Women are for fun, men are for the real relationships. I still don’t understand why they won’t offer Katrina Law a contract role on any of these shows season after season.
I would give the show and writers the benefit of the doubt if this weren’t the CW network. The home of shitty executive producers who have a history of loving to write rapey, gaslighting white male protagonists and promiscuous queer women who end up dead or with the aforementioned rapey gaslight male protagonist. Anyway, that’s my two cents for the day.
I was also worried when I heard that at first but I think what they meant by “reasserting Sara’s bisexuality” is that, for the fans of Legends who never watched Arrow, many think Sara’s gay because they never saw her with a man. So they wanted to remind everyone that she also like men (which is done in the first episode of this season and again here in the crossover.
However, Phil Klemmer, one of the showrunners, said he’s very protective of Sara and it’s hard to find someone who could be a match for her (both as a partner and as someone who could keep up with her). The way he speaks about it, it fits with the character of Ava Sharpe and how they’ve been developping her.
There are rumours Sara’s going to hook up with Constantine in a couple of episodes but I’d be really surprised if her “love interest” isn’t Agent Sharpe – in a slow burn throughout the second half of the season. And as for Citizen Cold, he’s only staying in Legends for the next episode and I don’t think they’d develop a relationship between the two when he’s clearly still with The Ray.
I’m still ready for disappointment but I remain hopeful. Just as I still hope that when Legends draws to a close, they’ll bring Sara back with Nyssa. It was nice to hear she still loves her after everything.
I’ve started watching Legends because of Sara (and I’ve also watched two seasons of Arrow because of her) and, although I’m not bi, I would like to see her dating men and women because that’s the premisse of being bissexual, and the public must know that her sexuality won’t change regardless of with who she’s with.
I’m all for her hooking up with Constantine and having a relationship with Ava just because of what Turkish said in previous comment: showrunners have a serious tendency of settling bissexual women in relatioships with men and their involvement with women is just for one-time things!
I’m really looking forward to see what they’ll come up for Sara and I hope it’ll be something good.
I keep seeing all of these posts saying the Nazi theme was too over the top and unnecessary but the metahumans, superheroes, and aliens aside, what the show portrayed is exactly what happened under Hitler’s reign. Yeah, this is supposed to be a fun entertaining show but the comics (and subsequently these shows) from their inception have always been about teaching us a lesson about humanity and how our sins shape us as much as our good deeds so in that respect it might have made people uncomfortable but it was supposed to. Soft or alternate depictions of what used to be (and what could be if a wrong is never righted) gives people more reason to believe it wasn’t that bad or it never existed at all or even worse, people insert themselves as the persecuted. These types of things are already happening in real life with grade school history books being diluted calling slaves “immigrants” or “workers”, the sharp rises in homicides of LGBTQ persons in places like Chechnya (where it is believed there are actual “holding” camps for LGBTQ persons) or Brazil over the last few years, or the white nationalists/far right/neo-nazi movements that are cropping up and attempting (and sometimes succeeding) in infiltrating governments all around the world. If it made you uncomfortable, good, it should and you should stand in it and help the world do better so these types of things don’t resurface.
I feel like that would have been more impactful if they’d showed more modern versions, then, because what they showed was a sort of mawkish version of WWII Nazis, which undermines the point that these are horrors that take place still today, in my opinion.
This show specifically talked about and portrayed what possibly (and likely) would have happened if Hitler and his armies won WWII. The modern Nazi party and its offshoots, though still disgusting and dangers, have been weakened (to a measurable degree) due to post-WWII regulations/sanctions/mindsets, civil and gay rights movements and progressivism. What they did in these crossovers is prophetic in that it shows us what could happen should we allow dictators and propaganda (see Trump and his ilk) to overthrow democracy and accumulate so much power that their regime lives long after the dictators have died.
There needs to be a show about Sara and Alex traveling through different worlds and periods of time. They could solve crimes and kick ass. They would be modern day Xena’s and Gabrielle’s. Only, way better. I would watch the shit out of that.
I just want to point something out.
all she is missing is the signature kara glasses and we have a match
GUYS
I JUST REALIZED
In Part One, when Alex and Sarah are fighting Tommy-X, he cracks a joke about how there’s going to be “one wedding, two funerals.”
But in the end, we get TWO weddings and ONE funeral.
I’M A WHOLE MESS
Thanks, @punkystarshine, for this…as someone who only watched Supergirl before this, there were definitely beats that I missed so I’m grateful to have you to connect all the dots. Now I think I need to go watch all four hours again.
What a fun set of episodes and even better recaps! Some remaining stray observations:
1)An earth that’s not only run by Nazis, but also where Winn is in charge of Alex? It’s officially The Worst.
2)It was a really sweet touch to see the Leo Snart/The Ray relationship. I think we’re starting to be in the era of TV where out queer actors can play queer characters and have room to create their own shows, like Take My Wife or One Mississippi, or just be a part of the fabric of your average Sci Fi crossover extravaganza.
Plus, didn’t Winn end up undermining his own cause? By trying to blow it up early, the heroes prevented Red Tornado from blowing up the base at all, right?
True! He wasn’t even GOOD at being in charge of Alex.
Thanks Valerie for another brilliant recap. You may not be an assassin, but you got mad skills with that keyboard.
Regarding why some doubles were Nazi’s and some weren’t:
I may have missed someone; but by my count, every doppelganger we saw that *could* plausibly have been a Nazi (white, non-Jewish, non-queer) was in fact a Nazi, except for Winn-X (whom I’m assuming is non-Jewish; however, “Schott” *can* be a Jewish surname, and actor Jeremy Jordan’s mother was Jewish).
We also heard about the late Mick-X, who probably wasn’t a Nazi (though those policemen he died saving would have been part of a Nazi state). But he had his own, different severe personality shift. Plus, we don’t know Mick-X wasn’t queer (pretty sure Mick-1 isn’t; but we also don’t know if Snart-X’s queerness carried over from Snart-1, or was unique to Snart-X).
As for all the Nazi-eligible supporting characters (and Barry) that we didn’t see doubles of: Odds are, most of them are Nazis, or at best loyal ordinary citizens of the Reich. Though the upcoming Ray animated series on the CW Seed might reveal differently.
Yeah, I agree with you. And in the promo for the Animated series, we see Barry’s doppleganger and he’s a Nazi, fighting alongside Overgirl and Dark Arrow (and Grant Gustin is credited as Dark Flash so definitely not Thawn.
I have no idea who are the other “super heroes” we see though but it would be nice if they’re characters we know as bad guys on Earth-1
I’m curious how they’re going to handle the Ray/Freedom Fighters series. The promo obviously took place before (or in a different continuity than) the crossover. If the series is all before the crossover, then we already know kinda how it ends. If it’s after the crossover, then it won’t have some of the most interesting villains. And if it’s in a separate continuity, that’s disappointing, and may confuse viewers.
The other heroes from the Freedom fighters promo are all versions of old-time DC heroes, mostly WW-II era who have also been part of the Freedom Fighters in the comics.
I read a bit about them and apparently they’re all from a different Earth (as in not E-X). If they also do that in the series, they need to explain why all these heroes ended up on Earth-X.
And I wonder too how when they’re going to set the timeline. After the crossover ending, I thought it was going to be the Aftermath and how they defeat the Nazi (and, sure Overgirl and Fhurer Arrow are no more but they could have faced other metas). But, yeah you’re right, if it’s before it’s going to be a bit weird.
On the Arrowverse wiki, they have Curtis and Mari’s Vixen as guest stars, who don’t fit in a pre-Crisis time…
Valerie I love your recaps and really respect as a writer but “striped pajamas”, seriously?
It was a reference to the Boy in the Striped Pajamas is all.
Ok, sounds better when you put it like that. I didn’t catch it was a reference to the movie. But that’s why I think using Nazism in it’s original form in the crossover wasn’t a good idea in the first place. It’s hard to navigate in painful history and not get offensive to anyone. And I have to admit I do fall into a bit of a national paranoia when it comes to a World War II.
I was thinking they needed to show to make people uncomfortable. And showing current day wouldn’t help because it’d be considered propaganda. After all, many people still refuse to see where jingoism and nationalism distorted by defeat, trauma and superiority complex leads.
However, everyone (except the Neo Nazis) know Nazis were bad. However, they may have forgotten in what manner and who are the folks who were worst affected.
I think the holocaust is a vague historical fact for many folks and many don’t know how Roma, gay folks, communists, twins were all affected.
A visceral and uncomfortable wake up clap was needed in my opinion.
However, I do hope the next crossover makes better use of Kara and Alex. And don’t use an evil version of these folks.
And thank you! :)
I don’t think they used the Nazi stuff in a way that justified its inclusion in this crossover. It was offensive, wasn’t fully fleshed out, and failed to show why Nazi dogma and ideology is so terrifying. It just turned Nazis into bad guy caricatures, which undercuts their historical reign of terror and significance. But, most grotesquely, they used the Nazis to kill a Jewish character and a black character. The Alex and Sarah stuff, while great and groundbreaking, doesn’t justify that these shows used Nazis to permanently kill a Jewish character off from the show. It’s gross, and has made me seriously consider no longer watching any of the DC Universe shows I’ve been watching for years.
I’m frankly disappointed that the anti-Semitism of this crossover wasn’t addressed more fully in this recap simply because we’re excited about the queer storylines, and that there was essentially no discussion of how half-baked the CW’s idea to use Nazis as a plot device was.
Thank you! In none of the recaps I stumbled into they addressed this. As a European Jew I found this very triggering. I mean using the SS logo for ‘Overgirl’ the concentration camps, it was disgusting.
Using Nazis was uncalled for. You can tell the Nazis didn’t have much effect on Americans or else you wouldn’t use their imagery so lightly in a freaking superhero show. My grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust so their story could be used as a plot point. It’s disappointing
Wouldn’t it be fun if they make a next crossover between Legends and Supergirl (like they did with The Flash)?
Central City could be in danger of some kind and only the Legends could help Supergirl.
I would love to see Alex and Sara just fighting together and being pals again! Not to mention a chance to see Lena interacting with the Legends.
I have on-and-off watched Legends, Flash and Arrow and am a big fan of Supergirl. This cross over was everything I was hoping it would be. All the little moments you mentioned like the montage of them each gearing up (I rewound and watched that three times!) and the amazingly choreographed action sequences. I loved how much time each of the female characters got (I was sad to read here that Iris isn’t given much to do any more on Flash). I loved that they brought Alex along and gave Mon-El barely one line in the first episode. I was very excited to see so many queer story lines along side the two hetero weddings. I also cried tears when Victor Garber’s character died.
These recaps were amazing. I really appreciate the time and energy you put into getting them out so quickly for us. Thanks Valerie!
So it took me a week to get through the episodes so I doubt anyone is checking this still but I just had a few thoughts.
Is Russell Tovey usually on this show because he was at the wedding in Part 1 but like no one recognized him. Additionally why did he choose at the end to go back to Earth-X especially since his love Leo was staying on Earth-1 the Earth he is from?
The come with me if you want to live line was humorous and I wonder if it had something to do also with Metallo popping up since Metallo kind of looks like the T-1000.
I liked the blending of the story and the different shows, the story line was okay, the Nazis were a bit much.
Cyclone, I’m always here! And no, Russell was never on the show before…weird he was at the wedding!!
Maybe he wanted to go back and keep fighting Nazis? I’m sure Leo will go back to him eventually. He can’t stay on Legends forever. Probably.