Hello and welcome to our annual CW DC TV Crossover Event! This year Legends of Tomorrow is off doing its own thing, so it’s just a SuperFlarrow crossover, which is fine by me; I think they realized they have too many big personalities to do a four-way crossover, and inevitably someone is uncharacteristically sidelined if they’re all around, so leaving our time traveling misfits to their mayhem feels right. (Especially after what happened last week…)

So this week things are a little shook up, and instead of a Supergirl Sunday, we’re starting this three-night event with The Flash. And for reasons I will never understand, this episode opens with the same exact scene that ended ALL THREE SHOWS last week. And once again it’s out of context. Old Flash in the ruins of an earth, dude with a big ol’ tome being rude about it.

Then we finally move on to something new, on Earth-1 (aka Barry and Oliver’s world) a professor with murder-hair is ranting to a half-empty classroom about humanity’s imperfections, scaring away students one by one and shouting about how no one is listening to him.

He goes outside to the parking lot and hears a voice calling his name, John Deegan, and Tome Guy shows up and gives him the book, telling him to dream big and play god, because sure why not.

The sky turns a weird color and strange lightning cracks across the it, and Oliver Queen wakes up in a room he doesn’t recognize. He hears Iris West calling him “honey” and goes into the kitchen to find her making him breakfast and kissing him, much to his confusion. He asks her where Barry is, and she looks at him like he started speaking a different language.

“Don’t be silly, look at how much light is in this shot, this is definitely The Flash.”

She calls HIM Barry and Oliver knows something is horribly wrong. She’s looking at him with heart-eyes that aren’t usually meant for him and while it’s very charming he’s very, very confused.

I would be like, “Welp this is my life now, no take-backs.”

He makes an excuse to go to Star Labs, but she gets an alert first and says she’ll meet him there. As soon as she’s gone he tests out his speed and it’s kind of cute watching him stumble around. Iris comes back and gives him his suit-ring and I’m just going to say this now: I never appreciated how cute Barry looks in that suit until I saw someone else in the suit.

Oliver-Flash wonders aloud what Barry did to fuck up the timeline, and honestly it’s a dig I make at Barry about once a week so I would deem it well-earned.

Oliver-Flash tries to embrace his new powers and take out some baddies, and stumbles through it at first but eventually does good enough that Cisco thinks the police can take over from there. What they don’t notice, in all the confusion, is the huge mindless-Iron-Man looking thing that seemed to come to life in their wake.

When he gets back to the lab and the team checks him out and deems him fully functional, Oliver-Flash decides he needs help, so he says he’s going to pop into Star City for a bit and wooshes away.

“Nothing wrong with you even though it looks like smiling hurts you for some reason.”

Meanwhile, in Star City, Barry comes to mid-fight with Diggle. He realizes he has superior fighting skills, and quickly realizes he’s Oliver Queen. His first instinct is to be delighted, because he’s Barry Allen, but after a beat he realizes that actually this is pretty weird.

Barry thinks probably he should call Star Labs, but Diggle says there’s no time because they have to answer a call. Barry puts on the Green Arrow suit and looks very smol but much better than Oliver looked in his suit. He has a hard time distinguishing one type of arrow from another, but the bad guys end up in a pile anyway.

Oliver-Flash shows up and him and Barry-Arrow head back to Team Arrow’s HQ. Barry is loving his new skills, doing the salmon ladder just for funsies, but Oliver implores him to take it more seriously, so they head back to Star Labs for help.

After one more dig at Barry’s proclivity for fucking up timelines, they scan the boys and still find no trace that something is wrong.

Diagnosis: Needs more Nora

And honestly this is a literal nightmare. To try to convince someone that your reality is real and having them tell you it’s not? No thank you! Oliver-Flash tries to talk to Iris but she drugs him because something is clearly going on here and she feels weird about it. At the same time, Stretch Armstrong (he has a different name like Mr. Bendyface but I literally do not care about him so here we are) knocks Barry-Arrow out. The two of them wake up in a Star Labs holding cell together and realize they’re in over their heads. Barry suggests they find a way to get in touch with Kara on Earth-38 to see if this is an Earth-1 or a multiverse problem.

They coach each other on how to best use their skills and make their way out of the cell, but find themselves face to face with Iris. Barry-Arrow uses his heart-words to get through to her, and even though she doesn’t recognize his face, she recognizes a Barry speech when she hears one, so she gives them the inter-dimensional extrapolator they need to jump worlds.

SuperGIRL. Go get SuperGIRL. Girl only. Got it? Can you handle this one task? Why do I feel like you can’t handle this one task?

We jump worlds first though, and head to the Kent Farm on Earth-38 and finally get to meet the one and only Lois Lane.

Now THIS casting news is far less grim (though more Grimm) than the Lex news.

Kara is on the farm helping them out and Lois talks about wanting to write about her adventures with Superman on Argo. Lois goes inside the barn for a bit, leaving the cousins to bond, and Kara does something I can imagine a younger Alex getting her to try: she opens two beer bottles with her thumbs.

Kara using her powers for everyday tasks is my JAM.

Kara tells Clark how annoying it was when the president was demanding to know her secret identity, that he was almost as intimidating as Cat Grant. She feels bad for leaving Alex alone at the DEO, but it’s where she’s at for now. Clark tells Kara about how fun it was taking Lois to Argo and he feels selfish for leaving her alone to defend the planet, but she was fine and also he’s in love, and she can’t begrudge him that.

“I suppose I can forgive you for eating my screentime in the crossover since you brought us Lois.”

Clark tells Kara that he has something important to talk to her about, but they’re interrupted by Lois crying out inside the barn. When they get inside, they see Lois almost murdering Barry and Oliver until Kara reassures them that they’re friends not foes.

Honestly I wouldn’t have been mad if Kara let Lois bean Oliver before stopping her.

Oliver and Barry are delighted to see that Kara calls them by their correct names, so Oliver shows her that he has Flash speed now and she knows she has to help him. She introduces the boys to her cousin, Clark, and they clearly know who he is, because Barry starts to stutter and Oliver puffs out his chest a little.

Before they head back to Earth-1, though, Oliver-Flash teaches Barry-Arrow how to shoot, and Barry-Arrow gets back at Oliver-Flash for their first training session by hitting him with some hidden crossbows. Oliver does his usual grumble-growl at Barry, causing Lois to shout, “DECK HIM, BARRY!” from the porch.

I think I’m in love.

It’s A Mood to be sure.

While they’re grumping around on the wrong Earth, Killer Frost and Gumby are fighting the big robot thing. After knocking them down, it suddenly uses a cool ice luge skill much like Killer Frost’s own to fly away. Back at Star Labs, they learn it’s called AMAZO and can basically learn any power if it gets the chance to scan the metahuman or alien in question.

When the team realizes the boys are gone, Iris tells them that she believes them now, and the team trusts her enough to go along with it. Also, Cisco got a really weird vibe where he saw the Tome Guy, so he knows something is fishy.

At the Kent farm, Barry and Oliver talk it out, and Oliver explains that as the Arrow, he draws on his pain to shoot his shots, and Barry says he does the opposite; he runs towards/for what makes him happiest. They decide they have to try to be a little more like each other (even though I’d argue they should both try to be more like Barry) and Kara comes out all happy that they finally kissed and made up.

Kara’s impression of Oliver is one of my favorite crossover moments of all time.

She even mocks Oliver’s grumpiness and it is very cute. It reminds me of the good old days when her and Barry where Superfriends. Anyway, she agrees that they have to at least lean into the new skillsets they have if they want go get through this.

Cisco breaches in and apologizes for not believing them at first, but assuring them he’s on board now, that the whole team is. So he takes his vigilante, metahuman, and alien buddies (Leaving Lois Lane in the lurch) and heads back to Earth-1 to sort things out.

Back on Earth-1, AMAZO is destroying things, so the team works together to take him down, Barry and Oliver leaning into their new outlooks and powers to succeed, and taking a very necessary assist from the SuperCousins.

I did appreciate them letting Supergirl take the lead on this takedown.

During the fight, Barry-Arrow even says Oliver’s classic line, “You have failed this city,” before hitting AMAZO square in the eye, causing him to explode.

They all go back to the lab and while everyone is excited that they beat the big bad, their original problem still exists. Figuring they’re not in immediate need of him anymore, Clark heads back to Earth-38, but Kara stays to help out.

Iris pulls Barry-Arrow aside and says that even though she could tell he was her Barry because of the way he talked to her, she saw him go all broody out there, and wants him to promise that when this is all over, he’ll come back to her. Not physically run home, the way he’s always promised he would, but also still be her fun-loving, mostly-optimistic husband. She doesn’t want him to become Oliver Queen. And frankly, neither do I.

“Nora saved us from going Arrow-dark, don’t undo all that work now!”

Back in the lab, Cisco tells everyone about his bad vibe, so Barry and Oliver ask to see it. But when Cisco is showing them, Tome Guy breaks through the fourth wall (fifth wall? vibe wall) and looks right at them. He is surprised by their powers but not deterred in his plan; he says “none of you” can stop what’s coming, but he also said something about “men on this Earth” so I’m hoping it’ll end up being him not only underestimating the beings on this planet, but also women, and that Kara, Alex, Lena and Nia will be the ones to save them all.

Anyway, that vibe was a VERY bad vibe, and it gave Cisco a bloody nose. Oliver-Flash speed-draws what he saw, but Kara doesn’t recognize Tome Guy or John Deegan. Oliver doesn’t either, but he does recognize one building in the back, the name “Wayne” emblazoned across it, so he knows where they need to go: Gotham City.

And this is when we see our first official in-show look at Ruby Rose as Batwoman, standing on a rooftop, cape flapping in the wind, red hair gleaming in the dark night.

da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-BATWOMANNNNN

See you tomorrow night for Part Two of Elseworlds, and our first full episode with Kate Kane!

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