ARROW Season 4 Episode 8: LEGENDS OF TOMORROW Set-Up Continues



Firstly, nice AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON reference Thea.

Relocating to a farm outside Central City, the combined forces of Team Flash and Team Arrow along with Mr. and Mrs. Hawk, prepare to take down Vandal Savage once and for all – something Hawkman and Hawkgirl haven’t been able to do in 4,000 years. 

In the flashback to the TV budget Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, we see how Priestess Chay-ara (I think they literally changed how they pronounced her name since the Flash episode) and Prince Khufu were originally killed by Vandal Savage, thus inexorably linking their fates together in this death and reincarnation cycle for the next 4,000 years. Something to do with weapons forged out of meteors and praying to Horus I think. They still didn’t really explain the wings though. I imagine we’re getting more of that in LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, which is a major flaw with this crossover. It’s not really a ARROW / THE FLASH story. It’s a 90 minute trailer for next year’s spinoff. 

Carlos Valdes is great as Cisco, forced between doing the right thing and helping this frankly amazingly gorgeous women leave him for some guy who dropped out of the sky claiming to be her soul mate – he even makes a point of calling out the fact that she doesn’t even seem to like him all that much. 

This kind of off sets the fact that Team Arrow doesn’t really do much, which is odd considering this is the ARROW episode of this crossover. Digging out an old tape made by some professor in 1975, they find a clue to defeating Savage, tied to the element in the meteors that made him immortal in the first place. 

Now, my biggest problem with the episode, which should have been one of the coolest moments; Barry traveling through time. The UK show 'Misfits' had a time traveling character that could act as a reset button whenever major characters got killed, but it was always used sparingly and in a way that made sense and was genuinely surprising. Here, Barry sees a ghost of himself whilst speeding through the city, highlighting that he’s going to time travel in the near future. If anyone didn’t see what came next coming, then I envy you. When Hawkman got stabbed whilst confronting Savage, I forgot for a split second that he was a lock for LoT, thinking maybe only Hawkgirl makes it. But when Oliver valiantly goes down trying to defeat Savage and the resulting blast from Savage’s magic staff wipes out most of Central City in one go, I knew that that reset button was about to be hit. The devastation, the chaos, the death, lasts all of 10 seconds before *poof* we’re replaying a scene from 20 minutes earlier. It was fun to see how they played things out the second time out, not making the same mistakes, making sure they had back up etc. I just wish in future if they do this again, they don’t signpost it so much. I also hope one day, as I‘ve hoped so many shows would do at some point, we see Barry’s time jump from everyone else’s perspective, with Barry only being able to warn us of what’s to come. 

Second time round, using Savage’s own staff against him, something that seems to not have occurred to Khufu and Chay-ara in 4,000 years, the good guys defeat the immortal in pretty succinct fashion, by disintegrating him. Now I know from the Legends of Tomorrow trailer that Savage obviously comes back and that the “Legends” travel through time to 1975, presumably to meet that Betamax making professor. I was left thinking, how? Until Malcolm Merlyn is seen scooping some of Vandal Savage’s ashes into a container, telling the former immortal that he “owes him one”. Is Merlyn looking for another way to achieve immortality in the wake of the Lazarus Pit being destroyed? Or was he in league with Savage from the start? 

Now all of this isn’t to say there isn’t some meaty ARROW stuff here. There is, but it’s flawed. Deeply flawed. Oliver finds his son and has Barry do a DNA test to help prove it 100-percent. Meeting with the boy’s mother, he’s given the choice – You can only be part of your son’s life if you tell no-one. Not even his partner. At no point does it occur to Oliver to just agree to these terms and then tell Felicity in secret later. She of course finds out he’s been lying to her, they have an argument which is one of the key reasons why it all went to hell in a hand basket and everyone died, before Barry made it all right again.

Given a second chance, Oliver doesn’t choose to tell Felicity, again not even in secret. The only difference this time round is he didn’t have Barry carry out the DNA test, instead having Barry tell him the results from the first time this scenario played out. With no test for Felicity to find, it makes it much easier to keep it a secret from his love and thus we are at it again! Characters not telling other characters things solely for the purpose for creating drama. It’s both THE FLASH and ARROW's weakest points and something I had really hoped the writers would stay away from, especially with this new and improved Green Arrow/Mayoral candidate Lover Queen they introduced this season. But now we have another ticking clock in ARROW to go with the “Who’s in the grave?” mystery. When will Felicity fund out Oliver has been lying to her? Heck, Oliver’s son and ex can now be added to the possible grave inhabitant list too now.

Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer