The Cinema Sentries are having their own crossover event to cover the DC Superheroes four-part crossover event entitled “Invasion!,” running this week on the CW. It began (briefly) on Supergirl, formally started on The Flash, continued on Arrow (sorta) and concluded on Legends of Tomorrow.
Shawn Bourdo: Billed as the first part of the four-part crossover, I feel sorry for viewers tuning in who watch the other shows but not this one. If you are a fan of just Arrow or just The Flash then you are missing out on a pretty good season of Supergirl but you were also probably pretty confused about this continuity heavy episode that tied up loose ends from the past couple months. The commercials should have said – “Fifty-six minutes of a regular episode and four minutes of two Flash characters showing up to lead us into tomorrow’s episode.”
For those of us watching along the way, that was a pretty good mid-season finale. The payoff of the Lena Luthor story was genuinely satisfying if not predictable in a comic book type of way. We are always going to feel like a Luthor is going to be evil. The Kara/Mon-El budding love story is also nothing that comes as a huge surprise; they’ve been telegraphing this for a month but the payoff seems to be coming pretty quickly now. The Alex Danvers coming-out arc can finally end as yet another predictable but fun plot from the first half.
We have reasons to be excited for The Flash. Last season’s crossover with Supergirl and The Flash showed tremendous chemistry between the actors and a brilliant mix of humor and light storytelling. I’m a little more concerned that the recent dark turn in The Flash series will make this less fun than it could be. I hope that this accomplished what all good comic-book crossovers try to do: get more eyes on the other shows.
Todd Karella: Ever since news that the CW was adding Supergirl to its DC superhero lineup, I’ve been waiting for a giant crossover between the shows where characters from all four team up for a multi-night adventure. Ironically, this kind of event is what stopped me from reading comic books. I hated having to read multiple comics just to get the entire story and no matter how hard I tried, I’d always miss something because I couldn’t find all the issues, as the story hopped from comic to comic. But the CW crossover is different because you can watch all four shows over four nights and be able to complete the adventure right away.
So to kickoff this epic team up, the first entry into this superhero-paloozafest was Supergirl. I’m not sure why the episode was called “Medusa” since it’s supposed to be part one of what’s been touted as “Invasion!” After watching the episode I know the answer. It’s because it has absolutely nothing to do with the crossover event. Unless you can count the last 30 seconds of the episode where Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) show up in Kara/Supergirl’s (Melissa Benoist) apartment and say that they need her help.
But I can’t. I thought it was a huge disappointment and could have been done at the beginning of The Flash Tuesday night. And it probably will be revisited as they will need to show her entering into the Flash’s universe.
Instead of being about the big DC event, Supergirl just continued its own storyline that was divided up into two plots. The first dealt with the previous episode where Supergirl was abducted by CADMUS, who took her blood and had Cyborg Superman (David Harewood) break into the Fortress of Solitude to obtain the formula for Project Medusa, a biological weapon that could kill all aliens, which CADMUS threatened to unleash upon the city. The second was about Kara’s sister, Alex (Chyler Leigh), coming out to her mother about being gay.
There were a couple major issues with both storylines. Leaving out the fact that Cyborg Superman doesn’t look like Superman, which is incredibly stupid, the entire premise is flawed. Lillian Luthor (Brenda Strong) is the leader of CADMUS and plans to wipe out all alien life by releasing the virus over one city. How is that supposed to kill all aliens across the entire planet? Couldn’t the aliens just stay indoors and wait for the cloud to disperse since it must be directly breathed in?
As for Alex’s plot, it was just incredibly boring. We’ve already seen her coming out in previous episodes and seeing her going through her struggle again is just repetitive. Not only did it drag the pace of the show as it took up half the air time, but it was even more excruciating to watch knowing that they could have been doing some awesome crossover scenes.
For a major television event, this was not the way to start it. The episode itself was weak and with so little involvement in the “Invasion!” storyline, the advertising was completely misleading. You could have skipped the episode and it would have had no effect on what is going to happen during the rest of the week. I’m still hoping for big things on the upcoming shows this week, but after tonight, I’m a little less enthusiastic than I was.
