Cape Opera

After two solid episodes of action, all signs point to this being more of a ‘filler’ episode. We’re already down one badass, with Hawkgirl out of action. It’s still the 70s outside, Savage got away, and Kendra has evil magical blade fragments working their way through her bloodstream, leaving the crew time-stranded. The expositionary dialogue in the obligatory team conference scene is given to Heatwave, officially man-of-the-match for both of these episodes, which is interesting - I’d actually love to see him doing more speeches that begin with “To sum up...”

It all leads into a speech from Rip Hunter, who delivers that killer line from the trailer: “I’ve seen men of steel die, and dark knights fall...” True, its impact is somewhat diminished without explosions and trailer music behind it, but whatevs. Cool line. And apparently, this is what makes Rip such a time travel genius, you see. He has more “perspective” on events, because he has been a Time Master. To be fair, everyone looks a bit skeptical at this point - he’s certainly made a complete arse of taking out Savage so far, and the cold open hints that it isn’t his first time fumbling the ball.

This is what you could be watching in another dimension or a parallel timeline.

While they’re stranded, ship’s computer Gideon advises them that their Jump Ship (awesome!), a "small expeditionary vehicle” (Rip, obvs) for super-missions, needs some repairs - handy then that Jax, aka Yung Firestorm, is a qualified automechanic. I was quite looking forward to seeing the guts of the ship, but that’s not really this show - look to The Expanse for your grim futuretech fun. Nope, YFS is going to be the getaway driver for Captain Cold and Heatwave, on a very special 70s heist.

But first, White Canary calls bullshit on Hunter’s “I am a badass Timelord” speech: “You don’t actually have a plan, do you?” Luckily, Canary was trained by Ra’as Al Ghul (the original, scary one, not John Barrowman). She proposes a plan to cut off Vandal Savage’s money - to rob him of his power by going after his stash at The Broomberg Group. Nice. Herein lies this episode’s problem, though - any idiot could have pointed out that if they were going to do some housebreaking, they should have brought Snart and Rory.

Canary even points out what a dick Hunter is being by proposing to rob Savage by himself. Hunter gives her this speech about how he “can’t risk the whole team,” which is stupid, because they risked the whole team last episode, and still didn’t beat Savage. Quite why Hunter wants to go off on his ones and try again, immediately, is unclear, but Canary has his back regardless. 

Snart and Rory even come in, overhear the plan, and OFFER TO HELP. And Hunter, who has already called Rory “thick,” is rude to them yet again. It comes off as snarky and arrogant, which I guess is a facet of Hunter we’re supposed to be seeing here - his hubris. But it feels like territory we already covered.

What makes it worse is that Rory isn’t as dumb as he looks - he’s just bored. “When I’m bored, I make bad decisions,” he says to Hunter, clearly a threat. Hunter just subs him, and by doing so, kinda seals his own fate, as far as his and Canary’s plot thread is concerned. He deserves what he gets.

Speaking of plot threads, Captain Atom and Ol’ Man Firestorm spend the whole episode measuring their scientific dicks, and re-enacting a kind of two-man Inner Space inside Kendra’s body. It’s weird, and gross, and pretty disappointingly poorly animated, so I’ll spare you the blow-by-blows.

As predicted, Canary and Hunter’s reconnaissance mission becomes a punch-fest, and the show doesn’t disappoint here. It’s a cool fight... y’know, as cool as a fight against evil ninja bankers can be, anyway.

You’re right, it’s dumb. It isn’t even a good meme. It’s all setup, really, for the realisation that Sara, who slices and dices her way through this crew like butter, still has the crazy resurrected ninja zombie rage, just like Speedy over on Arrow. Even though that makes no sense, because according to that show, Constantine “purified” Sara’s soul of the Lazarus Pit’s creepy supernatural badness. Seems he left a few sticky traces... she still, very much, has the stabby stabby thoughts.

Rip and Sara tie up and mock-torture one of the banker dudes (the sword guy, who has an Evil Fringe, and is a bit of a silver fox). We learn that Savage is the head of this dude’s super-creepy cult, and together, they sneak into Savage’s private party, because Savage and his rich-and-famous, Eyes Wide Shut pals (Heatwave even makes an Eyes Wide Shut joke later, I swear to fuck...) are going to perform an evil ritual with Hawkbro’s chisel-jawed corpse. Sara and Rip finally admit they need Snart and co’s help... but of course, they’re off stealing shit.

Cold and Heatwave, with Jax as the getaway driver, are off to steal a crazy big emerald (which looked, I think, a whole bunch like Kryptonite... I dunno, maybe that’s wishful thinking). But we don’t get to see that - instead, we learn that Snart has intercepted this jewel in an effort to keep his Dad out of jail.

Snart’s going to fuck with the timeline. Which is kind of stupid, given that we did the “don’t fuck with your own timeline” thing last week, with Professor Stein’s whole disappearing wife / wedding ring / Back to the Future type deal. It’s just a bad sign, kinda, if we’re going to have to mess with Grandfather Paradoxes every week, right? You can’t just screw with history?

“Yeah, well,” says Snart, “history screwed with me first.” It’s a great answer, and encapsulates everything about why Wentworth Miller is the real star of this show. He doesn’t want redemption, he doesn’t even want revenge - he wants to right the cosmic injustice of his own existence. He wants to un-write or re-write the tragedy of himself. To become a hero? To seek annihilation? Who can tell, probably not even him. His is a truly Nietzschean struggle. The scene between Snart and his father is played with such restrained menace; within the context of Miller’s grandstanding, snarky, sometimes moustache-twirling villainy elsewhere in the show, this quiet scene feels real, and has depth. Even if it is another stupid Grandfather Paradox.

With that, it’s back to the creepy Kubrick ball-slash-secret ceremony. It turns out Savage was expecting them - because he always bloody is. We get the end of that cold open - back in Ye Olde Egypt, Hunter tried to kill Savage, but faltered. This has led to Hunter becoming the creepy cult’s Judas figure - and the ceremony with Carter’s body provided a great excuse to lure him out.

Thankfully there’s no plan to bring Carter back to life - Savage cuts his throat and drinks his blood, sharing it with his creepy followers to give them a taste of the afterlife too. This is kind of cool, leading back to the idea of Savage as a kind of immortal energy vampire, and in that way slightly akin to The Reverse Flash. Not only does he live forever, he can feed off the reincarnation energy of whatever era’s Hawkman and Hawkgirl he finds himself in.

This also demonstrates quite clearly why Rip Hunter’s multiple failed assassination attempts could be literally the worst plan ever - all that has to happen is that Savage gets a time machine, and any barriers to his total dominance of history (as foreshadowed in the scenes of destruction in Rip Hunter’s time) are removed. Hunter is playing a dangerous game. And he is rubbish at time travel, as others have quite rightly pointed out.

What’s more, in this confrontation, he actually gives up the identity of his wife and son - Savage sees their picture. Hunter has done just what he has warned everyone not to - given away his advantage, removed the element of surprise, and revealed his weakness. Perhaps he has even caused the very events that led to his family’s death.

Luckily, even though Rip is a patronising, dismissive dick to everyone, they all still love him, because Cold and Heatwave show up and assist with laying waste to the place and everyone in it. Go team! Excellent work show, we’re back where we were at the start of episode 2. The team recover Carter’s body, and Hunter once again comes face to face with Savage. 

Hunter slashes his throat. Even though he knows this won’t kill him, because only Kendra can kill him, and only with the same magic knife Savage stabbed her with last week. While he kills Savage wounds Savage does that, he says his wife’s and his son’s names. Because he is an idiot. Clearly.

Meanwhile, nothing Snart has done has actually affected the timeline at all - his Dad still gets arrested, this time trying to move the stolen goods. “You tried to save him,” points out Jax, completely missing the existential core of what Snart has tried to do by rubbing out the bad parts of his father’s life in an effort to to curtail his own childhood trauma before it even happens. “That’s gotta count for something.”

“Turns out it doesn’t,” replies Snart, joining Rick (of Rick and Morty) on the list of my favourite fictional cosmic pessimists. Blah blah blah, Carter gets a funeral, Hunter apologises for lying to everyone and completely fucking up, again, and makes everyone agree, again, to work as a team. BUT CAN THEY ACTUALLY DO IT?

Looks like we’re about to find out RIGHT NOW - no cold open for episode 4, we’re straight into 1986, and it’s time to rob the fucking Pentagon. Let’s do this. Believe it or not, it works like a charm - everyone gets a job, with Snart on pass-thieving janitor duty, Sara and Kendra as General-Type Ladies, and Rory sneaking into the guards’ quarters and challenging everyone to an arm wrestle (seriously). 

Every member of the team does okay except for Jax, who manages to electrocute himself. This trips the alarm, leading to Kendra getting all Hawk-goddess on the security guards (spooky red eyes and everything), and Heatwave has to break out the old flame-on gun. Firestorm rescues the berserker-raging Kendra, and everyone gets back to the ship okay - Canary even has the file on Savage they were after all along. It’s just that the Pentagon knows about super-beings now, in 1986. Ooops. Luckily, Gideon “erased the tapes.” It never happened! Yeah, I hope that little incident doesn’t um... affect the timeline, or anything. 

Back at the ship, this episode’s conflicts are set up! It’s Jax versus Prof Stein for control of Firestorm’s inner monologue! Kendra versus Sara for the title of most-mysteriously enraged badass! Snart versus Palmer for, uh.. romance (more of that later). And for the team as a whole, it’s off to Russia for another crack at Savage! But oh no... as Jax puts it, “Boba Fett’s back.” It’s everyone’s favourite Temporal Bounty Hunter, IG-88.

Nah, I’m just kidding, it’s Chronos, and he’s still pissed. With some fancy flying and uncloaking and re-cloaking, Hunter manages to give Chronos the slip, distracting him with the Russian Air Force, and allowing The Atom to drop a Top Gun reference. I’m trying to decide if it’s cute or disturbing that it’s Snart who picks him up on it.

They cut the engines on the Waverider to avoid a pair of heat-seeking missiles (which hit Chronos, suckaaaaaaa!), and end up crashing in Russia harder than a Tunguska meteor, behind Communist lines. Eep. 

Luckily, they have magic science pills which allow them to speak fluent Russian. Yass. The plan is that Snart and Palmer cosy up to a Russian scientist-slash-super-spy, and find out what Savage is up to behind the Iron Curtain. Sara, meanwhile, is on training time this week with Sara, who’ll teach her about managing her anger in a constructive way, and restraining her “inner warrior.”

Yeah, that’ll go well. Sara has her own rageaholic problems, and besides, the gang kind of need Kendra to be a bit of a mental radge if she’s going to go up against Savage and beat him. They fight, and nearly kill each other, again surprising absolutely nobody.

At the opera, it turns out the Russian target is way more super-spy than scientist - she has no interest in talking to doofus Ray Palmer, and so Snart slides in. The pair skip the second half of the ballet, and head for a romantic (but suitably snarky and moustache-twirly) winter walk through a Canadian city somewhere Russian, probably Moscow. Snart hits it off with the target, and steals her security pass. I wonder if he has, like, a nail on his wall where he keeps all of the security passes he’s stolen? I’d totally do that if I was him. Does the Waverider even have bedrooms? Is it like the ship from Firefly, with quarters for everyone, or do they just kip in those fancy chairs on the bridge? 

Rip meanwhile gets to go Chronos-hunting with Heatwave, and again, this is the beauty of the show - it’s basically a bag of unlikely team-ups. The casting is so good that even if one arc doesn’t pan out for you, another will - and this week’s best ‘conceptual horse’ is definitely the Hunter / Heatwave double-act. Instead of Boba Fetty Wap, they find Time Master Druce, who wants to try and head off Hunter’s lunatic plan to deliver time travel into Savage’s hands. Druce asks Hunter to give up the chase. And Hunter, who has STILL LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT TEAMWORK, APPARENTLY, decides to pitch it to the gang.

What a pitch it is. Everyone goes back to 2016, they let Savage conquer history, and the Time Council put right all of the team’s fuck-ups so far. Thankfully, Hunter is like, “Hell naw,” and pulls the old bait-and-switch on Druce, who is of course, rolling with the bounty hunter at his back. Firestorm swoops in, with Heatwave as backup. They exchange laser-fire with Chronos, but Jax is hit, separating him from the Professor. Chronos’ blast was too much for him - he is wounded badly.

Back at the ship, the Prof gives Jax both barrels for being reckless during the fight. Then he volunteers to take point on inflltrating the Russian lab where Savage’s weapons are being manufactured - the episode’s gambit coming into play fairly late in the game. He gets in fine, and finds a secret basement of dead test subjects... for a Russian Firestorm. As Stein says, “Savage has spent the last decade trying to level the arms race against our team.”

Every episode so far has shown what a tangled web time travel weaves - each move undoes another, or produces a counter-move. The more they encounter Savage, the more he learns about them. Our heroes still seem remarkably oblivious to this, but Stein is catching on - horrified by the idea that his Firestorm research could have contributed to an East-West arms race, not to mention Savage’s rise to power.

The climax sees Palmer and Snart take on Russian military guards, and the scientist/super-spy valentina, while the Prof, who is immune to radiation, tries to contain the energy of the power core the Russians are using to make their own Firestorm. He manages to contain it, but Snart has already been captured by Valentina.

Rory turns up to rescue Snart - interesting Rory fact, his entry line for last episode’s last-minute rescue was “Let’s get this party started!” This episode, he goes with “This where the party’s at?” Rory likes to party. Unfortunately, Rory gets shot, and Snart only just gets away with the power core, leaving his partner and the Prof in Valentina’s clutches. 

So we’re set up for a rescue mission - can Kendra and Sara keep their shit together, and only kill, uhhhh, guys who kinda deserve it, I guess? Can Jax continue to not blame Professor Stein for his complete irrationality and dickish behaviour? Will Snart let Hunter live after Hunter let Rory get captured? Can we please have some more cool Atom-action not based in someone’s intestine, or have we blown that budget?

Nyssa and Talibah kick seven shades of crap out of a bunch of League-ers - Nyssa begins the fight by literally launching herself through the closing prison door, both feet and hands connecting with the guy’s masked face as he hits the dirt. The duo pick up swords from the fallen, and take out half a dozen or more ninjas, back to back. The fight choreography on this show, headed up by James Bamford, just keeps getting better. 

Cut to another room full of ninjas - two more League-ers enter, and report that Nyssa has escaped. As another clutch of guards prepare to join the fight, the two who reported the breakout attack, slaying everyone in the room. Nyssa and Talibah enter, and they bend the knee. Nyssa has loyal followers within the League, and intends to slay “the usurper,” ie Barrowman. 

The Demon’s Head. BRRRRRRRRR....

Given that I live in Glasgow, and am more used to seeing Barrowman in panto with The Krankies, I must confess I’d be more than happy to see him deposed from the League, and Nyssa in charge (although, to be fair to Barrowman, his performance as Malcolm Merlyn has done a lot to endear him to me).

Meanwhile, Team Arrow are chasing a cat burglar - the hooded figure gives Magneto Diggle and Black Canary the slip with some nifty parkour, and outruns Ollie and Speedy on the roof. Speedy has him cornered, pinning him to the edge of the roof, but she gets faint. Ollie only just saves her from falling. The man in black gets away. 

Back at the Arrow Cave, the gang are all of the opinion that Speedy flipped out because her blood lust is back. While White Canary’s blood lust was cured by John Constantine, Speedy’s had no such luck - Damian Dahrk drained her of the stabby-stabby thoughts for a bit, but they come back. The team have yet another reason to track down Dahrk, but he and his Ghosts have gone, um... dark for the last wee while (Besides, as we’ll see in this week’s Legends of Tomorrow, maybe Sara isn’t as chilled and mellow as everyone thinks, exactly).

Felicity’s subplot is fairly run-of-the-mill this week - she has to do a presentation for PalmerTech about a new piece of battery technology or something. Her new best bud, Curtis, helps her out and in the course of it, she regains some of the confidence knocked out of her by her recent confrontation with Gothlicity. It’s solid character-building for Felicity, and imminent-death-wise, she seems to be out of the woods for now, but it’s this episode’s slowest thread. The Den of Geek reviewer seems to like Curtis, though. Myself, I’m finding him a bit third-wheel ish.

Malclom Merlyn drops by and chats undead curses with Ollie and Speedy, but the Ollie is called away to fight the burglar from earlier on - and guess what folks, it’s Roy Harper! That’s right, Star City’s best warning against steroid use has returned, and he’s as moody as ever - when Ollie reveals his face, he gets a swift punch in the jaw, and Roy escapes again.

Except it’s not the ‘roids which have got Roy all fired up - it’s mind control (naturally). Before we can find this out, it’s back to the island again, GROAN, where Ollie is being tortured by Baron Reiter. 

Baron motherfucking Blitzkrieg, yo. Not fucking about, not even slightly.

Interesting Reiter fact - this character is based on Baron Blitzkrieg, a Nazi DC supervllain. Whether Reiter becomes enhanced, or magic, or metahuman, or indeed a Nazi on the show remains to be seen, but here’s a cool piece on Comic Vine about the casting of the role, with comments from Marc Guggenheim, Arrow producer and veteran comics writer.

Long story short, in the flashbacks, Shadow is back (in the past). EPIC GROAN. Except she’s a hallucination. AGAIN. GROAN. Jesus, just ditch the fucking flashbacks, show, please. Enough already. 

Obvs Ollie has some deep something-or-other to learn about himself in these scenes, but they have long felt like wheel-spinning, especially since Ollie has evolved from overly-worried-newbie, to worryingly-competent-killing-machine, to upstanding-moral-killing-only-when-necessary-mayoral-candidate, and all this happened literally ages ago in this narrative. The island is ancient history. It’s time. Jettison the device, show.

Back in the present, Diggle, Laurel and Ollie take down Roy, faking his death so that whoever is mind controlling him won’t suspect anything. Back at the Arrow Cave, a reunion takes place. Roy has been coerced into stealing tech for a new, as yet unseen villain - The Calculator. Given that the DC Universe Wiki outright describes Calculator as “the evil version of Oracle,” this week’s episode is suddenly interesting again. Felicity, newly codenamed Overwatch, is looking more and more like the Arrowverse’s Oracle... but why couldn’t they use the name? Is Oracle going to figure in the upcoming Justice League movie? Interesting...

After more Island pish, we’re back with Nyssa - HOORAY! - and she has come to Japan to confront a very different opponent... Katana, aka Oliver’s former handler and sometime-ally, Tatsu Yamashiro. Her confrontation with Nyssa is this episode’s (all too brief) highlight - two phenomenal performers, athletes and characters squaring off with deadly intentions. It is fantastic from start to finish.

This is also significant because it means Katana has not been taken off The CW’s board, despite her central presence in the upcoming Suicide Squad film (and unlike poor old Amanda Waller, who bit the bullet last week). I’m going to be optimistic here, and hope this is more evidence of a wider acceptance of the CWVerse as another branch in a slowly-unfolding DC TV / Cinematic Multiverse.

“We’re evenly matched,” quips Nyssa after a lightning exchange of katana blows. “One of us must yield, or this could go on for ages.”

Tatsu removes her mask and glowers imperiously at her opponent. “I have nowhere else to be.”

YES. 

Eventually, Tatsu agrees to listen to Nyssa’s tale. Back to Star City, where Roy and Ollie bro down wearing vests. Then Roy visits Thea, but as they talk, the stab wound inflicted on her by Ra’s Al-Ghul (the first one, no her Da), reappears. Looks like her blood lust problem is getting worse. 

Over at the Arrow Cave, Felicity is closing in on The Calculator with her best hacker-fu. She heads to PalmerTech to get help from Curtis (whose insight basically amounts to, “Why not focus on the subplots which DON’T involve punching?” No, punk!), while Ollie tries to reassure Speedy.

By the time Felicity has tracked The Calculator using some PalmerTech gizmos, Ollie’s back in the green leather, and he and Roy take on The Calculator’s hired mercs in (you guessed it) a warehouse. The fights provide some nice Ollie/Roy banter, but it’s all about Overwatch versus Calculator, with a good old hacker battle! Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

Come on, who doesn’t love hacking montages?

This particular hack-off ends with Roy shooting an arrow at the mainframe (or something), before rope-sliding away from a gigantic explosion. NICE! Home and safe, Roy says he’s not sticking around. And Ollie, meanwhile, is going to let Thea decide what to do about the whole blood lust thing - the world’s most controlling big brother is finally unclenching (or trying to). Speedy and Roy share a teary goodbye, and Felicity nails her PalmerTech speech (surprise).

But then! ACTUAL SURPRISE! Who shows up at the office? THE CALCULATOR! And Felicity is all like... “Dad?” 

So it turns out hacking runs in the family, and maybe Gothlicity was closer to the dark side than even her black lipstick and Gaiman-esque threads suggested...

Ollie visits Thea, and even shares a bro-down handshake of thanks with Merlyn... then Nyssa turns up, and offers Ollie a magic Assassins’ potion, The Lotus, which will cure Speedy’s blood lust... if Ollie agrees to kill Malcolm Merlyn. 

BOOM.

Thoughts on this episode: Show, I want MORE NYSSA AND TALIBAH, NOW! Have them join the Legends for an episode or something. Or just another badass Nyssa versus Katana showdown. Maybe even a four-way Nyssah / Talibah / Canary’s / Katana team-up. There’s your next spin-off show, right there... and please, please, please kill the flashbacks.

So with all this concept-establishing to be done, Season 2 of The Flash has been all about introducing the concept of the multiverse. Season 1′s cliffhanger saw Barry tearing open a massive rift in reality while defeating the Reverse Flash. The ‘singularity’ - read, big whirly tornado thing - was sealed, with half of the Firestorm entity (Caitlin’s oh-he’s-dead, oh-no-he-isn’t, no-wait-yes-he-is boyfriend Ronnie Raymond), sacrificing himself (AGAIN!) in the process. 

The season opens with the revelation that although the singularity was closed, it left not one but 52 (nice little easter egg there for the comics perverts) breach points around Central City, all of which lead to parallel earths. And on one parallel earth - which we are calling Earth 2 - a super-powerful, utterly evil speedster exists who is aware of the dimensional portals. OHNOES.

Professor Zoom, this season’s big antagonist, is a masked speedster whose identity is yet to be revealed, and he spends the bulk of the first half of the season lobbing super-powered villains through these holes in reality after bullying, threatening or coercing them into attacking our Barry, who is all the while trying to start up a romantic relationship with Patty Spivot, a plucky new detective on the Central City PD, and Joe West’s new partner. 

So Barry fights awesome CGI behemoths like King Shark, Sand Demon and Doctor Light, and we meet some of Earth 2′s heroes - including an alternate, Earth 2 Flash - Jay Garrick. He comes through to Earth 1 having been de-powered by Zoom, and joins the STAR Labs team. 

They also get Harrison Wells back, after a fashion - Earth 2′s “Harry” Wells is at least only dubiously morally ambiguous, if not yet proven to be totally evil, and while the team take a while to get used to seeing their arch-nemesis hanging around the lab again, he sticks about, basically playing quarterback for the whole long season arc leading towards a confrontation with Zoom.

That arc’s still in play as the second half of the season begins, as is the tie-in to Legends of Tomorrow, in the form of the introduction of Hawkgirl, a humble barista who is - surprise! - in fact an reincarnated magical Egyptian Hawk god with a cool mace, wings and superhuman strength. 

This plotline is all good until Hawkman shows up, which ruins Kendra’s newly-begun relationship with Cisco. However, given events in Legends, perhaps she and Vibe, who this season has been exploring his powers with the help of Earth 2 Wells, still have a chance? The important thing is, if you’re catching up by reading this recap, I can definitely assure you that you don’t have to put up with Hawkman’s douchebaggery for long.

The first half of the season also saw the triumphant return of Gorilla Grodd, another reason to celebrate this show - they put a 500-pound psychic gorilla on TV and made it work! YAY COMICS! A team up with the Arrow gang to defeat (or so they thought!) Vandal Savage, more time travel shenanigans, and the arrival of Wally West, long lost son of Joe and brother to Iris, who while still without a visible speed-power, could well be destined to become Kid Flash, all ensue, with much hilarity and punching.

So far, so goddman exciting - the central triumph is that by introducing a plotline about multiple earths, they have kicked open the door to a much wider DC Universe. If the Marvel selling point is a vast, inter-connected, consistent continuity with regions or products for teens (Agents of SHIELD, a superhero spy show with a Buffy-like sensibility, the dumber movies: Avengers 2, Ant Man), ‘mature viewers’ (the nuanced kung-fu drama of Daredevil, the taut psychological suspense of Jessica Jones, the nuanced spy thriller antics of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier), then DC’s output so far has been, to put it kindly, wildly inconsistent.

DC’s earliest attempts at superhero TV, and the various hits and misfires of Smallville, Birds of Prey and other shows, to messy cinematic fare like Green Lantern and Catwoman, to the overblown seriousness of Man of Steel, right through to wacky, Quixotic, fan-enraging and arguably wrong-headed attempts like Gotham, DC’s stuff has seemed daft in comparison to the slick consistency across genres, demographic focus and marketing approach taken by Marvel. They have left DC in the dust, even up to and including the launch of Arrow and the CWVerse. Their only triumph, arguably, has been Nolan’s take on Batman. 

But with the validation, on The Flash, of the multiverse concept - agreed by all to be the conceptual foundation stone of the DC Universe’s style of storytelling - The CW have made that inconsistency not just understandable, but marketable. Who knows, perhaps they’ve even laid the groundwork for inter-franchise, inter-dimensional team-ups and crossovers. 

They’ve created a space where Nolan’s Batman, Jared Leto’s Screamo Joker and the unrepetantly teeny, feelgood antics of Supergirl can all comfortably coexist, and be explained, and even enter into dialogue with each other. They’ve broadened the canvas. I cannot overstate how revolutionary this is for the kind of widescreen, decompressed, long-form storytelling to which the best Cape Opera shows, and the source material they use in increasingly sophisticated ways, lend themselves so well.

As a concept, the ‘shared universe’ is in its early days on TV; but The Flash is notable because of the rules it has broken first. It has given us everything we wanted from superhero shows, and more. It has proved that anything is possible in a reality which is designed to be a multiverse. 

Suddenly, it is Marvel’s tactic which begins to look unwieldy - how will they connect the gritty, street-level heroes of their Netflix shows to the globetrotting, and increasingly cosmic, universal adventures of the cinematic heroes? How, exactly the fuck, is Infinity War gonna work, if Avengers 2 struggled to keep its focus? Whether Marvel can make it work remains to be seen - DC doesn’t need to. The CW has given them another option. There are as many Flashes as there are realities.

Which brings us to the first three episodes of season 2′s second half, which, while excellent episodes in their own right, have seemed to drag a little when compared with the manic pacing of Legends. Perhaps this is simply conceptual drag... the CW now being so good at creating new shows, that each new show makes the other shows seem somewhat slow and drab by comparison. It’s not that The Flash has gotten slower, it’s just that Legends has raised the bar, in the same way that The Flash left Arrow in the dust by abandoning the flashback structure.

In Episode 10, we meet The Turtle, played by Battlestar Galactica’s Michael Buckner. I always liked Buckner in BSG - the repressed physical rage, frustrated integrity and dumb loyalty he brought to the character of Chief was always compelling to watch. He makes a great bad guy here, slowing time in such a way as to basically nullify Barry’s powers. Let’s have a wee break here and just remind ourselves of Chief and Number Six’s forbidden love.

Ah, Battlestar.

Unfortunately, Harry Wells is now being blackmailed by Zoom, and rather than helping Team STAR Labs steal Turtle’s power to combat the Big Bad, he kills the Turtle (BOOOO, show!), intending to leech some of Barry’s power to feed Zoom, who is basically some sort of speed force vampire type guy. And, to be fair, fucking terrifying-looking.

AHHHHHHHH make the bad man stop.

There’s also some stuff with Jay and Caitlin, which is a pairing I am kind of over. Let’s face it, Jay’s a bit... wet. And what is it with making Caitlin a vehicle for doomed romance plots? She deserves better, and we can only hope that the chance to strut her stuff as Killer Frost on an upcoming episode will be more fun to watch. Frankly, without speed, Jay is a boring white knight of a character, so really, who cares about the fact he has super-cancer or whatever. Yawn.

Episode 11 is all kinds of awesome because it is a Cisco episode - and Cisco, who you will legitimately hate if you just started watching this show, I warn you now, is the best character on the show, and soon he will be your favourite too. Just accept it. Embrace Cisco. Welcome Cisco into your heart now, and all will be forgiven.

Wells helps Cisco increase his Vibe powers with - you got it - awesome super-science sunglasses, in a 1990s Tour De France style. MUCH FASHION. SO CANON. Lets take a look at these badboys:

SHIT SON. I mean, that’s just freaking perfect. Not only will Cisco soon be embracing his powers and designing some sort of super-pajamas for himself, to help Barry fight crime - AMAZE - but he’ll also be doing it in some Hypersport-style retro fashion specs that transport me back to a time of Global Hypercolour, breakdancing, Vanilla Ice and pagers. 

I was hella blown away by this bit of the episode, for real, like dancing around the room and cheering and stuff. I don’t care what nobody says, this is a FIERCE LOOK:

... That needs to happen, show. Make it so. 

This was also a really cool episode because of the way it fucked with time travel. You see, in this timeline, our timeline, on this earth, aka Earth1, the Reverse Flash - aka time-travelling (from the future, keep up) speedster Eobard Thawne - had assumed the personality of Harrison Wells. This was season 1, okay? He was defeated by the sacrifice of his ancestor, Eddie Thawne (also Iris West’s boyfriend). Eddie’s death altered the timeline, meaning Thawne was never born. OR SO WE THOUGHT!

In fact, Thawne was kept alive by the speed force - his timeline remained intact, meaning this version of Thawne has not yet killed Barry’s mom, or subsequently taken over Wells’ identity. He disappeared, but didn’t go back to his future with a memory of his time as Wells - his timeline continued, intact, and he had no way of knowing that the Flash, his enemy, was Barry Allen. So while Wells remains dead (Earth 1 Wells, that is - not Harry), Thawne never died - his future timeline remained intact. The Thawne they have met has never encountered Barry Allen - only The Flash, who he wants to kill. 

SWEET, glad we’re all on the same page now. 

What seems like - and might in fact be - a spectacularly dumb bit of retconning is in fact very savvy and clever time travel storytelling. Here’s how it’s done. This version of Thawne is the one that WILL kill Barry’s mother, and there’s nothing Barry can do about it - the more information Thawne gets about The Flash, the more likely their future confrontation (in Barry’s past, with Barry’s future self, witnessed by the young Barry) becomes. 

Cisco, unable to resist gloating, taunts the imprisoned Thawne, and immediately gets a nosebleed - Team STAR Labs are messing with causality, and the more they mess with it, the worse Cisco, who can see the future, and whose (now amplified) powers are connected to the timestream, and therefore the multiverse, begins to seize and die. He begins to vanish, and become insubstantial, erased by the being at the nexus of this paradox. They have to send Thawne, the Reverse Flash, back to his future,with knowledge of Barry Allen’s identity, to save Cisco... and by doing so, they doom Barry’s mother. It’s Barry’s own fault his mother cannot be saved - something he has always felt, but which has never been literally true.

Barry’s origin has caused itself. Last season, it seemed like Barry’s progress towards embracing his destiny as The Flash was being driven by Thawne/Wells, for his own evil ends. This season, Barry has been out on his own, stepping into a larger world. 

When he defeats Thawne this time - this earlier Thawne who hates The Flash, but knows nothing of STAR Labs, the name Barry Allen, or even which time period his enemy, the future Flash, is from - Barry inadvertently sets in motion the events that will lead to his mother’s death, and in turn to him becoming The Flash. It’s a reverse grandfather paradox - an event in the past caused by his future self, witnessed by his past self, which caused him to act in such a way that he and his future self now have no choice but to enact it, dooming his mother. 

Or as Chief might have put it, back on the Galactica...

That’s what’s really happening on this show, people. We’re dealing with the big, cosmic, existential themes here - time is a flat motherfucking circle, and Grant Gustin is our chirpy Rust Cohle. Oh, and Patty dumps him in this episode too, and leaves Central City. So emosh!

For real though, The Flash might be the zaniest, wackiest, most out-there, gorilla-punching, disposable Cape Opera show on the go (or it was the goofiest, until Supergirl started up, and he fastest-paced, till Legends) but in some ways, it deals with bigger questions than its sister-show and progenitor, Arrow. 

For all its plot-holes and sheer fantasy fun, its a show where the writers are unafraid of playing with the big conceptual equipment in the narrative toolbox - what is reality? How does time work, exactly? How does an understanding of multiversity and extradimensionality, of the nature of the superhuman, affect conceptual constructs like destiny and fate, and free will? How can you have agency in a world of infinite possibilities, and predetermined futures? That’s some deep, metaphysical shit, my friends. 

These things are played out behind the punching in The Flash, and that’s why it’s a superb show. The more it delves into parallel realities, alternate earths, and the consequences of monkeying with time, the better (and the cleverer) it gets. It consistently intellectually outperforms the lazily-written, unscientific writing of Stephen Moffat on Doctor Who, and more importantly, does it with convincing character arcs, given to characters who become increasingly more likable, and who are given more and more agency (apart from Caitlin, which does suck). 

Yes, the tone of The Flash is wacky, and silly. Yes, the show is sentimental, and shallow on a great many levels. But it makes you give a shit about the silly, awesome, dumb people on it. And really, I can honestly say I believe more in the character arcs and emotional depth of Cisco, and Wells (both of ‘em), and stupid Barry, way more than I do about guys like Rick from The Walking Dead. 

As much as I admire the dour, ruthless Rick, I’d fucking cross the street to avoid him in real life. But honestly, after one and a half seasons, I’m actually dead into the idea of hanging out with Cisco and the gang. They exist in a much more real way to me, because I like them, goofiness and all. 

I get enough bleakness in my culture... most of the culture I like is bleak as hell. And to have a few shows that defiantly are NOT grim, gritty, dark and portentous, but still have high stakes, and layered, interesting, believable subject matter (like, uh, a guy made out of tar and stuff) is a good thing. Excelsior.

In Episode 12, we spend a whole bunch of time learning why Wally West thinks he is in The Fast and The Furious movies, and wishing that they would just give him superspeed already. The team learn that Wells is double-crossing them to save his daughter and sap Barry’s speed for Zoom, but they forgive him, and he agrees to help them double cross Zoom. They fight a tire guy, from the comics, and the fight scenes are boss. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool and all, but the Legends of Tomorrow got to smoke pot in the seventies and explode a whole warehouse full of henchmen. Just saying.

It’s a wheel-spinning, arc-developing episode, and if I have any strong criticism of the second half of season  2 so far, it’s that in comparison to the manic and awesome Legends, The Flash now feels a just a tiny bit tired, just like Arrow did when The Flash launched.

This, I predict, will all change next week, as the team cross over to Earth 2, and tangle with alternate, evil versions of Caitlin and her former lover Firestorm, known (of course) on Earth 2  as Deathstorm. 

It’s a two-parter, and later in the season, big Kevin Smith himself is even stepping in to direct an episode. No bullshit, my friends. So hold on to your hats - Season 2′s closing half may be off to a slow start, but it looks like the speed is about to pick up...

As they prepare for the mission, Hunter lets us know that the **Waverider **is equipped with a room which generates era-specific costumes, providing yet more grist for my fantheory about how Hunter connects to Doctor Who and the TARDIS. “You’ve got a room that makes clothing?” marvels Firestorm Junior. “Doesn’t everyone?” replies Hunter. Nope, just you and the Doctor! But enough about that for now...

Off to the arms auction, which is hosted in a suspiciously Canadian warehouse, and attended by none other than Arrow villain Damian Dahrk, looking not a day younger than his 2010s self, and wearing what can only be described as a fashion-forward, cream-coloured Blofeld-suit. Just in case you were in any doubt that he was a villain in the 70s, too. 

And lo and behold, who is hosting the motherfucking auction? It’s Savage! After Firestorm Senior and Cold talk their way through security, the team join the auction (standing in the front row, no less, with no view of the exits....) and even end up making a successful bid on a nuclear warhead. 

Savage, of course, rumbles the team (specifically, he trips up Firestorm Senior into revealing they are time travellers) and all hell breaks loose. Cue an all-team fight scene, with explosions, much punching, and **The Atom **flying around in both mini and full-size versions, generally whipping everybody’s ass. It’s beautiful... truly beautiful. As io9 quite rightly point out: “Legends of Tomorrow: Come for the fights, stay for... more fights.”

Let’s talk about this fight in-depth for a bit... the whole thing kicks off (of course) with a huge gout of flame from Heatwave’s super-flamethrower, providing cover as the HawkPeople fly in and start macing dudes in the face. The camera tracks back to show the jet of flame from Heatwave’s gun, and the landing Hawks. Meanwhile, Canary has produced her fighty-sticks, and is destroying be-suited badguys with low, circular, sweeping blows, turning the motion into momentum for devastating uppercuts. 

Professor Firestorm gets grabbed by a bald thug - cue The Atom, who launches his suit from the Prof’s pocket.  We zoom in on him, as he uses his tiny-mode to sequence-punch, like, eight terrorists. As the camera tracks him, we pan back across to the still kung-fu-ing White Canary, and a tour-de-force spinning camera shot of Cold and Heatwave back to back, firing twin jets of ice and flame, followed by Hawkman and Hawkgirl picking dudes up and dropping them, then pinning them to the ground with wing-assisted punches.

It is... it’s just so beautiful. I think I peed myself a little the first time I watched it - just a little wee came out as I squealed with excitement. The second time, I confess, there were even some tears. Shit’s just exploding everywhere, people are on fire, the sound of punching is like early-period jungle rhythms, there’s just so much of it. This show knows how to reward its viewers.

Vandal Savage is noticeably distressed by all this violence, and stands stock still in the centre of the room while none of the team try and kill him even a little bit. Which is pretty daft, but by the end of the episode, we’ll realise it wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway. Savage is harder to kill than Dracula, Wolverine and Keith Richards combined.

Savage sets the nuke to blow, and the Atom manages to do the classic “setting the timer countdown to like, way sooner” thing by flying inside it in mini-mode. This leaves a powered up Firestorm(s) (seriously, how am I meant to be pluralising this?) to transport the nuke to “a safe distance” before it explodes. It explodes in what looks like a bird sanctuary, destroying some trees, but it’s no big deal - and now we know Firestorm can stop a nuke, which you can imagine might come in handy, somewhere down the line.

Back at the ship, the team realise that they pretty much ballsed that mission up, despite the awesome fighting. Atom lost a rocket-launching gauntlet, which was picked up by Savage’s people and reverse-engineered, meaning that their future is now an apocalyptic wasteland ruled by Savage’s neo-fascist militia. Bummer. Luckily, as Hunter explains, this future has yet to solidify (”Time is like concrete, it takes a while to set”), and so, if they can retrieve the gauntlet, everything will be fine.

Cue the HawkPeople - again carrying the romance subplot. Kendra’s still not into Carter, although she is remembering a bunch of stuff about her original incarnation in Ancient Egypt - specifically, that the dagger Savage used to stab her and her lover is the only weapon which can kill him. Because, magic. 

Cue a big team planner session - Cold, Heatwave and Atom will try to steal the dagger from a private collection. As soon as they have it, they’ll call in the Hawks. Meanwhile, the Firestorm(s) and Canary will visit the Professor’s 1970s past self to borrow a gadget which tracks super particles or something dumb like that, which will lead them to Atom’s gauntlet, and, presumably, Savage.

Here’s where things get groovy - it turns out the Professor’s 1970s self was a pot-smoking, womanising, charmingly arrogant party boy. He gets Canary high (the Firestorms refuse), and they steal his thingummy-detector (after Canary knocks him out with.... a bong!). 

The set-dressing and costumes here are fantastic, with laughs-a-plenty about Firestorm Junior’s flares, another sly wink to Canary’s hedonistic character and open bisexuality, and a 1970s college dorm festooned with bongs and lava lamps and psych-rock band posters. This is the show gently easing into the time travel aspect, and doing it with considerable panache and humour. I mean, we all love Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. but would that show do this?

Yeah... I think not. 

Back at the break-in, Cold and Heatwave display their proficiency in the technique of Consecutive Normal Punches, and manage to finesse their way inside. They find the ancient dagger, but decide to take a bunch of other shit too, because as Cold says, “You don’t break into a candy store and steal one gumball.” 

Goody-two-shoes Atom objects, and gets clocked in the face - he and Cold trade punches, but then, SURPRISE! Savage shows up. The private collection is, of course, his, and he easily imprisons Cold and Atom in a handy cage (it literally drops from the ceiling!!), keeping Heatwave outside as a hostage. 

Before Savage shows, however, we get a nice little scene with Cold and the Atom. Cold attempts to re-wire the security system (giant cage!), leading Atom to comment that Cold could have had a career as an electrical engineer, instead of a badass thief with snarky banter. 

Cold pooh-poohs this immediately, cutting Atom down to size by calling him “the incredible shrinking schmuck.” Listen, I know this show is all about redemption, but I really don’t want Cold to EVER stop being reluctant about heroics. Fine, redeem him, but he should then disown it - every time. I think the show is smart enough to play it like that.

We get a ton of Hawkman / Hawkgirl stuff which basically amounts to - Kendra is warming to Carter, and remembering more of her past lives all the time. Just wade through this - there’s a reward coming at the end of this episode. Back to Firestorm(s) and Canary - they’ve got the tech-tracking whats-it, and are back on the Waverider, but... OHNOES! 1970s Professor has followed them on board. 

There follows a fairly dumb subplot about him not meeting his future wife because of changes to the timeline, which is cool in a sort of nods-to-Back-To-The-Future way, but is pretty pointless, other than to convince the Professor that he should be less of a dick to his symbiotic partner. Which, given his roofie-based antics last ep, should come as a relief.

Anyway, time travel guff dispensed with, we proceed to the main rammy - it’s everyone versus Vandal Savage, to the death! Firestorm frees Cold, Heatwave and The Atom, and takes Vandal out with a nuclear fireball, but of course, he’s not dead - cue an attack from the Hawks, aided by the newly-acquired mystical dagger.

Meanwhile, Savage’s henchmen attack, in another epic fight scene replete with explosions, lasers, punching and impressive camera work. LOVE THIS SHOW. The best part is at the beginning of the fight, as Hunter hands The Atom a tiny action figure - his miniaturised suit. SO COOL!

For... for me?

Finale time - Hawkman takes on Savage but SURPRISE! Even though Hawkman stabs Savage, he no die! He no die! Apparently, only Kendra can wield the blade and kill him. TOO BAD! Hawkman get stabbed. To death. Properly, for good. He’s gone! Kendra, who is also stabbed but then rescued by Atom, and patched up by Gideon, now has an amazing revenge motive! YESSSS. Words cannot capture how pleased I am with this result.

And our team? Now, they are not only underdogs, but they have a fully-fledged revenge quest to embark upon together. As episode 2 ends, they’ve saved the world of the future (from their own mistakes, granted, but still...), had a crack at Savage, and once more had their fortunes reversed.

A quick recap of significant happenings in episodes 1-10: 

- Ollie is now the Green Arrow. Don’t worry, he may have picked a colour scheme, and it may even symbolise his desire to be a better man, and stop killing people. But he still regularly shoots people in the face, through the heart and lungs, and into electrical pylons / through plate glass windows / off the top of tall buildings. I’m sure they’re fine. 

- Diggle now has a codename - he is Spartan, a name he shares with a robotic superhuman computer-bot originally affiliated with Jim Lee’s Wildstorm-based characters, the WildC.A.T.S. Will Diggle become a manborg in a future series? We can only hope, but for now, he’s borrowed Magneto’s helmet, and oh yeah, his gun fires ‘stun bullets’ so he totally did NOT just shoot that guy in the FACE, to DEATH, mkay?

- Diggle’s brother, long thought dead, is alive, and working for Dahrk / H.I.V.E., or at least he was til Team Arrow rescued/kidnapped him. They pretty much keep him in a cage, which looks boring as hell. Occasionally Diggle or Ollie get to punch or strangle him, presumably just to stave off boredom.

- Captain Lance, who this season valiantly gave in to encroaching baldness, has been playing both sides - initially threatened into helping Dahrk, he now informs on Dahrk’s movements to Team Arrow. He and Laurel Lance, aka Black Canary, are finally on speaking terms again, so hopefully we’ll be spared too much Lance family trauma this season.

- John Constantine made an appearance, it was glorious, he gave Ollie a magic tattoo (no, really) in an island flashback, and helped retrieve Sara Lance’s soul from the nether regions of hell after she came back all cray-cray zombie assassin style from Ra’s Al Ghul’s Lazarus Pit. Now Sara is the White Canary, and has gone off to join the Legends of Tomorrow. Which is awesome. It looks like we won’t see Constantine again though, and that sucks. But he has definitely lent some weight to the introduction of more mystical elements to the Arrow mythos.

Sound advice from the Hellblazer. Ye’ll be missed, son

- The Atom, aka Ray Palmer, is not dead after all, but shrank to the size of an ant (man) and couldn’t re-embiggen because, reasons. Now back to full size, he’s understandably a bit miffed that Felicity is with Ollie. This is a bummer, really, because he and Felicity made way more sense as a couple - a double-serving of geek is deliciously sweet. However, he does have a super sweet Iron Man Atomtech suit, and now rolls with a gang of time-travelling badasses. So he’s got that going for him.

- The Flash came to town to try and help his new pal Hawkgirl discover that she is not, in fact, humble barista Kendra Saunders, but an immortal reincarnated Egyptian mace specialist with awesome wings. She regained her memories of previous incarnations, dumped poor Cisco, and took off with fellow reincarnated Egyptian (and notable douchebag) Hawkbro. They’re both off being Legends too.

Okay, that’s you up to speed! 

Last episode, the team went after Anarky, a murderous and confusingly apolitical anarchist who had decided to target Dahrk for some revenge-type punching action, with a side salad of murder. A few episodes back, we learned that aside from being a super-evil bad guy, Dahrk is also a family man - Anarky goes after the wife and kids, and Ollie and Team Arrow have no choice but to save Dahrk. 

Ollie, of course, experiences some angst - why not just let Anarky kill Dahrk? All season, Ollie’s principle angst-face scenes (you know the ones - he almost smiles, that weird hairline wiggles a bit, he stamps his feet and puts his hands on his hips) have been dealing with his belief that to defeat Dahrk, he needs to be “willing to go far enough,” ie, kill him. All of which is brilliantly funny when you consider the *actual* death toll of each episode.

Ollie being angst-face-y

So anyway, Ollie lets Anarky go, and he goes after Dahrk’s family, who must be innocent, because who has an evil wife and kids, right? WRONG! Having second thoughts about freeing a murderer from police custody, mayoral candidate (!) Ollie tracks Anarky to Dahrk’s home. After saving Dahrk’s family, Dahrk tells Ollie he’s still going to kill him, but that in gratitude for saving the wife and kids, he can spend some time with his Team Arrow pals. What a dude. And after Ollie leaves? We see the wife is evil too. Hell, probably the kids as well. EVIL FAMILY UNIT! Lo and behold, Ollie and Felicity are ambushed in their limo, and Felicity is shot by the Ghosts.

This effectively delays the big face-off with Dahrk, who may only be a feint, villain-wise - although he is clearly mega-powerful, I would lay odds on him being defeated 2/3 of the way through the season, in time for the introduction of another Big Bad, and the build-up to Season 4′s cliffhanger. We’re also getting lots of foreshadowing about a team member dying - we’ve seen multiple scenes of Ollie in front of a grave, being all angst-face-y with Barry in tow. Presumably, defeating Dum Dum Dugan Dahrk will exact a heavy toll.

“So I’m in Marvel AND DC continuity, big whoop, wanna fight about it?”

Which brings me to Felicity. Show, don’t kill off Felicity. Don’t do that. We get that she is a fan favourite, we get that her relationship with Ollie is wish fulfillment for fans (see Rob Bricken’s great io9 piece on the topic), but show, if you kill her off... I dunno, I’ll cry or something. Yes, actually, legit cry - because that’s how much I care now, show. I’ve watched 4 seasons of this. I’ve seen Ollie get his heart broken over and over. I’ve witnessed the struggle and THE STRUGGLE IS REAL (for Oliver’s retarded emotional growth curve, that is). This man needs no more dead bodies as motivation, show.

So, Felicity, who survived the shooting, for now at least, is in a wheelchair - cue endless fan speculation about Felicity becoming Oracle. In the latest episode, when Felicity gets back in the game, she is given a new codename - the slightly daft Overwatch. Because, apparently, “Oracle was taken.” Was this a Birds of Prey nod? A DC cinematic universe thing? A copyright thing? A multiverse thing? Who knows, regardless, it seems Babs Gordon’s codename is safely stashed for future/past/aternate timeline use.

Back to Felicity - this episode saw the return of Goth Felicity, who, cards on the table, I TOTALLY FUCKING ADORE AND WORSHIP.

Where oh where did Goth Felicity get her look? Hmmmmm....

... or as the fans like to call her, Gothlicity. A badass goth hacker from the past, she pops up here as a hallucination (suuuuure....) to tell Hot Wheels (Felicity’s codename suggestion, actually quite cool IMO, shot down by Ollie) that she can’t be a hacker any more because, um, her legs don’t work. 

Bricken’s theory about how this shows her character development and makes sense of her love of angst-pot Ollie aside, this made not much sense to me... because hackers mostly work sitting down, right? It’s a type-y type-y job. Most hackers I know have couch-sores and week-old Dorito residue on them - they don’t move. Maybe Felicity was just thinking she’d miss out on that other favourite hacker pastime, rollerblading.

Anyway, eventually, Felicity swings back into action (sitting down at a keyboard, as predicted), and helps Ollie and Diggle out as they are ambushed at A.R.G.U.S. by a team of mercenaries called Shadowspire. 

Cue flashback. In Afghanistan - which Diggle inexplicably calls “the ‘Stan” - Diggle and his brother encounter the mysterious and corrupt Shadowspire unit, and it is led by - shock horror - the dude currently causing Ollie grief on the island in his flashbacks. IT’S ALL CONNECTED! In the raid on A.R.G.U.S., Amanda Waller is unceremoniously shot in the head - a shame really, as she was a cool character who they had spent a long time building up and developing... you can’t help but suspect that her death has something to do with her coming appearance in Suicide Squad. Arrow has fallen foul of this inter-studio meddling before, with David Ayer’s movie calling time on the show’s version of the Squad back in season 2. 

YAAAAAASSSSS! SUICIDE SQUAD! Sorry, I’m dead excited for this.

Will Felicity remain in a wheelchair? Quite possibly, although screaming at me from the back of my brain is the fact that FELICITY HELPED BUILD THE ATOM SUIT. Right? You’re telling me all of Palmer Tech (of which Felicity is still the boss, yeah?) can’t come up with a simple robotic spine, but it can build a full working exosuit with miniaturisation controls and wrist-mounted rocket launchers? C’MON, SHOW. As Ollie says, it’s a weird world, and he won’t stop searching it until he realises that it was entirely bloody obvious who should be building Felicity’s new mecha-spine.

Can we talk here for a minute about the flashback structure used in this show? How many fucking times has Ollie been to the island, for real! I’m over it now. The Flash did away with the flashbacks device, and as a result, it feels faster-paced, more engaging, and the stakes feel higher. The flashbacks worked for a few seasons on Arrow; the terrible, terrible wigs were legit fun, and arguably the flashbacks were necessary for the introduction of Sara Lance, A.R.G.U.S., Deathstroke, and the League of Assassins. Now, they are just distracting. Ollie grew this beard just watching dailies of all the flashbacks.

Honestly, there’s some kinda magic MacGuffiun on the island? Who cares, man! Get on with shooting people in the face with arrows, please! Especially in comparison to the loony dash of Legends of Tomorrow, these scenes are making Arrow feel a bit slow and tedious of late. Time to let the flashbacks go.

Okay, that’s yer lot! From next week on, we’ll be into regular, one-episode-per-post recaps for all yer Arrow fun, and after a big post getting us up to speed with The Flash, we’ll have this baby up and running. 

EXCELSIOR! Or something more DC-ish. Uh... MULTIVERSE! Yes. 

Of course I had problems with CW shows at the beginning. I, like most older comics fans, had gotten used to grim ‘n’ gritty as the standard ‘cinematic’ mode for superhero storytelling. I dismissed Arrow as soap-y bullshit after watching the pilot, and ignored it until I decided to board the hype train for The Flash. 

And The Flash was so good. SO GOOD! I wasn’t even much of a fan of the comics Flash; I just instantly warmed to the light and playful tone, the expertly-done combat and chase scenes, and the delightful rogues gallery of villains, not least Captain Cold and Heatwave, as played by Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell. 

The Flash had just enough camp to deliver that sugar rush of wonder and excitement that great comics give you, without falling prey to the parodic excesses of the Schumacher-era Batman movies; or the reductive, played-out pseudo-heroic shenanigans of the Smallville series. These are shows which have learned from the mistakes of predecessors, and repurposed what worked. The Flash went straight for it - by the end of episode 1, our hero had a costume, a team, an antagonist, and a mission. No messing about! Straight to the superheroics. Even better than the ‘competence porn’ of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD; perhaps because of the youth, inexperience and optimism of this new take on Barry Allen.

I went straight back and watched all of Arrow, devouring it like a man starved of ‘tights and fights’ for decades. I came to appreciate brooding, grimdark Oliver Queen, with Stephen Amell’s trademark wigs and frankly baffling hairline, all the more because he was surrounded by lovable, relatable, likable characters - who often reminded him that he was being too grimdark. 

This was a revelation, really - to be able to combine the Nolan approach with brightly-hued superheroics, without sacrificing the weight of serious storytelling. Characters we could care about, not just pity or envy. Human, nuanced storytelling. Before long, I was even caught up in the romance subplots. The Cape Opera genre had finally spread its wings, and I was along for the ride.

Moreover, as I began to watch more “serious” Cape Opera shows like the magnificent Daredevil and Jessica Jones, I began to realise how groundbreaking Arrow was. The fight scenes, although sometimes poorly shot, are incredibly well choreographed, and laid the groundwork for the jaw-dropping kung-fu antics of Dardevil. Unarguably, Dardevil is a more highbrow, adult-oriented show - but would it have been greenlit without Arrow preceding it? I’d argue not.

Crucially, both Arrow has dealt with some heavy subject matter alongside the superheroics. This show is a Shakespearean death-fest where no character is safe, while The Flash has brought seemingly ridiculous / unfilmable characters like King Shark and Gorilla Grodd to TV on a comparatively miniscule budget. There is a feeling that these shows could do anything, go anywhere, and that is joyous and wonderful for a lifelong comics fan.

All of which brings us to the unquestionably brilliant Legends of Tomorrow, the latest and greatest (already!) addition to the CW superhero stable. Knowing that they were unlikely to get to play with the popular toys (Bats, Supes, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern), the CW showrunners have created a kind of Justice-League-by-the-back-door - a superhero team with a revolving cast (if it gets a second season, at least), an ongoing narrative arc, and, because why not, a direct lift from Doctor Who in the form of Rip Hunter - a time-travelling ‘Time Master’ from the future who is in pretty much every way David Tennant’s Doctor, down to the brown trenchcoat, and is even played by Who series regular Arthur Darvill, with considerable relish.

The fact that this even works is testament to how bloody good the CW shows are - the direct lift feels like a joyous, madcap tribute rather than a shabby copy, and Darvill plays it to the hilt. 

What makes this show the CW’s best so far, however, has to be the interplay between the cast members, and the clever inversion of the series premise in episode 1.

*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR EPs 1 & 2 OF LEGENDS OF TOMORROW*

Rip Hunter arrives from the future to gather his team of heroes, telling them that in the future, they are not just heroes, but legends. Egos suitably boosted, they agree to go along for the time-hopping ride, hoping to defeat the evil, immortal Vandal Savage. 

The team features:

The Atom Scientist and occasional Team Arrow member Ray Palmer, in a super-suit which gives him the ability to fly, shoot stuff, and shrink - he is basically Iron Man and Ant-Man rolled into one, but with a more self-deprecating sense of humour. An everygeek, rather than a billionaire playboy genius.

White Canary Another former Team Arrow member, she is a butt-kicking bisexual assassin brought back from the dead to “fight for the light” or something. While now dressed in white, and on a heavily-signposted quest for redemption, the first thing she does as a member of Team Legends is go drinking with the bad guys and start a massive bar brawl. YES.

Firestorm OK, non-comics readers, hold on to your conceptual hats - Firestorm is a composite entity made up of an old, white scientist dude and a hot young black car mechanic or pro football player (or both). When they combine, they become Firestorm and go and kick ass (the white professor guy becomes a sort of disembodied Jiminy Cricket at this point). Exactly zero time is spent explaining how or why this manifestation of his/their power came about, so if you didn’t watch The Flash, yah boo sucks. Also, any sympathy you might have for the old professor guy is tempered by the fact that in episode 1, to get his partner to come along, he has to Mr T his ass. Why you gotta drug the black man’s milk, cracker? What is that about, exactly? The show skips merrily over this alarming roofie-based action and all is forgiven, so, uh, I guess lets not dwell on it?

Captain Cold & Heatwave These two villains have fought The Flash multiple times, even defeating him. As Wentworth Miller finds new ways to convey sarcasm using only eyebrows and a voice worthy of 60s Batman show villains, Dominic Purcell’s barely-contained mega-anger becomes a thing of strange and fierce beauty - he’s like a Hulk who never powers down, loves to fight, and wants to kick your ass for no reason. They’re basically along for the ride so they can steal shit from multiple centuries. Which is amazing. They’re the core of the show, and get all the best lines.

Hawkman & Hawkgirl Hawkgirl is badass. SO BADASS. She even has a mace. It might even be magic. I can’t even. After getting used to her powers, now she has to deal with the advances of the inexplicably white Hawkdouche, who basically thinks because they’ve always bumped uglies in previous incarnations (they are magically reincarnated Egyptian magic warriors or something, I think, maybe it’s a curse, wasn’t paying attention), that a relationship is his by right in this incarnation. This, unsurprisingly, makes him into an unlikeable douche who everyone quite rightly ignores and wishes would shut up. If there is one phrase I always find myself uttering while watching LoT so far, it is this: “Hawkman is a dick.”

In the first episode, the premise - that these are obscure, B-list heroes who become “Legends” is neatly flipped when it is revealed that in fact, Hunter chose them to aid him in his quest to defeat Savage precisely because they are insignificant, and worth little to the timeline. They are expendable. 

Adorably, they decide that this means they have everything to play for - a rousing speech is delivered about how they can “become Legends,” meaning that the hype which built up the series as a kind of TV Justice League is now inverted - we are now rooting for underdogs. Clever move, show. Very clever move.

Other things that happened in episodes 1 and 2 - well, we should probably talk about Hunter’s SUPER AWESOME TIMESHIP:

The Wave Rider, which shares a name with mullet-wearing energy-based superhero Waverider from the mid-90s DC comics everyone hates, has a cloaking device, laser cannons (I hope, anyway), and a built in HQ for our team of heroes. It is both cheapo digital effect, shiny, well-lit set and storytelling device, all in one. What’s more, its onboard computer is Gideon, offering a possible connection back to The Flash, where Gideon was the AI used by The Reverse Flash to track Barry Allen through time (and, I believe, was even created in the future by Allen himself). SO MANY QUESTIONS.

How did Gideon end up on The Wave Rider? Given that The Flash, in episode 2 of the new season’s second half, has been dropping hints about how The Reverse Flash came to battle Barry Allen in his parents home when Barry was a child, killing his mother in the process, the fact Gideon is also the onboard computer for the Legends is bound to have some significance down the road. Can you say crossover?

We should also probably talk about this badass mofo:

This is Chronos, a “temporal bounty hunter” (yay, comics!) who’s after Rip Hunter because he literally stole a time machine and went off to save the universe by fucking with the timeline. This character has everything, right? Black super-armour, check. Stupidly huge laser cannon, check. Wristwatch time travel device, check. Amazing metal mask, check. We only see him briefly in episode 2, but I imagine he’ll be a series regular - and by his attack, he reveals to us that Hunter is a renegade Timelord Time Master, and that his Legends are basically Super Nobodies. For now, anyway.

At the end of episode 2, the characters have already developed a ton - there’s been some team interplay, with White Canary and Captains Cold and Hot battling nameless thugs with amusing and well-chroeographed fisticuffs. Firestorm have had to deal with the whole roofie thing, and while I am still deeply concerned about an elderly white male in an authority position drugging and abducting a black college student, Firestorm seems to have forgiven him(self). Hey ho. 

Thus far, Captain Atom has been given some expensive flight/action sequences, but is kind of hanging around like a fifth wheel, stroking his wounded ego. But Brandon Routh is spectacular in this role, and while he suffers from the lack of the kooky chemistry he had with Team Arrow’s Felicity in these early episodes, I do believe he’ll come into his own. Which leaves Hawkdude and Hawkgirl, so far carrying the soap subplots with their creepy romance storyline, and its connection to the immortal Savage. If this show cannot find a way to make me not hate Hawkbloke, then he will just have to die. And quickly.

But what is it that makes this show compelling? The brutal cold open, with Savage’s armies destroying future-London by laserbeam and jckboot? The incredibly fast-paced leap into adventure of the first two episodes? The joy of seeing a functioning superteam on screen for the first time? The ultimate snark of the team’s superbly-cast villains? It’s all of these things, and more. It’s so good, it has made the opening episodes of the new seasons of The Flash and Arrow seem slow, reflective and (whisper it) dull by comparison. 

Legends feels like something completely fresh and new, and is driven at its core by incredible action sequences, dynamic casting and slick storytelling. It has already become a highlight of my weekly Cape Opera watching, and I can’t wait for the adventure to continue.

From this week’s episode on, I’ll be giving you a blow-by-blow recap if the events in each week’s show, so get caught up on the first two, and get ready to Fight For The Future!