The DC Series on the CW have delivered a speculator, dare I say unprecedented 4-way crossover series, but did “Invasion†live up to the lofty expectations of the crossover? More or yes, certainly.
The main difficulty of having such an extensive crossover is the fear of overstuffing an episode and replacing strong characterization with superfluous banter; surprisingly, this episode was able to avoid that for the most part. Early on, the various heroes are split into groups; Mick, Amaya, Nate Cisco and Felicity travel back to 1951, the place where they plan to capture a Dominator to determine their intentions for currently attacking the world.
It is surely a bit farfetched, per se, but definitely right up the alley for the partial Legends crew. The excitement that Felicity and Cisco have about being able to time travel reallys puts a lighthearted note on the very serious twists that occur when they do capture a Dominator. They eventually end up saving a Dominator from being tortured and thus learn that the Dominators are here to keep Metas in check, and they fear Barry’s powers in the current timeline. This then provides the lesson that pulls Cisco back to being on Barry’s side. Cisco attempted to help by talking down the Dominators, but he then realized that it is the same situation where Barry was in. They were both just desperately attempting to help, which led to unintended outcomes.
Paralleling the time travel to 1951, Caitlin and Martin are attempting to find a way to take out all the Dominators to save the world, with the help of a certain aberration caused by Barry’s time traveling and Martin’s meddling with his younger self on various occasions. Caitlin Snow brings in none other than Dr. Lily Stein, Martin’s daughter, or as he struggles with coming to terms with, an aberration. The struggle within himself to acknowledge that he indeed does have a daughter and that he missed being an actual farther to her is pretty tough to swallow. Martin goes through all the emotions you could imagine, but with the help of Jefferson, he eventually does come around and appears to want to really get to know Lily. Â
They create small devices that are to be placed on every single Dominator, across the entire world. Of all aspects of the episode, I feel like the final resolution was a bit anticlimactic. There were few brief scenes where we got to see the entire crew fight together, but the scenes seemed like an afterthought to Barry and Supergirl placing the small chips on all of the Dominators. I feel that a more elegant solution could have been created where they didn’t just have to run fast and put them on each Dominator. It seems very bland for a show all about the fantastical. Sadly, this is pretty much what Supergirl was relegated to in this episode.
Oliver, in his overthinking of the situation, felt that they needed to do this without Supergirl, since she is an alien after all and was afraid of how all powerful she actually can become. This was a bit of a ham-fisted way to write Supergirl out of the episode, or so it seems. They obviously wanted to her to take a backseat since she could easily handle them, but the episode was definitely missing that Supergirl vibe.
