[For Arrow 100, “Invasion!” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

The CW Summary:
“Invasion!” Oliver Queen wakes up to a life where he never got on The Queen’s Gambit.

The 100th Episode of Arrow was many things: Part homage, part heartstring-tugging spectacle, part nostalgia piece… But most of all, center episode of the “Invasion!” crossover.

At the end of the opening “Invasion!” episode of The Flash, we saw five human heroes teleported onto a Dominator alien ship. The five heroes — Arrow, Speedy, Atom, White Canary, and Spartan — spend Arrow 100 sharing a collective dream, plugged into a Dominator computer.

“For the Man Who Has Everything”

The shared dream sees Oliver Queen on the eve of his wedding to — you guessed it — Dinah Laurel Lance. The resplendent Laurel is alive and well in the dream, as are both of Ollie’s parents. Noteworthy to this dream is that everyone is proud of the man Ollie has become (even Captain Lance). Oliver’s dad is about to become the mayor of the city. He asks Ollie to take over as CEO of Queen Consolidated, lest the board support a buyout from one Ray Palmer.

It seems like Ollie has everything a boy billionaire could want: A beautiful Laurel. The love of his family. A CEO job waiting. “You have everything. Stop trying to throw it all away.”

Arrow 100 is a light homage to Alan Moore’s great “For the Man Who Has Everything” (incidentally BDM‘s favorite Superman story of all time). Superman — who dreams of living a very different life on an unexploded Krypton in the Moore story — is Ollie here. But the whole thing is a lie. The Dominators want to present a perfect life to the five non-metahumans to keep them docile in the ship; very The Matrix, even.

When Ollie and Dig first show signs of freedom and recognition, the dreamscape fights back. Deathstroke — fully masked and certainly not Manu Bennett — bursts onto the scene and attacks them with swords. Ollie and Dig hold him off admirably (given it’s fists-against-falchion) until Sara disarms Deathstroke from offscreen and stabs him to death.

This prompted some discussion on Twitter.

Tonight's episode of ARROW raises a serious question; could White Canary take out Deathstroke? I need @fivewithflores power rankings.

— Brian David-Marshall (@Top8Games) December 1, 2016

I think it’s obvious that White Canary — even promoted to her starring role on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow — is not realistically a match for Deathstroke. This was dream-Deathstroke, and not even Manu Bennett! We actually know how a Sara-versus-Slade confrontation would go (Sara onced jumped Deathstroke and was tossed aside effortlessly).

The Fight

The trio gather Ray, but initially fail to recruit Thea to leave the dream. What’s so great about the real world, she perhaps rightly asks. Maybe, speculates Thea, this dream where Laurel and their parents are still alive, and the Queens are still billionaires, is Ollie’s reward for all the sacrifices he’s made.

Except Ollie didn’t make any of those sacrifices for a reward. He did it all because it was right.

Ollie &co. move to leave the Queen wedding compound but are confronted by the Big Bads of the previous seasons. Malcom Merlyn. Deathstroke. Damian Darkh. (and some randos) Conspicuous by his absence: Ra’s al Ghul.

Thea has a change of heart and engages dear old dad.

Sara pairs off against Darkh this time, avenging a sister still alive in the dreamworld.

Ollie gets Deathstroke.

The fight scene is pretty great. Thea kills her dream-dad with a sword and takes his bow, shooting an arrow at Sara. Sara catches the arrow out of the air and uses it to stab Darkh. Ollie finishes the fight with the bow, which he uses to finish off Deathstroke. (Ray and Dig kill the randos with some guns. Whatevs.)

WHO’D WIN?

Could Sara have beaten Deathstroke? To be fair, it was three-on-one (one of whom was Ollie). Ollie could not only beat Deathstroke, but Year Minus Three Ollie on Lian Yu killed a Mirakuru-powered Deathstroke, cleanly. Why does Deathstroke only have one eye? Ollie stabbed him “to death” through the other one. Ollie of course completed Season Two with a very pyrrhic win over Slade with another clean win. But Sara? Probably not.

Could Speedy have beaten Merlyn? While it is possible that Merlyn would “let” his daughter win, I don’t think that dream-Malcolm not throwing a death match would likely lose to Speedy. Merlyn is sub-Ollie, but still ascended to Ra’s al Ghul. Remember, Nyssa was not considered his equal (Ollie had to fight Merlyn in her place, taking Merlyn’s hand). Unless you think Thea is substantially more dangerous than Nyssa, this win is equally the product of a dream as Sara killing Deathstroke.

Could Sara have beaten Darkh? I think so. Regular Darkh (i.e. not Diviner Darkh) was “just” an assassin (not the equal to Merlyn); same as Sara. Sara is depicted as having grown through her many trials, while Darkh is depicted as increasingly reliant on magic or powerful allies like Reverse Flash.

Could Ollie have beaten Deathstroke? Sure. Especially in the dreamworld.

The heroes escape the Dominators’ dream, stealing an alien spaceship. They are persued by dozens of others, but are saved at the last minute by the Waverider, leading into the “Invasion!” conclusion on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Until tomorrow.

To be continued…

LOVE
MIKE

[For The Flash‘s “Invasion!” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

The CW Summary:
When aliens attack, Barry seeks help from Green Arrow, the Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl.

Cold Open

In an “Invasion!” opening flash*-forward we see Barry and Ollie up shit creek. Ollie refers to Barry as “team leader” just as a burst of Kryptonian heat vision rips through the wall they are hiding behind. The founding pair of the Arrowverse come around to face their foes… Starting with Speedy (!!!)

The “Invasion!” cold open ends with Thea Queen in her full red Speedy armor, Spartan, Heatwave, White Canary,Firestorm, the Atom and Supergirl in badass poses facing off against the fastest man alive + a guy with a bow and arrow.

Ten Hours Earlier…

At S.T.A.R. Labs a concerned Team Flash is measuring Wally West, who has only recently obtained Flash-like speed. Apparently everything is coming up Piznarski for Wally, but Iris begs Team Flash to discourage him from training or using his speed.

A “meteor” plummets towards downtown Central City, prompting Barry to investigate… but it turns out to be an alien spaceship instead. Scary alien monsters swarm out and knock down Barry (but don’t kill him or anything)

The government attempts to cover up the alien ship crash as a routine experiment. Lyla Michaels (aka Mrs. Diggle, aka Amanda Waller version 2.0) is on the scene and suggests the President take this more seriously. She is rebuffed by government “big guns” … But Barry, still there in Flash mode from the previous night, will listen.

At S.T.A.R. Labs Lyla informs Team Flash about the aliens — the Dominators. Four ships are coming, not just the one. Lyla says that the United Nations is coordinating a response, but Barry points out that they won’t be able to stop the Dominators if it comes to it. The Argus director retorts that neither will Barry.

Not alone anyway!

Barry gets a little help from his friends…

Barry recruits Arrow, Diggle, Thea, and Felicity from Star City. Thea comes out of retirement, because aliens. Felicity leaves some kind of time message for the Legends. All of them meet up at “a hangar” that Barry owns (pictured above). Recognize it from anywhere?

There are countless wide open plot holes in “Invasion!” so far but my God there is nothing as great as Team Arrow, Team Flash, the Legends of Tomorrow, and a dimensionally-displaced Supergirl meeting at the Hall of g-d Justice. The next episode could be an “it was all a dream” cop-out and ten-year-old michaelj wouldn’t care. He would love it Love It LOVE IT anyway.

Per BDM‘s recap of “Medusa” Barry and Vibe bring Supergirl back from last night’s episode and the team-up proper begins.

Ollie defers to Barry as team leader; Supergirl plays resident training alien, to the dismay (and bruises) of the assembled other-heroes.

Key “Invasion!” plot developments:

1. The Dominators capture and apparently kill the President. Their goal, though, seems to be to take mental control of our heroes.
2. The Firestorm duo reveals the recording Barry sent from forty years in the future on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. In the recording future-Barry warns Rip and crew that he can’t be trusted, presumably due to his Flashpoint screwup. When Dig finds out that Baby John used to be Baby Sara, Caitlin is maybe Killer Frost, and Cisco’s brother is now dead, everyone is upset with Barry. Oliver says he will stick by Barry, which ends up separating Arrow and Flash from the rest of the heroes when they go to rescue the President.
3. Heroes versus heroes! The Dominators mind control the non-Arrow / non-Flash good guys with some kind of alien gem. All heck breaks loose at S.T.A.R. Labs. Wally very briefly bursts in to save the day (before being punked by Supergirl).

In addition to these three crossover points, I found it interesting the DC’s Legends of Tomorrow team would choose to make two of their show’s big reveals on The Flash. Not only did we find out what happened on future-Barry’s recording during “Invasion!” but we found out about the mystery brunette that has been giving Professor Stein headaches… It’s a daughter he apparently didn’t have pre-Flashpoint.

Head Scratchers:

Keeping in mind that there is almost nothing that would quench the raging inferno of my love for this superhero crossover, here are three things from “Invasion!” that made no sense to me:

As far as I can tell, the point of this episode (from the Dominators’ side) was to mind control the powerful Earth superheroes. It is consequently maddening that they would leave their mind control gem unguarded. For that matter, why wouldn’t they have used the mind controlled heroes for something more interesting than just attacking the not-yet-mind-controlled ones? Barry has to out-speed and outwit Supergirl to break the mind control gem, but it is inexplicable to me that he would have had the opportunity against a strategically thoughtful foe.

Supergirl says she has heard about the Dominators. They came to her world before she was born and killed a lot of people. I found this a bit off considering she is from Earth-38. Is she saying that there are parallel Dominators in her universe? Implying Earth-1 Dominators breached their way to Earth-38?

White Canary claims that Nate and Vixen have stayed behind to guard the Legends’ time ship, calling them “rookies”. Doesn’t Vixen presumably have years of superhero experience, seeing that she was an actually trained agent in the J.S.A. prior to stowing away with the Legends of Tomorrow? Maybe they’ll reappear Thursday night or so.

These things did make sense:

• Upon learning that boy billionaire / Star City mayor Oliver Queen is the Green Arrow, Iris declares him “even hotter”.
• White Canary expresses similar admiration for “skirt” Supergirl, as she repeatedly lays out the Earth-1 heroes in training.

“Invasion!” ends with Barry alone in the rain, as the briefly-foiled Dominators teleport all nearby superheroes off the Hall of Justice S.T.A.R. Labs tarmac.

To be continued…

LOVE
MIKE

* See what I did there?