THE FLASH Season 2 Episode 8: 'Legends of Today' is Awkwardly Trying to Justify the Crossover



Despite being billed as the second big crossover between ARROW and THE FLASH, “Legends of Today" is, in reality, a crossover between ARROW, THE FLASH and LEGENDS OF TOMORROW. This would actually be pretty exciting if it weren’t for the fact that LoT still hasn’t aired. So instead of getting our fill of interaction between Team Flash and Team Arrow, we’re introduced to a bunch of new characters that will probably never show up again on either show, except if it’s another crossover.

That doesn’t mean that the characters or story are bad… just that they have nothing to do with the plotlines of either THE FLASH or ARROW. This led to several awkward moments that appeared to be trying to justify Team Flash and Team Arrow’s presence, but just served to hammer home how forced everything felt — I mean, Malcolm Merlyn randomly dropping in twice for an exposition dump on new baddie Vandal Savage, and Cisco accidentally giving away Barry’s identity to Kendra after a year of secret-keeping? That’s just clunky writing. 

While we did get a few nice Green Arrow/Flash team up moments during the fight scenes, the truth is that this is really Kendra’s story, and her ties to the rest of the 'Flarrow' universe are pretty tenuous at this point. To be fair, we did see get a few glimpses of her earlier in the season during some romantic moments with Cisco, but I doubt she had even ten minutes of screentime total before this episode. She felt out place with both teams; neither Barry nor Ollie really had much of a connection to her.

That said, Ciara Renée is very likable and charming in her role; it’ll be great to see her have a chance to spread her wings (horrible pun intended, yes) and explore Kendra’s character more. What we saw of her and Carter’s backstory this episode looked very intriguing and seemed to be referencing a lot of the classic Hawk mythology from the comics; there’s a definitely a lot of great dramatic material for LoT to draw on. And of course, Vandal Savage has his own very complex rich history in the comics that I’m sure the show will want to weave in. We only get vague hints of what he’s capable of in this episode, but the fact that he’s managed to kill Carter and Kendra in over two hundred of their previous lifetimes shows how ruthless and effective he can be. 

As the rest of the team deals with Vandal and the Hawks, Caitlin and Wells stayed behind to try and come up with a drug that could increase Barry’s speed and allow him to match Zoom. It was nice that the writers didn’t totally ignore the Zoom plot, but it did end up highlighting how totally unrelated the Vandal business was to the main storyline. Still, I really enjoyed that they continued to build on Wells and Caitlin’s bond from the previous episode; I always thought their relationship had a lot of potential that was left untapped in Season 1. It also adds a nice bit of tension Jay and Caitlin’s romance, since it’s clear he still completely distrusts Wells, even if he did end up saving his life. And he may have good reason, since the ending of the episode seemed to suggest Wells is planning to use the drug on himself rather than Barry. It could be a red herring, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see three speedsters running around in next week’s midseason finale.

Of course, Wally West is making his long-awaited appearance next time (we can all stop holding our breath now), so there’s always the possibility that the writers want to the ground running at give him his speed right away, or at least tease it a bit. It’d be a pretty bold move, but midseason finales are known to end on a juicy cliffhanger or two. And if this crossover proved anything, it’s that the show’s definitely not shy at all about bringing new heroes into the fold.

Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer