ARROW Season 5 Episode 8 'Invasion' Review: Well after a stellar kickoff to the crossover on THE FLASH (sorry SUPERGIRL but everyone knew your episode didn't really count) I was sorely disappointed with the 100th episode of ARROW. After being beamed up by the Dominators at the end of this week's Flash, Oliver, Thea, John, Sara and Ray found themselves in a Dominator generated shared VR dream made up from elements from their collective memories but more importantly, elements from the show's five-year history.
We've all seen this kind of story get told before – heroes wake up in a simulated environment, a “perfect life” and slowly realise something is wrong. We've seen it in shows like Star Trek to Doctor Who to Red Dwarf. And all of them were done better than this. It was all so clumsy and I simply couldn't bring myself to care. I'm sure fan boys and girls were squeeing away as Oliver's parents turned up alive or Malcolm Merlyn showed up but I just could muster any enthusiasm for it. I have always disliked the soap opera elements to Arrow, so casually tossing aside the crossover storyline to take a stroll down memory lane simply bored me. All of the elements felt shoe-horned in and the fact they didn't even let the characters figure things out themselves was just infuriating, instead each of the captured heroes having their real life memories “glitch” back into place with a poorly chosen static effect when confronted by familiar elements that reminded them something was wrong.
Yes, this was sort of Arrow's Flashpoint, showing an alternate world where Oliver and his father never left Starling City on the Queen's Gambit, but unfortunately it wasn't explored in any depth. Where THE FLASH crossover episode dealt with the characters meeting each other and coming to terms with the revelations of the changes Barry made to the timeline – this was just a shallow re- skin of Arrow to celebrate 100 episodes. So allow me to “fantasy book” this episode for a second. Had the captured heroes memories been truly mixed up, with them not being able to clearly distinguish what was real and what wasn't, just how heart breaking would it have been had they tried to break out the dream with Laurel in tow, only to realise she wasn't captured along with them and was in fact only part of the VR construct, forcing them to face her death again. Just an idea.
Also, I found myself throughout the entire episode asking myself “why?” Why had the Dominators kidnapped them and trapped them in this, seemingly completely ineffective VR dream world? It felt obvious that the answer was the writers thought this would be a cool idea for the 100th episode and it was made to fit the Invasion storyline retroactively but as we later found out the whole purpose was actually to “probe” their minds for intelligence. All that for some info on how best to attack the Earth? Really? The most interesting thing to happen in the illusionary life was when Thea couldn't bring herself to leave and Oliver decided to leave without her, all of which of course turned out to be nothing than an ad break cliff hanger as literally in the next scene Thea re-joins the others in their attempt to leave. The fight against their assorted nightmare enemies was pretty sweet though.
Back on Earth, Felicity and the remaining Team Arrow (Sans Artemis. Seriously where was she?) worked with Cisco to try and find out where The Dominators took the others. The fact it took them all episode to work out that the aliens had abducted them to a ship in orbit was a joke. I mean, where did they think they beamed them away to? A quick note, having a more downbeat Cisco, in keeping with how his character is right now in The Flash due to the revelation that his brother is dead because of Barry's meddling with the timeline was actually pretty brilliant as it cut through the otherwise unbearable cringe fest that is Curtis and Felicity bandying back nerd talk to one another. What got me though, was when Cisco pulled a piece of Dominator tech taken from their drop ship that landed in Central City. This miraculous piece of tech that could have come in handy when they engaged the Dominators in The Flash's Invasion part 1 but then no, because it was obviously only just conjured into existence so Felicity and co had something to “hack.” But of course, they needed one last piece of experimental tech to make the whole thing work, a MacGuffin of a device stolen by some random Cyber Woman super villain that too was just conjured into being so the others had someone to fight.
Flash and Supergirl turned up as glorified cameos in what wasn't really a crossover so much as an Arrow special but it was fun to see them double team the Cyber Woman. What was weird was Rene's sudden dislike of people with powers. It's something you think he would have mentioned before, considering he's faced people with powers and even works alongside Ragman who by any definition is a powered individual (even if it's his suit and not him). Of course he changes his mind about meta humans and aliens straight after Barry and Kara save his life, another example at how shallow this show can be. Also, what was with the weird reference to the divine being? This lead to the revelation that the Dominators communicate in a form of alpha-numeric language based on hebrew because... reasons. I've no idea what they were thinking.
After escaping the Dominator's mother ship, Oliver and co were saved last minute by the Waverider, a moment that had me simultaneously punching the air and lamenting the fact the other Legends, Firestorm, Vixen et al had no place in this episode. For shame CW.
We were left with the Dominators heading to Earth with no real understanding of their motivation and a prayer on my lips that LEGENDS OF TOMORROW can bring this one home. Oddly enough, ARROW showrunner runner Marc Guggenheim co-wrote both the ARROW and LEGENDS OF TOMORROW episodes of the crossover, but he always comes out better on LEGENDS OF TOMORROW so we'll see.
Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer -- Click to read Nick's posts
SUPERGIRL
THE FLASH
LEGENDS OF TOMORROW