The long discussed and anticipated crossover is here. The Flash has made his way to National City and is teaming up with Supergirl to stop Livewire and Silver Banshee who are out to kill Supergirl, Cat Grant and Kara Danvers.
The Positive
Times have been tough for Supergirl, she is still trying to win back the public trust from the Red Kryptonite incident, Hank aka J’onn J’onzz is a fugitive along with her sister Alex, and now her former coworker Siobhan Smythe is tying to kill her. Kara gets some help from the most unexpected of places when Barry Allen shows up in her world.
The plot is a basic revenge story as Siobhan realizes she has a powerful ability and sets out to use it to get back at Cat and Kara who she believes wronged her and crushed her dreams of being a professional journalist. Turns out Siobhan’s family is cursed by a banshee and when one of them is wronged the banshee comes out and takes over until they kill the person who wronged them. While getting checked by the DEO she sees Livewire and a plan is born.
The real highlight of this episode is watching Barry’s interactions with Supergirl’s world. His shock and surprise to learn that she is an alien, everything in the DEO, and even her time with Cat Grant is just a lot of fun. Kara and Barry compliment each other very well, seeing him run and get her ice cream is simply a fantastic scene that you can’t help but smile at.
There has been a trend in recent superhero productions to make things darker and grittier, so it’s refreshing to see a story that is fun and light. Of course, the episodes is not sunshine and rainbows but the characters do not succumb to the darkness instead they strive to uphold the light.
Supergirl and Flash don’t start off as the best superhero team, he wants to plan more and she just wants to rush headlong in, and things do not go as planned. Since he is the more experienced hero, he gives her advice and helps her take out the villains and earn back some of the public’s trust.
The Negative
Silver Banshee and Livewire make a good villainous team, however they do show some of the limitations of the show. Both of them have some questionable makeup and hair. Once Siobhan has gone full Banshee, she looks less like a supervillain and more like a goth Halloween costume.
This not the first time that the Flash has traveled to another Earth, but Barry seems to accept this new world rather quickly and it’s never really in question that he will be able to get back home safely. He acts a bit more like a tourist than someone who has traveled to another Earth by accident.
The episode ends with the Flash returning home, so it may be too early to tell what kind of fallout his arrival has for National City. They are all very excited about a new hero in their midst, and there is no mention of what will happen now that he is gone.
The Verdict
The Flash and Supergirl are two of my favorite comic book shows on TV right now. Seeing the two of them crossover was simply great and I had a smile on my face the entire time. The episode is light and fun, but a pair of good villains do keep it from being too sugary sweet.
For continuity people, if you watched this and the latest episode of The Flash as they aired, we actually got Barry’s story out of order as this episode seems to take place sometime after the latest episode of The Flash.
