Welcome back, Arrowheads! If you haven’t figured it out, this is the second half of a big Arrow/Flash crossover (which you can read the first half recap on A&V Stimuli), so let’s stick to what we learned on the Flash end: Vandal Savage, an immortal hunter who has been part of the big events of human history, visited Central City to kill Cisco’s new girlfriend, Kendra. Why? As we learn from a winged man (as in a man with hawk wings) called Carter Hall, she and him are lovers who have spent thousands of years being reincarnated and killed by Savage. When Barry Allen feels the Flash isn’t enough to stop him, he seeks Team Arrow’s help. Bad news, they can’t stop Savage, and with Savage recovering a superpowered staff, it looks like things are gonna get worse.
Oh, and Ollie thinks his ex-girlfriend, Samantha, from many years ago, had a child between them he didn’t know about. So, there’s something big there.
Across Eternity. For this week’s flashback, we go way back…like thousands of years ago to ancient Egypt times. We see Carter as Prince Khufu, and he’s in love with a priestess, Chay-era, who looks like Kendra. They get their lovemaking interrupted by a high priest who is Vandal Savage, and he is interrupted in “claiming” Chay-era by Khufu, and both lovers are stabbed fatally. They make a pact to be reincarnated again to each other as Vandal makes a vow to return to kill them over and over again. And this is before a meteor strike lays waste to everything. So let’s get to the less destructive present…
Welcome to the Egypt Weather Channel, today’s forecast calls for–AGHHHH! METEOR!
The Past Haunts. Team Arrow and Flash head off to a farm outside Central City, and set up what they need to do. One: Carter has to train Kendra; Two: find out how to hold that staff Savage has; Three: find a way to stop Savage; and Four: well, Ollie has to run down a lead. That “lead” is spying on Samantha and her boy, and he engineers a “run-in” with them. He doesn’t say anything about what he suspects in front of little William, and when he offhandedly asks about who’s the father, she says it isn’t him. But he does manage to get a piece of William’s hair to find out.
Then, Malcolm calls up to let Ollie know he’s managed to get Savage to sit down and negotiate ending this whole thing, which, RED FLAG, Malcolm can CALL up Vandal Savage. Seriously, why are you still trusting him? Barry also gets this news, and as he runs to the netting that night, he notices something. It looks like it the blur of running, he sees himself running too. If you’ve seen The Flash, you know that means time travel. But what would cause Barry to head back in time from the future?
Negotiating. Barry arrives to see Malcolm and Ollie, where Ollie really wants to use this meeting figure out how to fight Savage. He does this by hearing Savage’s proposal of “if Carter and Kendra are delivered to me in 24 hours, I won’t destroy you, your friends, and family” by answering “yeah, here’s an arrow to the chest”. That goes as well as the last time Team Arrow tried shooting him in the chest with arrows, which immortal, unkillable guy is not killed by it. After Savage leaves, Malcolm insists Ollie and company take the deal to protect Thea, to which Ollie should have said, “yeah the only person to hurt her over the last few seasons has been YOU, so shove your advice up your ass”.
Barry: “Look, if you’re gonna kill anyone, don’t kill Malcolm, because he’s our most loved person we know.” Malcolm: “Thanks, Barry–HEY WAIT A MINUTE!”
The team gets told about Savage’s offer, and based on Carter’s recollection of their past lives, not accepting would lead to all their deaths. Kendra’s willing to sacrifice herself to keep Savage from doing that, but let’s table that for a moment, because Laurel found an old videotape from an conspiracy theory group liking into a man that sounds a lot like Savage. From what the scholarly man says in the video, material that connects the duo and Savage can be used to kill Savage. Interesting…
What Is Hidden. Barry tells Cisco about that weird time flash he had, but before we can figure out what that’s about, Ollie asks Barry to run an analysis at the crime lab on that hair taken from William, and yep, William is Ollie’s son. He leaves telling Barry not to say anything about this, and when Felicity shows up to get the guys back to the farm, what does he do? He caves into her questioning and shows her the test results form, which by the way, has no names on it, and is shocked to read it. Ollie goes over to see Samantha, and confronts her alone about what happened. Well, she tells him about her agreement about Moira to stay quiet about her pregnancy (and she even presents Moira’s UNCASHED 1 MILLION CHECK? WTH?!), and knowing Ollie’s life of late, would rather not bring him or anyone into William’s life. But she will allow Ollie to see him, if he doesn’t tell anyone about William. Oh great, no way will that promise to lie go badly for Ollie.
Except, Ollie doesn’t even get a chance to do that when he gets back to the farm, because Felicity confronts Ollie about him being a daddy (because, and only with Felicity can something this crazy be said without seeming really creepy stalker-like, she recognizes his DNA patterns. ONCE AGAIN, WTH?!). Before he can say, “Look, I just discovered this long-lasting lie TODAY, can I at least sit down with this news to take it in?”, she’s ready to end things between them because he was lying, or in this case, didn’t, because being Felicity Smoak’s boyfriend means dealing with neurosis ON EVERYTHING. Before we can get to patch things up there, Cisco has gotten the gloves to hold the staff ready, and with Kendra now realizing her powers, there’s a plan that involves accepting Savage’s offer. What could go wrong, except EVERYTHING?
“OOOOOOHHHHHHH (censored)!”
Hawk Bait. Seeing Ollie’s a bit distracted, he only brings himself and Barry to this trade-off in a warehouse (naturally), along with Carter and Kendra in some nice costumes. But everything goes bad as Barry uses the gloves and gets Savage’s staff, but it doesn’t work in controlling it. Kendra has stage fright which leads to both her and Carter getting killed by Savage! Then Barry’s told to run as the staff turns Ollie to ash! And THEN Savage unleashes a pulse which vaporizes Central City AND the rest of our team! But as Barry speeds faster to avoid the pulse…he goes back in time to the meeting they had with Savage a day ago! At least he knows the plan won’t work.
FLASHBack. After that meeting happens again for Barry, he’s about to be asked to run a test on that hair strand by Ollie, when he tells him what happened. As in the whole “he’s your son, you lie and Felicity leaves you, and oh yeah, everyone dies” story. Where Barry sees the bad side of knowing about the future, Ollie uses it to fix the mistakes of what happened. Besides the gloves, Ollie needs Cisco to help Kendra.
Carter’s been trying to train her through being aggressive, but Cisco appeals to the part of her he really likes about her: her need to protect and nurture. And also, she gets to see that ancient Egypt flashback we all saw earlier, and says she knows how to stop Savage. Things bonded to their link can be used to work the staff with the gloves, like say, the meteor rock that hit Egypt. Good thing Felicity finds one nearby in Central City, so all they need to do is find it, and–hold on, Barry just swiped it! And just in case, everyone’s coming to the meeting. What do you mean, everyone? EVERYONE!
Ok, just hold the giant metal staff together and thrust. Nothing weird or sexual about that.
Re-Try. So we get to the meet and things are seeming to go the same way…until Kendra gets in the zone finally, and Thea, Laurel, and Diggle distract Savage. Barry gets the weapon, but still isn’t strong enough to blast Savage, at least until Ollie offers an assist and helps keep the Staff steady. And then Savage and the staff get reduced to ashes! Damn! So way better results this time, huh?
Bondings. The next day, Kendra decides to leave with Carter to learn more about herself, along with helping others. Cisco is kind of okay with it, but its still kind of a bummer for that relationship. Meanwhile, Barry advises that lying about William to Felicity may not be in that couple’s best interests. Oh, and they bro-hug. Nice.
So Ollie goes to see Samantha and when she makes her offer we saw previously, he accepts. So he gets to bond with his son (a big Flash fan, BTW) while playing “an old friend of Samantha”. After Ollie and Felicity get home, he unfortunately doesn’t tell her a out William, which, sounds like another disaster you could have walked out of, Ollie. You were told what would happen, man!
Also, in the “of course you can’t trust Malcolm Merlyn” department, ol’ Malcolm is scooping up Savage’s ashes into an urn, saying he’ll owe him for this. Dammit! Well, that’s it until the winter finale, which makes me wonder, how will this rank in the realm of horrible Queen Christmases? Like “Malcolm Merlyn almost kills me” or “Ra’s al Ghul stabs me and throws me off a mountain”?
So, same time next year?
–Comic book connections: So the city Hawkman and Hawkgirl are going to is a noteworthy locale for the heroes in the DCU. Also, Oliver does have a son in the comics, but whether that means his son will take the Green Arrow mantle in this show is way too early to tell.
–Clearly Vandal Savage isn’t dead (after all, he’s the big bad of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow), so how is he coming back? Its not like you can resurrect ashes in a soiled Lazarus pit, right?
–The sniping between both groups over whose HQ is the easiest to get into was great. But guys, in my eyes, you both have crappy base security!
–Cisco’s scale of glove reliability? From “You Can’t Touch This” to “Invisible Touch”.
–“Wait, the ‘Indiana Jones’ reference is the only part of that I understood.”
–“My world is stranger than yours.”
–“A bunch of superheroes in a farmhouse? I think I’ve seen that in a movie…”
–“You shoot arrows, you give love tips, I get it, you’re Cupid now…”
–“I know stuff.”
–“I’m not really a hugger.”
That’s it for now, but leave your comments below and come back next week for the recap of the winter finale, “Dark Waters”…
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What do you think?