Airing in the UK on Sky 1, new episodes every Monday
Writers: Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim
Director: Larry Teng
Essential Plot Points:
- Barry and Iris are getting married, and everyone’s invited to the wedding! Kara, Oliver, Mick, everyone is on board to support the bride and groom.
- A lot goes down at the rehearsal dinner, as Oliver and Felicity’s relationship seems to be in shaky territory, while Alex gets super drunk with Sara and the pair hit it off right away.
- Kara is still struggling with the recent news that not only is Mon-el alive, he’s from the future and is now married. But that won’t stop her from having fun on Barry’s big day.
- When the day comes along, though, Nazi soldiers from an alternate reality decide to step in and attack the superheroes – stopping the wedding in its tracks.
- Barry, Kara, Olliver et al spring into action, and after a grueling first battle the masked soldiers manage to escape.
- The villains, it turns out, are the Nazi equivalents of the superheroes and are led by an alternate version of Kara, herself.
Review:
It’s Barry and Iris’s wedding, and they’ve invited all their super-friends to join in the celebrations. In this year’s big Arrowverse crossover we get to see Kara, Barry, Oliver et al combine their efforts against their Nazi counterparts from an alternate dimension. And the result is an action-packed episode which showcases exactly why these shows are so great. With Supergirl now a full part of the CW family, this year’s collaboration benefits from her appearance in the episode as an important figure rather than a throwaway reference like last time.
The first of a four part special, “Crisis on Earth X Part 1” does a great job of setting up the premise for the crossover as well as putting all of its heroes to good use in a short amount of time. It’s a pretty easy narrative to become engaged in, Barry and Iris –the perfect couple- are finally tying the knot and all their super-friends are coming to visit, but just as they’re about to say their vows a group of dark-clothed Nazis in masks turns up to ruin the party, que fight and many burning questions from our charismatic superheroes.
The real joy of this special is seeing everyone together under one roof; everyone is just so loveable and charming that it’s hard to find a fault with them. Seeing them interact and show an interest in each other’s lives –romantically or otherwise- made the group seem like a real close-knit family. There’s a great balance between the different storylines present in each show which was nice. But, the wedding came at a particularly good time for certain character’s arcs, like Firestorm or Kara and Alex. Now that Mon-el has returned but is married, and Alex and Maggie are no longer together, the event comes as a bit of a struggle for the Danvers sisters, as they try to come to terms with things while dealing with their surroundings. It certainly came as a good way to smoothly bring them to the next chapter of their lives.
The episode’s reveal that the unwanted visitors are Nazi equivalents of characters like Green Arrow, Supergirl, Reverse Flash and Prometheus is put a little too close to the ending. Given how obvious it is who the villains are, it seems like this was an idea that could have been introduced much earlier in the episode to save it from a rather lacklustre ending. Also, while the episode did set up the story for the upcoming episodes well, it was just that…a set up. What this means is that there wasn’t much to the episode to make it stand out when its main purpose was just making sure that everything was prepared for the rest of the narrative.
The Good:
- The writers have done a good job of balancing the stories of the different characters well even when this is technically an episode in Supergirl.
- All the characters are so loveable and fun, can they get together more often please?
- They all interact with each other really well.
- This is a solid first part for this super-special crossover, it sets things up very nicely for the future episodes.
The Bad:
- It’s a great set-up, but it is just a set-up so apart from the intense battle at the end this episode feels a bit drawn out and isn’t much more than a taste of what’s to come.
And the Random:
- Did you catch the Indiana Jones “I hate Nazis” reference in this week’s episode?
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