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S02.E07: Invasion!


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So glad Cisco finally realized what a giant hypocrite he was for time traveling. Eight million people have apparently fucked with the timeline, there must be about a zillion timelines now, but Flashpoint was when the Dominators decided "NOPE, THAT'S IT, CAN'T HAVE THE TIME TRAVELING."

I don't watch Legends but I enjoyed this conclusion. I actually think they did a great job across all the shows for the crossover. I really hope they continue to do crossovers, even for just one or two characters at a time, because I enjoy seeing them interact. Especially Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin who make everything better just by showing up and being smiley and charming. Seriously, Supergirl writers, how do you manage to keep putting her in boring romantic pairings when she has chemistry with nearly everyone in the world?

It's the little things, you know?

-Supergirl saving Oliver and then having a look on her face like "Um, was that okay?"

-Barry and Kara forcing Oliver to do a group hug.

-Mick calling the president hot and Sara being all "yeah"

-Ray noting that Kara looks like his cousin. 

-the Sara/Oliver hug at the end.

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9 hours ago, Minneapple said:

Eight million people have apparently fucked with the timeline, there must be about a zillion timelines now, but Flashpoint was when the Dominators decided "NOPE, THAT'S IT, CAN'T HAVE THE TIME TRAVELING."

Again I don't think they knew about any of that.  I believe they only learned about Flashpoint (that a meta could drastically alter the timeline causing potential instability) after they captured Team Arrow and examined their brains for intel on the current metas.   The Dominators probably never knew about Thawnes antics either.  (Although it's possible they learned about him from Oliver, but to Oliver's current knowledge he is presently dead thus why they would not have been at all concerned about him only Barry?  At this point Ray/Sara don't know that Thawne is currently their time traveling enemy either.)   The Legends would have been irrelevant to them because again their main beef is not time travel it's their fear of metas growing too powerful to be controlled.  A meta capable of altering time represents one that is too powerful to them which is what set them off and made them decided to nuke the meta population before anymore metas of that caliber could arise on Earth.

Edited by Xenith22
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I watch The Flash and Arrow, but not Supergirl or Legends of Tomorrow so I wasn't sure how much of this four part crossover I would like and how much would have me scratching my head about shows I normally don't watch.

Pro: Most of the characters on LoT were from Arrow so I knew who they were. Cisco and Felicity are always fun together. It seems like the whole Cisco hates Barry thing might finally be over.

Cons: Where do I begin? First of all, Oliver's bull crap excuse as to why Kara shouldn't come along made NO FUCKING SENSE. Also completely nonsensical: Firestorm couldn't turn the bomb into something else until Stein said, "I have a daughter and she's counting on you!" What the fucking fuck? The aliens were going to blow up the planet if Barry didn't hand himself over because he broke a condition of a treaty that he wasn't even aware of? Don't get me wrong - what Barry did was selfish and he KNEW that he shouldn't go back and change time, but did he deserve to be killed by aliens because some dude he had never met negotiated an agreement with aliens? But even more ridiculous was the fact that his punishment would prevent the aliens from killing everyone on earth, but the Flash/Arrow/Supergirl/Legends team decided that they should risk the safety of the entire planet to keep Barry from being killed by aliens. Ooookay then. Even Buffy knew that one life in exchange for saving the world was the right call.

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3 minutes ago, Writing Wrongs said:

That kinda bugged me.

I agree.  Barry and Oliver both have their own shows, whose seasons run a good five episodes longer. So I was a little annoyed that they ended up with the final scene here.  It made sense because this was the crossover finale but that could have gone to the Legends crew.

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5 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Mick though, continues to be the best.  Him hitting on Kara is something I never knew I wanted, along with him and Sara both admiring the new President.  And why is that I want Rene/Wild Dog to get smacked whenever he calls Felicity "Blondie", but Mick calling her "Ponytail" doesn't seem to bother me?  Is it because he gives pretty much everyone nicknames?  Or it just doesn't come off as condescending or disrespectful compared to Rene?  I really don't know.

Yep, with Mick it comes off as a badge of honor.  If Mick gives somebody a nickname, it's not a bad thing, it's actually a good thing.  Ray is his closest friend since Snart's dead, and Mick calls him "Haircut".

Edited by Jediknight
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Mick uses nicknames if he likes the person. If he calls you nothing that's worse. Angry hockey mask was just a condescending asshole. Although Mick does call Sara by her name. That's probably the ultimate sign of respect from him since the only other person he did that for was Snart. Unless he's talking about the three of them in the third person, then they are Killer, Klepto and Pyro. 

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On 12/2/2016 at 2:43 AM, thuganomics85 said:

Speaking of which, The Dominators are kind of dicks, because they apparently weren't that concern of Eobard/Reverse Flash fucking up the timelines, and even Zoom's fuckery, but it's only when Barry does it, they go "We cannot abide by this!"

Don't blame Martin at all for keeping Lily a secret, but I'm sure that is going to cause problems down the line.  Victor Garber was great as always.

Not enough Diggle, but his reactions to all the weird stuff that goes down, never gets old.  Neither does Cisco/Felicity geeking out.

Mick though, continues to be the best.  Him hitting on Kara is something I never knew I wanted, along with him and Sara both admiring the new President.  And why is that I want Rene/Wild Dog to get smacked whenever he calls Felicity "Blondie", but Mick calling her "Ponytail" doesn't seem to bother me?  Is it because he gives pretty much everyone nicknames?  Or it just doesn't come off as condescending or disrespectful compared to Rene?  I really don't know.

Barry and Kara making Oliver do a group hug should be required for every crossover.  There already is a great chemistry between those three.

Can't wait to see them do it again and hopefully flesh out a few more pairings (really want to see some actual Kara/Sara scenes), but I'm looking forward to next week, after seeing those previews!

That's the other curious thing -- that the Dominators supposedly showed up in the 50s because of the JSA, not because of the Legends fucking with the timeline for hundreds of years.  Or Eobard fucking with the timeline, like helping Damian Darhk nuke New York.  If the Dominators can detect the timeline changes, do they have similar powers to Alchemy in that they are aware of all the changes in the alternate timelines ?  Can they also time travel since they seem to know that Metas will affect the future ?  So many unanswered questions.

Edited by ottoDbusdriver
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6 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Mick though, continues to be the best.  Him hitting on Kara is something I never knew I wanted, along with him and Sara both admiring the new President.  And why is that I want Rene/Wild Dog to get smacked whenever he calls Felicity "Blondie", but Mick calling her "Ponytail" doesn't seem to bother me?  Is it because he gives pretty much everyone nicknames?  Or it just doesn't come off as condescending or disrespectful compared to Rene?  I really don't know.

I wonder if part of what is so very grating about Wild Dong calling Felicity "blondie" is A: he hasn't worked with her long enough to have earned the right to calling her a nickname and (for me this is the part that makes me just scream) B: he is so much younger than her (where Mick is probably a smidge or two older than her) and that is just disrespectful. He is just disrespectful and hasnt done one damn thing to endear himself to anyone, not anyone on the show(s), not anyone in the audience for it to be "ok" for him to be so disrespectful to Felicity of all people.

Anyway.....except for the fact that this crossover event officially erased Sara's bisexuality (I suppose TPTB think "bisexual" is far too complex for the average tv viewer), and the fact that the coda to the entire event was Ollie and Barry having drinks together (instead of maybe Ollie, Barry and Sara, since the last show of the event was LoT, she should have been there ffs), and the fact that I really didnt get the motivation for The Dominators, in spite of all that, I liked this event a whole lot. I too hope Lilly sticks around but I also wish Nate would just go away.

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OK, so, Cisco's been all up in his feels for the entire season of Flash, and FINALLY pulls the stick out of his ass in regards to Barry ... on Legends? They didn't want to maybe put that on their actual show?

I am biased, given that I despise Oliver and find Amell to be a limited actor, at best, but Oliver's supposed to be some brilliant leader, but he's feeling a little overwhelmed, so let's leave the unstoppable alien ON their side back at the base? Really? That scene couldn't have maybe been dropped in order to give us more room for actual Legends?

And where the hell is Rip?

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Can't wait to see them do it again and hopefully flesh out a few more pairings (really want to see some actual Kara/Sara scenes), but I'm looking forward to next week, after seeing those previews!

Definitely one of my few disappointments with the crossover, as that dynamic would have been great.

An IGN article does acknowledge that there was at least one moment between the two that was cut...

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For all the people wondering what would happen if Sara Lance met Alex Danvers: you're not alone. "There was a little exchange between Sara and Kara that I really liked -- I don’t think we even filmed it -- where Sara says, 'Hey do you want to get a drink when this is all over,' and Kara says, 'I think you wanna meet my sister,'" Kreisberg said, adding he liked "just the idea of starting the Sara/Alex shippers going."

Sara and Alex together might be too awesome for the screen.

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11 hours ago, tarotx said:

I can't stand Nate. He doesn't warrant the time spent on him. He was acting like the captain in telling people who can and can not go and saying which members he was bringing. He's a Newbie and mocks the "nerds".  Yuck. And Sara as captain wasn't even mentioned. Which I can deal with if not for Nate. She got plenty of screen time and emotional beats over the crossover. Nate was aggressive as well. I'm liking him less and less.

The episode ending on Barry and Oliver was weird since this wasn't a crossover movie. I liked the moment though. I think if I could remove Nate and Arrow's Wild Dog and some of Curtis I would have enjoyed the crossover a lot more. I did love that little Oliver and Sara talk and hug. I wish Sara could have seen her Dad. He really could benefit from seeing her. I enjoyed Felicity&Cisco as well as Stein dealing with his daughter.

Still very little female interaction. I think that is why I especially enjoyed Sara&Laurel and Thea&Moira in the Arrow part.

They cut a Sara/Kara bit where Sara asks her to go for a drink and Kara tries to steer her towards Alex

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12 hours ago, Maverick said:

How has Lilly not radically altered the timeline?  She's a super genius like her father and had to have some impact on history.  She's in the same field as Ray so his life most likely had to be impacted by her.  Is Stein ever going to have his memories of Lilly integrated or will he just continue to have headaches?  Why aren't the rest of the Legends effected.  At a minimum, Jax would know about Stein's family situation and Ray knew Stein years earlier so they should be suffering from the aberration too.

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Didn't she say she went to MIT?  Is that where Ray went?  They may have been college buddies. 

12 hours ago, Maverick said:

 The most frustrating thing for me was no one on the Legends team asking Barry about the time-traveling speedster causing aberrations.  Barry's a speedster who's just admitted to causing trouble by traveling through time.  Wouldn't it occur to you to ask if he's ever heard of another (evil) speedster who might have a habit of travelling through time and wreaking havoc?  Maybe see if Barry has any tips on how to find and/or stop him?

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That annoyed me too. I think even an offhand remark by one of them -- "We've been saving history from a time traveling speedster . . ." and then  have someone else say "save for for after the alien invasion, we've got work to do."  It would only take a few seconds and at least acknowledge the issue. 

7 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Mick though, continues to be the best.  Him hitting on Kara is something I never knew I wanted, along with him and Sara both admiring the new President.  And why is that I want Rene/Wild Dog to get smacked whenever he calls Felicity "Blondie", but Mick calling her "Ponytail" doesn't seem to bother me?  Is it because he gives pretty much everyone nicknames?  Or it just doesn't come off as condescending or disrespectful compared to Rene?  I really don't know.

 

I think it is the overall appeal of the characters and the actors.  Dominic Purcell has a way of delivering lines that gets the humor just right.   They are both offensive but with Purcell and his character you get the feeling that there is humor behind it.  And I also think it is the age thing.  With Mad Dog he is just a winey little s*&^ and a teen calling a grown woman "blondie" is not cute. Mick is at least a grown man.

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3 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Cons: Where do I begin? First of all, Oliver's bull crap excuse as to why Kara shouldn't come along made NO FUCKING SENSE. Also completely nonsensical: Firestorm couldn't turn the bomb into something else until Stein said, "I have a daughter and she's counting on you!" What the fucking fuck? The aliens were going to blow up the planet if Barry didn't hand himself over because he broke a condition of a treaty that he wasn't even aware of? Don't get me wrong - what Barry did was selfish and he KNEW that he shouldn't go back and change time, but did he deserve to be killed by aliens because some dude he had never met negotiated an agreement with aliens? But even more ridiculous was the fact that his punishment would prevent the aliens from killing everyone on earth, but the Flash/Arrow/Supergirl/Legends team decided that they should risk the safety of the entire planet to keep Barry from being killed by aliens. Ooookay then. Even Buffy knew that one life in exchange for saving the world was the right call.

 

I think the team knew it wasn't going to save the world.  Sara referred to it as a trap. When aliens attack the earth, I don't want to give my biggest gun to them and just hope they never come back.  I want to use my gun on them instead. 

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10 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

This also means that not only do the Dominators exist in parallel universes (Earth 38 for sure, per Supergirl), but they can detect changes in the timeline.  Would have been helpful 'how' they were able to do this ?  And how far away they were when they were able to detect Metas in the first place ?  And how long it took them to get to Earth -- do they have FTL propulsion or did they take years to travel to Earth ?  Where exactly is their home planet ?

That was pretty awesome.

The Dominators are coming back to Earth 38 in the back half for the Mon-El thing .Which makes me wonder if the aliens from Monday were actually Thanagarians

7 hours ago, CletusMusashi said:

Supergirl: Yeah, yeah, we got your message. Just let us finish up what we're doin' here and we'll give you two minutes at the end to do whatever the hell you want. But we're not writing it. Or making it. Or giving a shit about it.

 

It was that they didn't have time .

It was the mid season finale,they lost Melissa for a large chunk of 2.07 (which then became a Guardian episode with Kara in a semi bottle episode on her own) because she was filming for the other shows  and they don't have any other finished episodes to show as they are still doing post on 2.09.It started filming later than the other shows because of the move as well

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I guess I'll go against the grain here and say I flat-out did not like any of the crossover episodes. Any of them. Reading the article previously linked about the scenes they left out makes me think that they left all the good stuff on the floor and put the average to bad stuff on my screen.

- You bring over Supergirl and have her doing nothing but a few action shots here and there for the most part (bleh) and Oliver's excuse for not having her feature in this episode? I'm gonna call that a whole lot of nonsense.

- What's with side-lining the Legends on their own show? Ending with Barry and Oliver made it seem like this was a very special episode of the Flash with other characters popping in now and then.

- And speaking of side-lining characters, the Wests and Thea disappeared as well.

- Echo the sentiment above of why do we have a Nate? I'm slowly beginning to get annoyed by his existence with each episode of Legends.

I have more thoughts but I don't want to go on a rant. I honestly expected more from all four shows considering how much they hyped up this crossover event. Shame on me for expecting them to give us more character beats than Oliver and Barry's friendship, which is great, but not what I wanted the majority of this crossover to be about.

 

EDIT: just saw @Humbugged's response about Supergirl and I'm still unimpressed at how little they used Supergirl.

Edited by kdm07
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10 hours ago, ketose said:

Felicity said "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" when her language was scrambled. There's a geek shout out.

I thought I heard her saying that, but didn't feel like rewinding to double check. Cool.

Overall, pretty underwhelmed by the entire crossover. There were definitely some good moments in each episode, but the whole really lacked in getting across the idea that this even needed to be a crossover in the first place. Major characters underutilized; the bad guys a non-existent or absent threat for much of the time; a quick and not terribly satisfying wrap-up to it all.

I did enjoy Firestorm getting to transmute something and being the Big Damn Hero. Mick, as always is great (still miss Snart though!).

Rather than have this entire invasion fleet that didn't apparently invade and only made one metahuman-bomb (what's keeping them from making another?), maybe it would have been better to focus on a smaller group of aliens instead, give a couple of them some personalities and names, and make them a more personal threat to the heroes as a result? (And ditch the CGI and make them more practical so you can get some good actors in for them instead.)

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They left because Supergirl and the Flash Counted Coup on their entire ground army. Those little devices of pain-induction could just as easily have been explosive charges. The dominators aren't stupid, they got the message and left.

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Cisco uses the transponder to Vibe himself and Nate to the mothership to talk to the Dominator whose life he saved --

whereupon said Dominator tells him they need Barry to surrender to them for having fucked the timeline, and if he doesn't, they'll destroy every last metahuman on Earth. Fun!

Your recap is wrong...THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN.   This Dominator itself does not mention Barry once.   Transcript of the scene:

Dominator:  What an unusual gift.  You appear to be a meta-human as well.

Cisco:  Yeah, well, I figured you'd cut me some slack, seeing as how we saved you back in 1951. Remember that?

Dominator:  Much has changed on your planet in the last 60 years.  The threat of your kind has become imminent.

Cisco:  Listen, E.T. We're not a threat.  Metas are protecting this planet.

Nate:  And besides, the guy who tortured your ugly ass back in 1951 was human.

Dominator:  But what happens when a man like him inherits abilities like yours?  We have seen it happen on
countless other worlds, which is why we must exterminate your kind before the scourge of your planet becomes the scourge of ours.

Which is why it would have been incredibly stupid for Barry to surrender when this alien made it extremely clear that their actual goal is to exterminate all metas as a pre-emptive strike... 

(On a different note...what a brilliant strategic move by Nate to insult the alien who they think could possibly help them save their planet.  That's a great way to make someone want to help you...)

Edited by Xenith22
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I think out of all the crossover episodes, this was my favorite one. 

I loved Cisco and Felicity. I can watch those two geek out about anything.

Mick and Sara discussing wether the new Madam President was hot or not was funny and so in character. 

Team Arrow, Team Legends, and Team Flash were all utilized appropriately. 

Supergirl was not used that much but I figured it was because they ran out of budget for her. 

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1 hour ago, Xenith22 said:

Which is why it would have been incredibly stupid for Barry to surrender when this alien made it extremely clear that their actual goal is to exterminate all metas as a pre-emptive strike... 

I was also struck by what seemed inconsistent writing with the Dominator's motives in this episode. First we are told that it is Barry's messing around that brought them and they want him to surrender, then- as you point out- the one Dominator suggests instead that their goal is total metahuman elimination, but by the end of the episode it's all back to just "Barry give up" and no one points out the convo with Nate and Cisco. Kept waiting for someone to mention it, but I guess it would have diminished Barry's heroic sacrifice so it got shuffled offstage to die a quiet death. They couldn't get rid of the Nate/Cisco scene, though, because they needed that one to drive home (with extreme malice and lack of subtlety) Cisco's about-face on the whole time travel stuff. The two scenes could have used another pass in the writer's room, I think.

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I enjoyed this episode, although I wish it had been more focused on the Legends, since it was actually their show.  I get that it was the last episode of the crossover so everything had to be tied up, and that several of the Legends were instrumental in helping.  But there were entire scenes where they were cut out completely.  Too much Felicity and Cisco, too much Oliver and Barry.

That said, I don't understand why Oliver asked Supergirl to stay on the sidelines.  Because they were faced with this alien invasion.  Especially when the aliens dropped that bomb, and Sara was trying to get Firestorm to transmute it.  By that point, Supergirl had somehow defied Oliver and joined in the final battle.  Why didn't Sara ask for help and have Supergirl take the bomb and just throw it into space?  I know they wanted to have Firestorm destroy it, but seemed like a weird choice.

Does Ray's armour no longer allow him to shrink?  Did he disable that function when he rebuilt the suit?  Why?  Too costly to do the special effects?

19 hours ago, Maverick said:

 Nate's costume looks like ass.  I mean that is some serious FUG going on.   Probably the worst live action superhero costume ever.    

I agree that it looks terrible.  Like a rejected idea for Captain America.  Too colourful for someone called "Citizen Steel".  The costume should just be silver/grey/metal coloured.  Oh, and of course they feel the need for it to be short sleeved, so the actor can show off his arms.  Stupid.  He's a guy that can turn into steel, he doesn't need that armoured costume.

18 hours ago, steelyis said:

I like this episode of the crossover, but I do wish the final fight on the roof had been a city-wide rumble instead. There was probably a budgetary reasons not to do that, but it would have given the episode an Avengers feel, which is the live action gold standard of alien invasion battles.

See, I actually thought it had a very Avengers-ripoff theme.  The way they all lined up like that, the shot from the side, then everyone starts running and some fly, it was just like the airport battle in Civil War.

Edited by blackwing
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5 hours ago, ElleMo said:

Didn't she say she went to MIT?  Is that where Ray went?  They may have been college buddies. 

I don't know about Ray but Felicity went to MIT.

Jax and Stein finally told the others about Barry's message, only to get a new secret. I'm getting tired with all the secrets on the shows.

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13 hours ago, Minneapple said:

Seriously, Supergirl writers, how do you manage to keep putting her in boring romantic pairings when she has chemistry with nearly everyone in the world?

I know! Kara has chemistry with just about everyone in Earth 1, but they cant find poor Kara a decent love interest back home! 

I know there are flaws, and when I read everyone's comments I will probably notice more, but I really did enjoy this whole cross over. Its just really cool seeing all the different characters from the whole shared universe interacting with each other, and fighting a bad guy, and doing cool stuff. Thats all I really want in a cross over like this. I liked seeing Sara and Oliver talk about how the island stuff started everything, Mick hitting on Kara, Cisco and Sara on the waverider, there was some good stuff. I do feel bad that the Legends crew got kind of screwed over this episode. They should have gotten to close the episode out, as much as I love Barry and Oliver together. I loved the group hug with Kara and Barry and Oliver. Poor Oliver, trapped in a puppy sandwhich!

I hate that we had to spend so much time with Wild Dog last week, and Nate this week, while Thea and the West family got screwed out of scenes. Wild Dog sucks, as always, and Nate is a weirdly written character. Sometimes he acts like a brainy dork (basically Ray lite), and sometimes he acts like a wanna be jock who makes fun of the "nerds" and acts like hot shit. Did the writers realize they had just written him to be a less likable Ray?

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I thougt the entire x-over event was a pretty fun ride. Crazy and out there but I`m a sucker for superhero team-ups. And I especially like the friendship moments so I loved those little moments of everyone stepping up to stop Barry from sacrificing himself and partying at the end. Kara even slipped into her civilian persona. Teehee. Also loved the group hug and the Sara/Oliver and Oliver/Barry convo at the end.

The entire thing was Cisco was just a bit pat and I don`t remotely see the situations as comparable. Trying to show the Dominator that humans (and metas) are not so bad was a valid strategic and moral call. That it didn`t work out was bad luck. The consequences of Flashpoint were bad luck also but the impetus for creating it was nowhere near trying to do the right thing.

But I guess an entire alien invasion was the motherload of "you really fucked up" to Barry. So I`ll take the quick patch-up with Cisco. I don`t find it as emotionally fulfilling as it could have been if earned but oh well.

I thought they tried to give all the characters a moment to shine here. Not all equally but everyone contributed something. Team Air and Team Ground. Granted, it was the least focused on the core characters of all the shows involved but for the resolution, I`m not sure that could be helped. And Arrow was its 100th episode so that should have been focused on the Arrow cast. Flash was a bit split.

Loved all the logos overlapping in the beginning.

Steel`s suit looks horrible. Like, half-done. 

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  13 hours ago, Minneapple said:

Seriously, Supergirl writers, how do you manage to keep putting her in boring romantic pairings when she has chemistry with nearly everyone in the world?

I know! Kara has chemistry with just about everyone in Earth 1, but they cant find poor Kara a decent love interest back home! 

I know there are flaws, and when I read everyone's comments I will probably notice more, but I really did enjoy this whole cross over. Its just really cool seeing all the different characters from the whole shared universe interacting with each other, and fighting a bad guy, and doing cool stuff. Thats all I really want in a cross over like this. I liked seeing Sara and Oliver talk about how the island stuff started everything, Mick hitting on Kara, Cisco and Sara on the waverider, there was some good stuff. I do feel bad that the Legends crew got kind of screwed over this episode. They should have gotten to close the episode out, as much as I love Barry and Oliver together. I loved the group hug with Kara and Barry and Oliver. Poor Oliver, trapped in a puppy sandwhich!

I hate that we had to spend so much time with Wild Dog last week, and Nate this week, while Thea and the West family got screwed out of scenes. Wild Dog sucks, as always, and Nate is a weirdly written character. Sometimes he acts like a brainy dork (basically Ray lite), and sometimes he acts like a wanna be jock who makes fun of the "nerds" and acts like hot shit. Did the writers realize they had just written him to be a less likable Ray?

Supergirl is really likable (I'm still not on board with her show) and did pretty well. She really did have great chemistry in the crossover. Barry and Kara together is really fun.

I always love Barry and Ollie together.The Flash and Arrow have proved they are interesting well drawn characters played well by Grant and Stephen (who I think has gotten better, I wasn't convince earlier in Arrow.) The Legends... well they are improving over last years... terribleness. No standout lead, no standout actor. I'm liking Nate more and Victor Garber is a national treasure, but still not totally enamored of his Stein character.

The plotting of this cross over was a bit rocky. Thank goodness the Cisco/Barry fight has FINALLY been resolved. At least we can count that as momentum. The we need Supergirl was a little inexpiable.

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I think this episode demonstrated just how unbalanced Supergirl makes the DC TV-verse and why they should never bring her into this reality full time. They wanted to have Kara as part of the crossover because she is on the CW now and it would be odd for Barry to have access to a super powered alien and not call in her in fight an alien invasion. The problem is, as Barry jokingly said at the end, she is more powerful than everyone else in the room combined. With her there they had very little need for the rest of the team since none of them, except Barry and Firestorm to an extent, could contribute as much as Kara alone. That's why they had Oliver very illogically sideline her.

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18 hours ago, DearEvette said:

 

And I thought the Legends ep was fun an actiony, but also felt it did the LOTs characters a disservice. They felt like supporting players on their own show. 

I wouldn't say that. The decisive blow was delivered by the Waverider and Firestorm. The rooftop fight was just stalling and would not have accomplished anything on its own. 

If anyone was sidelined it was Kara. She should be able to deal with this entire mess all on her own. 

Edited by mrspidey
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47 minutes ago, KirkB said:

I think this episode demonstrated just how unbalanced Supergirl makes the DC TV-verse and why they should never bring her into this reality full time. They wanted to have Kara as part of the crossover because she is on the CW now and it would be odd for Barry to have access to a super powered alien and not call in her in fight an alien invasion. The problem is, as Barry jokingly said at the end, she is more powerful than everyone else in the room combined. With her there they had very little need for the rest of the team since none of them, except Barry and Firestorm to an extent, could contribute as much as Kara alone. That's why they had Oliver very illogically sideline her.

Justice League: "Secret Origins."

Invasion by white martians? Entire Justice League to defeat them, even with Superman being there. So they could have utilized Kara here more substantively. After all, Berlanti just LOVES to steal from both Batman: The Animated Series: "Perchance to Dream" (which he used in Arrowthis week) and Justice League Unlimited-"For the Man Who Has Everything" (used in Supergirl last season--down to the dialogue being practically verbatim).

Edited by GHScorpiosRule
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I wouldn't say that. The decisive blow was delivered by the Waverider and Firestorm. The rooftop fight was just stalling and would not have accomplished anything on its own. 

True, but if you look at the main emotional beats and character development in this episode you had, in no particular order:

-Cisco and Barry coming to an understanding

-Barry learning that his screwups are apparently galactic scale mistakes and wanting to make the big heroic sacrifice

-Oliver coming to terms with the alien craziness

-Stein dealing with his new daughter

Everyone else was there to fight, look cool, and deliver snarky one-liners. 

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29 minutes ago, Potanical Pardon said:

You know, it's entirely possible that Flashpoint didn't cause any of the changes but that Stein having a daughter did. How does anyone know for sure it was Barry now?

Because time travel is hard to understand. Technically  Stein having a daughter happened after Barry's Flashpoint. Plus if the Aliens are blaming Barry then they probably have the tech to figure it out it was his fault. 

Edited by Sakura12
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20 hours ago, steelyis said:

Remembers Man of Steel

Shudders

Good point.

 

I think what separates the two actions in my mind is motive and intent:

Cisco and friends intended to go back in time and capture the dominator (which allowed the government goons to get their hands on the dominator) not directly change the future. It was a plan they all come up with to save the world and it led to someone being tortured to death and they chose not to let it happen in front of them even though it was an enemy, because that's what heroes do.

What Barry did was pure selfishness. He wanted to make his life happier and made the decision to alter time on his own, consequences be damned and people suffered. Barry knew his motives were wrong from the start and he didn't care until it began to affect him personally. There was nothing heroic about Barry's actions.

I can forgive a lot if someone's intentions are good but bad things happen as result, it doesn't negate the bad stuff but I can at least see that the person paving the road didn't mean to hurt anyone. Barry hurt a lot of people, knew he would and shrugged it off with a big dumb smile on his face. The two actions are not the same to me.

Please enlighten me on why/how/where Barry knew he would hurt a lot of people? All of Barry's previous time jumps have saved people for the most part. The only person who's life was ever alter drastically after a Barry time jump was Hartley who was no longer a bad guy and his parents accepted him as being gay. Oh yea and everyone who was dead and then wasn't when he time jumped. That would be Cisco (dead by Thawne's hand) Iris and Joe from Marden (plus others in Central City from the tsunami) and the Arrow crew and Hawks from Vandal Savage.

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5 hours ago, blackwing said:

I agree that it looks terrible.  Like a rejected idea for Captain America.  Too colourful for someone called "Citizen Steel".  The costume should just be silver/grey/metal coloured.  Oh, and of course they feel the need for it to be short sleeved, so the actor can show off his arms.  Stupid.  He's a guy that can turn into steel, he doesn't need that armoured costume.

He got the costume because he was complaining about his clothes getting all stretched out whenever he turns to steel.

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39 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

Please enlighten me on why/how/where Barry knew he would hurt a lot of people? All of Barry's previous time jumps have saved people for the most part. The only person who's life was ever alter drastically after a Barry time jump was Hartley who was no longer a bad guy and his parents accepted him as being gay. Oh yea and everyone who was dead and then wasn't when he time jumped. That would be Cisco (dead by Thawne's hand) Iris and Joe from Marden (plus others in Central City from the tsunami) and the Arrow crew and Hawks from Vandal Savage.

Short jumps back in time may be safer, but Barry didn't just go back an hour or a day or a week or a year, he went back more than a decade. Any familiarity with movies, books, TV shows and comic books dealing with time travel, which we know Barry has, plus legit theories on time travel, personal experiences and common sense should have told Barry people's lives would be affected by changing a large chunk of the past. Hell, the first time Barry tried to stop his mother's death a future version of Barry told him not to. Barry even saw how the universe dealt with speedsters who mess with time and misuse the speed force when Jay got dragged to hell. How many warnings does Barry need to figure out changing the past is dangerous?

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One other thing that kind of struck me as odd with the "Cisco Learns His Lesson" morality play in this episode (aside from providing mixed motives for the Dominators) was that it seemed to me that Cisco was implying that his saving the Dominator in the past is what led to them somehow coming back in the future to wipe out the Metas. Not only did this not seem consistent with Past-Dominator's assessment that it was the JSA that led them to originally attack the Earth (implying already had it in for the Metas), but it seems to fly in the face of every time travel rule we've seen in the show(s) so far.

Okay, so they've pretty much broken the (1? 2?) actual rules they've ever established, but up until this point, the only changes we've ever seen to the timeline only occurred as a result of the heroes initiating the change to their present by travelling to the past and mucking around. This time, the implication is that the event that is occurring in their present was actually initiated by their future selves (post-Dominator invasion; albeit only a few days post-Dominator invasion). That's a very different way of showing Timey-Wimey muckery in any of these shows so far, and it really just opens a can of worms as to what- precisely- it should mean to try and stop "time aberrations" and protect the course of history. Whose history? Future Heroes' history? Present-day Heroes' history? Past Heroes' history?

My head hurts.

EDIT: Anyway, I guess my point really is that this was kind of a poorly thought out way to bring Cisco around, because his rationale of somehow being at fault for Present Dominators doesn't seem to fit the pieces narrative. "Dominators came to investigate JSA, got run off by humans, came back when Barry demonstrated the true danger of Metas via Flashpoint" fits much better than "Dominators came to investigate JSA, got run off by humans but saved by Metas, came back decades later to destroy the Meta threat- except for the guys who saved one of them."

Edited by Cthulhudrew
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Good question.  When they mess with the timeline, does it then affect them from that point on?  Will they remember what life was like before or not?

15 hours ago, diebartdie said:

I wonder if part of what is so very grating about Wild Dong calling Felicity "blondie" is A: he hasn't worked with her long enough to have earned the right to calling her a nickname and (for me this is the part that makes me just scream) B: he is so much younger than her (where Mick is probably a smidge or two older than her) and that is just disrespectful. He is just disrespectful and hasnt done one damn thing to endear himself to anyone, not anyone on the show(s), not anyone in the audience for it to be "ok" for him to be so disrespectful to Felicity of all people.

It may be just because Wild Dong grates on me so much but I don't think it's anything to do with age.  For me, it's because when Mick calls someone "Haircut" or "Ponytail" or "Skirts", I think it's because he likes them whereas when Wild Dong gives people names, it's because he thinks they're not good enough to be considered for who they are (i.e. beneath him).

And because Felicity has at least twice asked him to stop calling her Blondie and he ignores the requests and continues to treat her disrespectfully. I don't think Mick would do that.

13 hours ago, ElleMo said:

Didn't she say she went to MIT?  Is that where Ray went?  They may have been college buddies.

Felicity went to MIT 04-09 for her double masters.  Lily was born in '88 and said she spent 7 years there getting her PhD ('06- 13?) so they definitely would have been there at the same time.  Felicity was a Goth hacker and Lily strikes me as someone who would have been a good girl so if they met and hung out, it would have been interesting.

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7 hours ago, mrspidey said:

I wouldn't say that. The decisive blow was delivered by the Waverider and Firestorm. The rooftop fight was just stalling and would not have accomplished anything on its own. 

If anyone was sidelined it was Kara. She should be able to deal with this entire mess all on her own. 

I doubt Kara on her own could have defeated all the Dominators.

Firestorm/Waverider prevented the bomb from going off but I think the decisive blow was struck by a combination of Lily&Stein and Felicity in creating the thing that would give the Dominators pain (yay for women in science!)* and Barry and Kara attaching the things that would deliver the shocks to the Dominators with their super speed. Two from LoT, one person from each of the other three shows.  The rest of the fighting was just to give them time to get the job done.

* It is completely beyond me how Marc Guggenheim can write Felicity as such a smart and funny character here on LoT and yet she's been a 60s stereotype this season on Arrow.

Edited by statsgirl
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7 hours ago, steelyis said:

Short jumps back in time may be safer, but Barry didn't just go back an hour or a day or a week or a year, he went back more than a decade. Any familiarity with movies, books, TV shows and comic books dealing with time travel, which we know Barry has, plus legit theories on time travel, personal experiences and common sense should have told Barry people's lives would be affected by changing a large chunk of the past. Hell, the first time Barry tried to stop his mother's death a future version of Barry told him not to. Barry even saw how the universe dealt with speedsters who mess with time and misuse the speed force when Jay got dragged to hell. How many warnings does Barry need to figure out changing the past is dangerous?

I totally get that and I do understand what you are saying. I've read the Flashpoint comic and even own the animated film based off the book. In there when Barry goes back in time to save his mother, it is Flashpoint that was all screwed up. He no longer had his powers, Thomas Wayne was the Batman, Aquaman and Wonderwoman's people were at war. So he had to fix that by getting his powers back and going back in time again to stop himself from saving his mother (much like that scene at the end of S1) where things went back to normal. But the writers borked it all up. In the TV verse Flashpoint wasn't that bad. Mom and Dad were alive, Cisco was a tech billionaire, Caitlyn a doctor still, Iris/Wally a crime fighting duo. But when he allows Thawne to kill his mother again now it's the returned to timeline that is all messed up (which makes no sense).

The only way I can see this happening is in the comic, when he lost his speed, he had Batman help him get it back by recreating the accident that gave him powers, but the writers already used that in S2 in the Zoom story. So in the TV verse when he is losing his powers he has to ask Thawne to take him back and go kill his mother again to correct things. When Thawne dumps Barry on the porch of the house he even eludes to how Barry might not like what he has returned to, which makes me think that Thawne did more than just kill Nora Allen again.

But I do see your point. It's just the writers really haven't consistently showed it. Sure there are time wraiths for crimes against the timeline, but then why weren't they all over Barry in Flashpoint? Or Thawne for that matter with all the things he did in both Flash and LoT.

My point is in show, Barry's time jumps haven't hurt people, so I don't think he knew he was going to hurt people as your original post stated. It's Flahpoint that should have been screwed up and not the original time line. Correcting the timeline should fix things, I mean that is what LoT does in every episode no? Even Stein haughtily says "Unlike your friend Barry I have the luxury to change time" . Which made no sense to me, because you are both time travelers regardless of your mode of transportation correcting time.

 YMMV.

Edited by Spaceman Spiff
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14 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

I totally get that and I do understand what you are saying. I've read the Flashpoint comic and even own the animated film based off the book. In there when Barry goes back in time to save his mother, it is Flashpoint that was all screwed up. He no longer had his powers, Thomas Wayne was the Batman, Aquaman and Wonderwoman's people were at war. So he had to fix that by getting his powers back and going back in time again to stop himself from saving his mother (much like that scene at the end of S1) where things went back to normal. But the writers borked it all up. In the TV verse Flashpoint wasn't that bad. Mom and Dad were alive, Cisco was a tech billionaire, Caitlyn a doctor still, Iris/Wally a crime fighting duo. But when he allows Thawne to kill his mother again now it's the returned to timeline that is all messed up (which makes no sense).

The only way I can see this happening is in the comic, when he lost his speed, he had Batman help him get it back by recreating the accident that gave him powers, but the writers already used that in S2 in the Zoom story. So in the TV verse when he is losing his powers he has to ask Thawne to take him back and go kill his mother again to correct things. When Thawne dumps Barry on the porch of the house he even eludes to how Barry might not like what he has returned to, which makes me think that Thawne did more than just kill Nora Allen again.

But I do see your point. It's just the writers really haven't consistently showed it. Sure there are time wraiths for crimes against the timeline, but then why weren't they all over Barry in Flashpoint? Or Thawne for that matter with all the things he did in both Flash and LoT.

My point is in show, Barry's time jumps haven't hurt people, so I don't think he knew he was going to hurt people as your original post stated. It's Flahpoint that should have been screwed up and not the original time line. Correcting the timeline should fix things, I mean that is what LoT does in every episode no? Even Stein haughtily says "Unlike your friend Barry I have the luxury to change time" . Which made no sense to me, because you are both time travelers regardless of your mode of transportation correcting time.

 YMMV.

Agreed on your whole post.

SuperLegendFlarrow verse is extremely inconsistent when explaining why time traveling shenanigans causes cataclysms in some instances, but not others. That's why while I think Barry did something selfish and reckless I haven't written him off. It's understandable why he thought there was enough wriggle room to hope changing his past wouldn't have a lot of negative repercussions, which, like you mentioned, turned out to be more or less true. His decision was very human and that makes it hard to hold against him, despite how badly things ended up.

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4 hours ago, steelyis said:

SuperLegendFlarrow verse is extremely inconsistent when explaining why time traveling shenanigans causes cataclysms in some instances, but not others.

This! I don't understand how on one show changing Barry's mother's fate has such far reaching consequences (with Jay saying that every time you travel back in time you can't put it back together exactly the way it was) while over on Legends they can kill off rulers 10 years before they originally die and there are zero changes to the timeline.

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17 hours ago, Aeryn13 said:

Loved all the logos overlapping in the beginning.

Me too; both the Flash and Legends did a great job with that (Arrow was too wrapped up in their 100th Episode celebration so they just did the evolution of the arrowhead).

I enjoyed the crossover overall (I'm here for the action more than character beats), but as a non-Arrow watcher the middle third was, not entirely lost on me, but certainly less meaningful that it would have been to people who knew who Tommy was, etc.  And the original Invasion comics story had more depth to it, but trying to recreate that on a TV budget and, more importantly, a TV production schedule, would likely have been impossible.

But yeah, putting Supergirl on the sidelines was a terrible tactical choice; I don't know if it was because of budget or if it was impossible to schedule Melissa appropriately (I heard she was pretty much exhausted from everything she did have to do over the week), but as a big fan of that show it was disappointing.

OTOH, we got to see Firestorm transmute something, and they also established something else: it's very hard for them to do it.  So while he has the power, it's not an easy out every time there's a ticking bomb (a la the WWII nuke from the start of the season).  That still doesn't explain the too-frequent choice to split up Stein and Jax when facing dangerous situations, though.

Lilly and Felicity both went to MIT because I think there's a Los Angeles cultural imperative preventing anyone in the TV industry (Vancouver or not) from acknowledging the existence of Pasadena.

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9 minutes ago, RedVitC said:

This! I don't understand how on one show changing Barry's mother's fate has such far reaching consequences (with Jay saying that every time you travel back in time you can't put it back together exactly the way it was) while over on Legends they can kill off rulers 10 years before they originally die and there are zero changes to the timeline.

Not only this but the sheer hypocrisy of their reaction.  When Cisco dropped his bomb everybody got all judgey.  You'd think at least the LOT folks would pause and think that "Hey you know what, the things we do all the time could have much more far reaching consequences, we just got lucky none of them came back to bite us in the ass yet."   And then Stein had to double down "Unlike your friend Barry I can fix my mistake."  So not only does Stein acknowledge that it was possibly him and not Flashpoint that caused his daughter to exist in this timeline.. and therefore acknowledging that Barry is hardly the only person guilty of changing shit, he then proceeds to forget all the warnings they just gave Barry mere hours earlier about going back and changing things.

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9 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

Not only this but the sheer hypocrisy of their reaction.  When Cisco dropped his bomb everybody got all judgey.  You'd think at least the LOT folks would pause and think that "Hey you know what, the things we do all the time could have much more far reaching consequences, we just got lucky none of them came back to bite us in the ass yet."   And then Stein had to double down "Unlike your friend Barry I can fix my mistake."  So not only does Stein acknowledge that it was possibly him and not Flashpoint that caused his daughter to exist in this timeline.. and therefore acknowledging that Barry is hardly the only person guilty of changing shit, he then proceeds to forget all the warnings they just gave Barry mere hours earlier about going back and changing things.

Not to mention if the Legends are the protectors of the timeline, why didn't they stop Barry themselves or even know about the Flashpoint changes. Gideon or their new fangled alert system should have been shouting Danger Wil Robinson.

I do feel bad that we didn't see what, if any, changes were made to the Atom suit, because Cisco said it needed an upgrade.

I was bummed that Thea wasn't there also for final battle, maybe she needed a break after her dream life being shattered, but I am not sure what people expected the Wests to do. I mean Joe could have been firing his side arm like Digs, but even so I think he would have been a detriment to the operation.

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I guess my problem with this episode, like what a few people here have pointed out, is that the Legends themselves were sidelined on their own show. On Flash and Arrow, their characters were still a big part of the episode. But on Legends, the focus was on Cisco/Felicity, Oliver, Barry and Kara. There were long scenes with characters that weren't even on this show. That just felt weird and made me feel like Legends is the red-headed stepchild of Arrowverse. Just like the EW cover where we only got a tiny, tiny Atom and no mention of Legends at all on the cover.

Also, Sara, as the new leader of Team Legends, should have gotten more to do, IMO. Although she did behave very leader-like in the scene where she's all "call the Dominators".

However, I will say that the Oliver/Sara scene was very well-done, and I loved that the show acknowledged Sara's importance to the series.

On 02/12/2016 at 9:32 PM, Sakura12 said:

Mick uses nicknames if he likes the person. If he calls you nothing that's worse. Angry hockey mask was just a condescending asshole. Although Mick does call Sara by her name. That's probably the ultimate sign of respect from him since the only other person he did that for was Snart. Unless he's talking about the three of them in the third person, then they are Killer, Klepto and Pyro. 

Mick does call Sara "Blondie" sometimes.

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The difference, I think, is that Mick is generally not trying to be condescending when he does it. He seems to pick out a character trait or a visual reference point and uses it. He will choose a less nice one with someone he doesn't like, but he's not making fun of Kara when he calls her skirts or Ray with haircut. The same can't be said for Wild Dog. It always sounds to me like he's being dismissive of Felicity.

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19 hours ago, Sakura12 said:

Because time travel is hard to understand. Technically  Stein having a daughter happened after Barry's Flashpoint. Plus if the Aliens are blaming Barry then they probably have the tech to figure it out it was his fault. 

The aliens are blaming Barry for Flashpoint, because that is Barry's fault. The changes that we've seen in all of the shows this season may or may not be related to Flashpoint. Stein's daughter most definitely did not happen after Flashpoint. Aside from us seeing that Stein's headaches started after he met up with his younger self, from that point in time in the 80s, anything could have changed, including things that we have already seen air. In the present timeline we're operating from, Lily was definitely born before Nora died and subsequently the point in time when Barry returned from Flashpoint, and all the other timelines created by all the Reverse Flashes and Barry's that keep coming back to that point. There is no definitive proof that Baby Sara/John, dead Dante and other changes had to be Barry. When Reverse Flash returned Barry from Flashpoint, the biggest difference in the timeline changing at this point was that Reverse Flash time-traveled again to return Barry to the present day after re-killing his mother...instead of pre-Flashpoint Reverse Flash who faded away like unconscious Barry, who presumably both ended up going to Flashpoint still for that loop and everything happening in this new timeline to exist; that fading away was the show acknowledging this new timeline branching off while the Flashpoint timeline fades into not existing in the same time-space. The Dominators being pissed off at Barry for Flashpoint is just that; they're mad because someone on Earth had uber powers that could do that emerge. They weren't mad because he time travelled. The Legends time traveling because of this Invasion arc's team-up must have always happened as part of a loop, and yet the Dominators weren't mad about the time-traveling nature of that, they were upset because again superpowers on Earth that could threaten them in the future.

Time-travel itself isn't a difficult concept to grasp, especially if copious attention and mental/written notes are given to it. These DC TV shows are a testament to neither - they constantly have plot holes in their handling of time and consequences. That said, each instance of time-travel in these stories, we give them the benefit of the doubt that they paid attention to the rules, until they blatantly haven't. Biggest example: They still haven't explained all of Season 1. Eobard was stopped in the finale by Eddie killing himself. OKAY, that makes sense. BUT. An Eobard still had to have been born in a timeline where Eddie did not kill himself in order to go back in time to kill Nora and have every event that occurred happen in Season 1, meaning that Eddie killing himself should not have erased that Eobard. It should have only erased the Eobard from the Season 1 timeline. It's been ignored completely in Season 2 and now, but logically can still be explained and fixed with characters capable of it...my guess being the Eobard running around right now and through time in Legends who never became Wells and even alluded to the passed out Barry on the front porch in the first episode this season that he figured out something esoteric. Season 3 timeline still requires an Eobard to have become Wells and we still haven't seen who that is. Most likely, the writers are going to go the easy route and have the Legends explain the plot hole of Seasons 1 and 2 Eobard unable to time-travel, though this one can, by removing that ability and then dropping him off in the street in front of the Allen house.

Anyway, the point where Barry returned to the present after Flashpoint should not have had that many alterations as to what transpired in Season 2. That timeline should be for the most part intact as the main changes all occurred local to the Allen house, just like when Barry went back there another time to shake his head at another Barry not to save his mom. Most of the changes in Season 3 should be the results of some other event. 80's Stein having a kid definitely qualifies, current Eobard jumping around time is also highly likely, or some other not yet revealed transaction with time. 

Edited by Potanical Pardon
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