S02.E07: Invasion!

[ottoDbusdriver]

5 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

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.

You would have thought the LoT would have picked up on something like that -- my bigger question is why the Time Wraiths didn't go after Barry when he created Flashpoint ?  Or why the Time Wraiths aren't going after Eobard ?  Or why the Time Wraiths aren't going after LoT as well ?  I thought the Time Wraiths were something separate from the Time Masters, as indicated by the Time Masters having to target Cronus/Mick after the LoT.

I'm still trying to figure how Nate the historian whipped up the time-quake apparatus, which basically looks like a seismograph that is somehow "connected" to time disruptions.  You would think that Gideon would have that kind of functionality already built-in -- ya know, just in case of a disconnection from Vanishing Point Central.

[KirkB]

I think the Time Wraiths were a one-off villains the Flash show runners came up with because they thought it was a cool idea. They didn't consider the further disruptions to the timeline Barry was going to cause, not to mention Eobard, that should logically have gotten the Time Wraiths attention. I'd give LoT a pass only because the Time Masters are probably 'authorized' to travel through time and while the organization no longer exists the Waverider is still connected to it so the Time Wraiths may try their best to ignore them.

[tarotx]

I think Flashpoint happened when the Legends were scattered through out time so they missed the moment it would have pinged. It wasn't that big in the scheme of things. I think all the metahumans coming from the particle accelerator plus Alchemy creating new ones made it time for the Dominators to visit Earth to get info. And then the Flashpoint news coming from the Arrow dreamers, left the aliens with the belief they had no choice but to take action. 

Edited December 4, 2016 by tarotx
>.< >.<

[dkb]

Nate has really become more annoying as the episodes have gone on. Hopefully he's gone at the end of the season, and Rip is back full time.

[statsgirl]

13 hours ago, MarkHB said:

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.

Pasadena, Rose Bowl right?

I think it's more a case of referencing a top tech university that is immediately recognizable to the general and international audience.  MIT is very well known but I had to look up what's in Pasadena and even with that, I know nothing about Caltech.

[MarkHB]

4 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

Pasadena, Rose Bowl right?

I think it's more a case of referencing a top tech university that is immediately recognizable to the general and international audience.  MIT is very well known but I had to look up what's in Pasadena and even with that, I know nothing about Caltech.

Well done for getting my undercover reference to CalTech!  I went to a different tech university than either of those, but CalTech is, I would say, every bit as good and prestigious as MIT.  Also, my impression of Pasadena from the absolute furthest end of the country from it is that it, as a city, is the sort of place that is considered terminally and irrevocably uncool (SoCal folks, please feel free to correct me on that).

[statsgirl]

According to the Times rankings  Caltech as the best university in the US, followed by Stanford, MIT and Harvard.  But it's small, 1/10th the size of Harvard, so it's not as well known.

The characters on The Big Bang Theory all went to Caltech.  How does that factor on the coolness scale?

Did using the parable of The Lion and The Mouse to show how something big can be defeated by something small bug anyone else?  I learned it as The moral of the story is that mercy brings its reward and that there is no being so small that it cannot help a greater.how an act of kindness can turn an enemy into a friend. 

So really, what the fable applies to is Cisco saving the Dominator from the nasties in the US government, not the Steins nanotechnology.

[CooperTV]

*sigh #2*

I'm glad they did two The Flash episodes this crossover week. We needed that contrived "Lets forgive Barry because he's trying" storyline to be resolved here. /sarcasm Although I was having a blast with "Everything's Barry's fault". The selfish jerk deserved everything that came for him.

I was a big fan of LoT last season, and this season they take everything I enjoyed about that away, and tried the new weird characters happened. Why?

[waving feather]

On 12/2/2016 at 0:51 PM, steelyis said:

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.

Agreed. Both Cisco and Barry changed the timeline but Cisco changed the timeline not based on selfish reasons but on making the moral choice, saivng someone from torture. Barry, on the other hand, changed the timeline because he could not deal with what happened to him and him alone. He did not even feel any remorse in the beginning of Flashpoint. He was happy! Until, of course, things around him weren't the same anymore and he couldn't accept that too and had to change it again. All of his decisions are from selfish intent. If Cisco had used the time-ship to go back in time to save his brother, then yes, I would say he and Barry are doing the same thing. Motive is important to me.

It's not that I want Cisco to remain mad at Barry for a long time; I was also hoping they make up quickly, but the way they did it this episode wasn't convincing enough for me, even though Carlos Valdes acted the heck out of it. Let's hope they do not brush it off on their own show just like this.

It is sad though that for a cross-overs episode on Legends, it still felt like a Flash episode with guest characters. Cisco, Felicity, Oliver, Barry, Prof. Stein (who was also from the Flash universe) and Caitlyn had a lot of screen time.

[Miss Dee]

Wild Dog gives people nicknames. Mick Rory gives people Micknames. Two totally different things.

(later) As I'm getting a few likes for this post, I should point out that I am (sadly) not the word wizard who coined the term "Mickname"; I heard it on another forum. I will, however, be using it exclusively from now on.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Miss Dee
Avoiding plagiarism

[Spaceman Spiff]

1 hour ago, waving feather said:

Agreed. Both Cisco and Barry changed the timeline but Cisco changed the timeline not based on selfish reasons but on making the moral choice, saivng someone from torture. Barry, on the other hand, changed the timeline because he could not deal with what happened to him and him alone. He did not even feel any remorse in the beginning of Flashpoint. He was happy! Until, of course, things around him weren't the same anymore and he couldn't accept that too and had to change it again. All of his decisions are from selfish intent. If Cisco had used the time-ship to go back in time to save his brother, then yes, I would say he and Barry are doing the same thing. Motive is important to me.

It's not that I want Cisco to remain mad at Barry for a long time; I was also hoping they make up quickly, but the way they did it this episode wasn't convincing enough for me, even though Carlos Valdes acted the heck out of it. Let's hope they do not brush it off on their own show just like this.

It is sad though that for a cross-overs episode on Legends, it still felt like a Flash episode with guest characters. Cisco, Felicity, Oliver, Barry, Prof. Stein (who was also from the Flash universe) and Caitlyn had a lot of screen time.

I don't consider what Barry did selfish at all. He was correcting a wrong. His father was imprisoned for half his life for a murder he didn't commit, and killed by an evil speedster someone on E2 created also his mother was killed by an evil time traveler who altered the original time line. Did Barry benefit from all of this? Absolutely, but I don't consider his action purely selfish. As always YMMV

[statsgirl]

I see the selfishness in that he did it for people who were close to him.  There are lots of wrongfully imprisoned people all over the US much less the rest of the world but he wouldn't have done it for any of the others.

But I agree that they had to end the "Barry is selfish" soon, I just wish they had done it better and done it on The Flash rather than LoT.  The problem is that on The Flash, too many characters spend too much time telling Barry how wonderful he is so maybe it wouldn't have worked there.

[waving feather]

8 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

I don't consider what Barry did selfish at all. He was correcting a wrong. His father was imprisoned for half his life for a murder he didn't commit, and killed by an evil speedster someone on E2 created also his mother was killed by an evil time traveler who altered the original time line. Did Barry benefit from all of this? Absolutely, but I don't consider his action purely selfish. As always YMMV

YMMV but many unjust or unfortunate things happen everyday in life, so who is to decide what is worth changing or who is worth saving? Just because others don't have the power and access to go back and change things and Barry does? If everyone wants to go back to the past to right every wrong (be it big or small), the world would be in chaos. So I still think it's selfish for him and his family. Great power, great responsibility and all that.

I don't want people to keep beating up Barry on this issue on the show because it's not fun but the Cisco conflict resolved in an unsatisfactory manner.

FWIW, I thought Cisco asking Barry to go back in time to save his brother is just as dumb and selfish as what Barry did. But that's not what he did in this episode, so still not comparable to what Barry did.

[squidprincess]

42 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

I see the selfishness in that he did it for people who were close to him.  There are lots of wrongfully imprisoned people all over the US much less the rest of the world but he wouldn't have done it for any of the others.

But I agree that they had to end the "Barry is selfish" soon, I just wish they had done it better and done it on The Flash rather than LoT.  The problem is that on The Flash, too many characters spend too much time telling Barry how wonderful he is so maybe it wouldn't have worked there.

By that logic, Barry saving lives in Central City is selfish, because there are people in danger all over the world.

It's not selfish to want to correct an immediate wrong that's right in front of you, even if you would benefit from it too.  He knew Nora wasn't supposed to die in Eobard's timeline.  He was grieving and made a stupid decision.  But we also know he time traveled for other reasons too.  First, to save the city from a Tsunami.  He undid Flashpoint for Wally, who was dying, and gave up his family in the process.  He was going to try again and fix the mistakes of the new timeline (including Dante),  before Jay stopped him and talked sense into him.   The consequences of Barry's decision were awful, but to call Barry's act "selfish" is very much an over simplification.

It boggled me though that they'd have something as important as Cisco and Barry's reconciliation in LOT rather than Flash though.  (And I really wished they'd gone a different route than Barry-as-a-martyr, which completely ignores that Cisco has a legitimate reason to be angry at the consequences of Barry's decisions.)  But then I was pretty horrified that they had the Stein's daughter reveal in Flash instead of LOT.  I really hope the entire crossover is included on the DVD set, or fans are going to be awfully confused.

Edited December 4, 2016 by squidprincess

[GHScorpiosRule]

19 minutes ago, squidprincess said:

By that logic, Barry saving lives in Central City is selfish, because there are people in danger all over the world.

It's not selfish to want to correct an immediate wrong that's right in front of you, even if you would benefit from it too.  He knew Nora wasn't supposed to die in Eobard's timeline.  He was grieving and made a stupid decision.  But we also know he time traveled for other reasons too.  First, to save the city from a Tsunami.  He undid Flashpoint for Wally, who was dying, and gave up his family in the process.  He was going to try again and fix the mistakes of the new timeline (including Dante),  before Jay stopped him and talked sense into him.   The consequences of Barry's decision were awful, but to call Barry's act "selfish" is very much an over simplification.

I really hope the entire crossover is included on the DVD set, or fans are going to be awfully confused.

Not to mention the reason he went back this last time was because he had just seen Zoom kill his father, who finally returned to Central City after being exonerated for Nora's murder, right in front of him.  He'd just finally accepted Nora's death. The grief was very fresh.  I don't think he realized that lives would be changed or that Baby Sara would have been erased.

And Lily can't be blamed on Barry because he wasn't even born yet. He went back to when he was 11. And I'm sure Lily was born by then.  So that's all on Stein.

I don't know if they do that with the super hero shows-have them in each of the shows.

I know that Law & Order had a couple of crossovers with Homicide: Life on the Streets, but the latter concluded episodes weren't in the Law & Order set. Or when Law & Order: SVU had a crossover with original recipe-the conclusion wasn't included.

[Starfish35]

No, I don't think Lily can be blamed on Barry - that's all on Stein.  

[ketose]

Obviously, Barry went back in time because he wanted his family back. One can argue that if there were people going around fixing damage to the timeline, one of the biggies should have been Eobard Thawne killing Barry's mother and Harrison Wells (and his wife). He actually fixed the time line, but it was crumbling around him because the plot demanded it. In a real Flashpoint, there should be no metahumans because Wells was alive, the car accident never happened and the accelerator accident wouldn't happen for another decade.

[tarotx]

I don't think Flashpoint was crumbling around Barry. It was just settling. Barry would eventually lose his powers and Wally might die so there would be no Flash but evil speedsters on the loose. Barry decided to leave because he would destroy the world if he didn't. My issue with what happened is Barry has only had to deal with people being mad at him. He should have lost Joe. I don't mean kill Joe off but have Joe not close with Barry since he became the Flash. Yes later fixable but Barry trying to save his parents and then "losing" the only parent he really had would be karma imo. 

[scarynikki12]

Hey guys, this is getting too far off topic.  We've granted some leeway due to crossover week but the discussion has mostly moved away from the episode/crossover.  Barry has his own thread over in The Flash forum and it could use the traffic.  Please continue to debate his actions/motives/etc over there. 

Thanks

[ohjoy]

Concerning LoT character time during the crossover, it seemed to weirdly work for me in LoT's favor.

Flash: Okay crossover episode, although mostly focused on Flash characters plus Oliver and Stein
Arrow: Okay 100th episode, but not a great crossover episode, with major focus on Arrow characters plus Sarah and Ray (with a little Barry & Kara in the mix)
LoT: Best episode of the crossover, even though there was more focus on Flash & Arrow characters -- but also had decent focus on Stein and some Legends interspersed

Thinking about it, Stein got decent focus on Flash and Sarah got decent focus on Arrow, but neither of those really felt like LoT focus because those are the shows in which the characters originated. Same for Ray on Arrow; he's LoT, but it was hard to think of him like that in the midst of the Arrow shared dream. With the exception of Supergirl, there just wasn't a lot of scene/plot pull for true crossover characters, until we got to LoT (I guess because it's the newest show). I think Felicity had been in a flashback or two, and Cisco might have shown up somewhere, but other than that Oliver and maybe Barry were the only ones who'd really interacted with the Legends on their own show before. So to me this episode actually felt like a crossover more than the other episodes, even if the Legends were in it less.

Edited December 5, 2016 by RandomMe
say "crossover" again, I dare ya

[ElleMo]

On 12/2/2016 at 4:13 PM, thenj said:

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.

 

I must have been thinking of Felicity.

[darkestboy]

That whole crossover was one of the best thing we've had on television this year.

The consequences of Flashpoint nicely played throughout all of the episode, the false life that Sara and company got to experience, the meeting of so many characters, especially with Felicity and Cisco reactions thrown into the mix as well.

I do think the Dominators made for some satisfying threats though and I liked the big battle sequence with them and all of our heroes towards the end of the crossover.

Stein having a daughter now is going to be interesting to see explored in later episodes and I loved both Sara and Mick's reaction to Kara and Felicity/Cisco/Thea's reaction to the Waverider.

Can't wait to see how this is topped next year though, 9/10

[jhlipton]

On 12/4/2016 at 0:21 AM, statsgirl said:

The characters on The Big Bang Theory all went to Caltech.  How does that factor on the coolness scale?

It makes CalTech immensely less cool.  (I hate, loathe and dispise BBT)

On 12/4/2016 at 7:01 AM, CooperTV said:

I was a big fan of LoT last season, and this season they take everything I enjoyed about that away, and tried the new weird characters happened. Why?

I'm the exact opposite.  I find Dahrk a much more fun and interesting villain than Savage, and swapping Amaya for Hawkgirl is a huge improvement.  Swapping Nate/Steel for Hawkman is a draw.

On 12/4/2016 at 8:23 AM, Miss Dee said:

Wild Dog gives people nicknames. Mick Rory gives people Micknames. Two totally different things.

(later) As I'm getting a few likes for this post, I should point out that I am (sadly) not the word wizard who coined the term "Mickname"; I heard it on another forum. I will, however, be using it exclusively from now on.

I gave this a like for the "later" part!

[KirkB]

3 hours ago, jhlipton said:

I'm the exact opposite.  I find Dahrk a much more fun and interesting villain than Savage, and swapping Amaya for Hawkgirl is a huge improvement.  Swapping Nate/Steel for Hawkman is a draw.

To be fair I found the random street criminals Oliver used to take out in a scene during the first season of Arrow to be more interesting than Savage. And Gideon was more fun to watch than Hawkgirl. As for Nate, I'd say he's better than Hawkman but that's not actually saying much, since at least he is animated and doesn't bore me to tears.

[AudienceofOne]

Ok, so here I am finishing the crossover and back in this really bad show.

This was a better episode of the Legends than we've had before. But I'm afraid, as far as I can see, 85% of the plot for the 'big event' made no sense whatsoever. That whole episode where the Dominators were 'probing their subconscious'? There was no point to that. The whole 'we want Barry even though we've had two chances to just take Barry but didn't for no reason' plotline? Pointless. Why go through all this if your plan is just to drop a meta bomb? I don't see the point at all.

[kismet]

On 12/3/2016 at 10:30 AM, MarkHB said:

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).

Well I think Arrow earned the right to do that after 100 episodes.... It's why it was so dumb for them to plan the crossover during the 100 episode. One week before or one week after would not have changed the show. It took away from both events.

I did enjoy the other shows blending the logos though :)

And I honestly think they should reconsider moving the crossover to Jan/Feb as a way to kick off the new year.

[kismet]

On 12/3/2016 at 11:54 PM, statsgirl said:

Pasadena, Rose Bowl right?

I think it's more a case of referencing a top tech university that is immediately recognizable to the general and international audience.  MIT is very well known but I had to look up what's in Pasadena and even with that, I know nothing about Caltech.

I also think MIT really loves to drop its name... whereas other universities are more private and don't necessarily give permission as widely for their name to be used in passing for random TV characters. The only show I've ever heard drop CalTech was Alias and that was in passing for a guest star. Not a recurring name drop for multiple characters.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 12/15/2016 at 11:30 PM, kismet said:

I also think MIT really loves to drop its name... whereas other universities are more private and don't necessarily give permission as widely for their name to be used in passing for random TV characters. The only show I've ever heard drop CalTech was Alias and that was in passing for a guest star. Not a recurring name drop for multiple characters.

I don't think any permission is required to connect a real college with a fictional character.

[kismet]

12 minutes ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I don't think any permission is required to connect a real college with a fictional character.

I don't honestly know. But I remember listening to some commentary from writers and BTS people that they weren't able to use certain universities because they were declined permission. I wanna say it was West Wing. I also remember Felicity being declined usage of NYU which is why she went to Univ of NY.

I think it might be related to trademarking. And obviously the universities would have to be tracking and persuing infractions. Maybe different studios also have different internal rules based upon their legal departments.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

1 hour ago, kismet said:

1 hour ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I don't think any permission is required to connect a real college with a fictional character.

I don't honestly know. But I remember listening to some commentary from writers and BTS people that they weren't able to use certain universities because they were declined permission. I wanna say it was West Wing. I also remember Felicity being declined usage of NYU which is why she went to Univ of NY.

I think it might be related to trademarking. And obviously the universities would have to be tracking and persuing infractions. Maybe different studios also have different internal rules based upon their legal departments.

You are correct in that while they could refer to NYU, and show actors wearing and using real NYU paraphernalia, they wouldn't be able to use the NYU trademark on West Wing t-shirts without permission, for example, or on the Felicity website.  This might have limited them in some way.