Oh my god, oh my god, oh my fucking god. I am so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of emotions I felt during this crossover. Capping off an extraordinary event, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow delivered big time in feelings and action, and carefully using their players. And so, let’s dive right in!
Jumping right where we were in Part I and II, we finally get the full Earth-X experience as the premise of a Nazi victory delivers an “update” on the horrors so many people experienced in the past: the concentration camps, the striped pajamas, the badges that defined the “crime” people were being held for. It is through a pink triangle that Jax first meets Ray, who is at the camp for being a gay man.
At STAR Labs, where the Earth-Xers established their base of operations, we find Cisco, Caitlin, Dinah, Rene, and Wells locked inside the cells. Kara is also restrained, but to a bed, being exposed to red sunlight to weaken her cells so that the surgery can be performed on her.
With all the heroes wearing dampening collars, Sara also has to deal with the Earth-X version of Quentin Lance, an honored captain of the Nazi army. Besides gushing about his homophobia towards Sara, whom he supposedly kills, Lance explicitly stated that Nazi-Oliver is the actual Fuhrer in Earth-X, which surprises me a bit. Personally, I would expect the writers to use Damian Dahrk for this; at this point, he sort of has a leading role among Arrow-verse villain. But then again, they didn’t bring a possible Earth-X Laurel Lance into the fold either, so what do I know?
Moving along, Quentin takes all of them, plus Ray for *some* reason, to perform their execution. They do try to fight their way out, but the collars can also taze them into submission, so it happened to no avail. Right before the squad can shoot them, one Leonard Snart appears and saves all of them and here’s the kick: Leo, as he likes to go by, is good in this Earth. In fact, I believe this is the only time I liked the character in all of these years of DCTV. It gets even better though—Leo is gay and dating Ray and this is huge because we got not one, but two gay actors portraying gay characters. As we know that Wentworth Miller will not be playing the character much longer, I personally feel like they just decided to have a nice Captain Cold so that Miller can be himself while in character because I do believe that he is that kind and nice in real life. Oh, also, Ray has powers as the superhero The Ray.
The next scene had Melissa Benoist truly acting as she played both Supergirl and Overgirl chatting: the conversation was tight, but in the end, didn’t amount to anything. Meanwhile, Iris and Felicity try and fail to get everyone out of their containment cells, but Felicity does succeed in sending a SOS signal to the Legends still at the Waverider. Honestly, it was so rude of Barry to not invite everyone from all the shows, but this is TV and some conce$$ions had to be made.
At the rebels’ base of operations, Ray tells everyone not only that he is also from Earth-1, but that the Nazi took possession of a temporal displacer that can open breaches. Jeremy Jordan comes into the foray as a very different Winn from his role in Supergirl. In Earth-X, he is a general of the rebels who is trying to get the displacer blown up right away even if it means it will keep our heroes from going back. Alex even tries to talk some sense into him, but it doesn’t work.
Martin pulls Jax aside to apologize to him for not taking his feelings into consideration, regarding their argument from earlier in the crossover. They make amends, thankfully, as their father-son bond grows stronger. Sara talks to Alex about her feelings and tells her to trust in her first instinct of splitting up from Maggie instead of the creeping regret she started to feel. Leo manages to convince Ray into talking to Winn about allowing his plan to blow up the displacer to be on hold for an hour while the heroes try to go invade the Nazi base and go home, which, he agrees to in an off-screen argument that we didn’t get to see. They end up devising a plan to infiltrate the place’s control room so that they can turn the displacer on and then leave.
At STAR Labs, Iris, and Felicity save Kara in the nick of time from a grim fate as they take the power out from the whole place. As the duo get a severely weak Kara from bed, their runaway is hindered by Metallo’s reappearance.
Basically, the plan is to get Oliver in the control room as he disguises himself as the Fuhrer. As he goes in, he oversees Quentin sending a Nazi Waverider to Earth-1 through a breach. However, as Quentin suspects Oliver to be fake, he brings in Earth-X Felicity: as a Jewish woman, she was already in a concentration camp. But because she helped some children get more rations, Oliver would have to execute her then and there. He doesn’t, obviously, though it’s all a trap given that as he tries to execute Quentin instead, he fires an empty gun. With his disguise blown out, he decides to go the old way and just knock everyone out by fighting. Barry arrives in, but the fight damaged the remote controls of the breach, so they’ll have to do it manually on it. There’s also news that Winn has gone back on his word and already released a Red Tornado, his plan to destroy the displacer.
As Felicity had encrypted the power system to STAR Labs, Eobard Thawne threatens to kill her for the code. Kara intervenes, however, as she doesn’t want anyone to die for her, and asks Felicity to spill the beans, which she does.
Back to Earth-X, Ray and Barry get in charge of stopping the Red Tornado from reaching the base while the rest of the gang need to fight the Nazi soldiers and get to the displacer as Jax and Martin start it up manually. Jax’s part goes as, hot wiring the circuit, but as Stein tries to pull the lever, he gets shot in the back.
The Legends episode begin with the heroes overcoming their tests: Stein manages to pull himself up from the floor and pull the lever, even if it costs him another bullet, while Ray and Barry finally take Red Tornado out. Jax merges with Stein to keep him alive until Gideon can fix him up. With the situation solved, they can finally escape from Earth-X.
At STAR Labs, Wells is starting the surgery, but Kara gets saved by Ray Palmer, blasting everyone with his ATOM suit. Nate opens the containment cells allowing the benched out to finally join in the party along with the Legends — something very, very satisfying about seeing Zari and Amaya using their powers to knock Nazis out.
Metallo joins the fight again and, booyah! More fighting begins and, I swear to god, I couldn’t stop smiling; it’s so nice seeing a greater amount of people fight now that the rest of the Legends and the metahumans from Team Flash are together. Plus, the people who were at Earth-X returned, so even more help! Needless to say, they pooled their powers together and toasted Metallo…and there is even more collective group fighting coming up next for the finale! As a side remark, a huge congratulations and thank you to the directors, cinematographers, stunt coordinators, stunt performers, actors, and VFX designers that work for the DCTV for giving us so many long fighting shots which not even big budget movies do as often.
Meanwhile, Arrow and Nazi Arrow face off as each of them has their respective lovers on threat of death: Nazi got an arrow aimed at Felicity while Arrow got a knife to Overgirl’s throat. Before anything actually happens, Reverse Flash snatches them out, running away from STAR Labs.
Kara and Alex finally reunite and so do Mick and Leo — the former was cute and tender while the latter is soft and hilarious. Turns out, in Earth-X, Mick has died trying to save cops from a fire.
Despite Gideon’s and Caitlin’s best efforts to save Stein’s life, a situation made worse by Jax starting to collapse as well, Caitlin realizes that both of them will die because of their psychic link.
Curtis analyzes Overgirl’s radiation levels and figures out that her disease will turn her heart into a gigantic supernova in a short while.
Stein wakes up from sedation and tells Jax that he is dying. Not only that, but he knows he is dragging Jax down with him, so he wants to unlink them using Cisco’s drug so that Martin can die while Jax lives. It’s a very powerful moment that emphasizes their father-son relationship, being incredibly well acted, and it got me very emotional, personally. Martin ends up convincing Jax to hand him the drug, which he takes, and soon passes away.
The group at the Waverider mourns the loss of Stein while Jax goes over to Martin’s house to tell Clarissa and Lily about it, another powerful scene that had me feeling like an exposed nerve as the trio hug and cry together.
Nazi Arrow tries to leverage leaving with Overgirl, peacefully, if they give her Kara. A proposition that, besides getting mostly everyone together for a group photo, is denied by Oliver quite bluntly as they plan on fighting for their Earth.
The Earth-Xers start attacking and killing Central City civilians as the heroes make their big entrance — the prize goes to Killer Frost though, arriving midair and sliding on ice. The fighting begins and, once again, awesomeness ensues, I couldn’t stop smiling, cleaned my pores, cured me of my depression and all the happy-mood one-liners.
Up in the air, the Waverider is fighting its Nazi counterpart without a lot of success because of the shields. Cisco enlists Killer Frost, Zari, and Amaya’s help (an amazing combo that gave me chills watching) to infiltrate the spaceship while Overgirl goes out to fight Supergirl. Iris commands the trio to deactivate the shields, Cisco gets them out with his breaches, while Wells takes out the Nazi Waverider.
The Flash and the Reverse Flash are having their own particular brawl just as much as Nazi Arrow v. Green Arrow and Overgirl v. Supergirl. Flash takes advantage of Thawne, but refuses to kill him, allowing him to get away. Overgirl starts to explode, so Supergirl takes her up in the air, as far as she could take her, a plan that works pretty well. Distraught by his wife’s death, Oliver finally takes an arrow to his Nazi-scum’s doppelganger’s heart.
With everything right with the world, Ray goes back to Earth-X while Leo decides to stick around for some more time. We see Stein’s funeral, with a great eulogy given by Jax, and a through-and-through incredible scene. Before they say goodbye, Alex gives Sara goodbye and tells her that she is going to take her advice on Maggie and remain apart. Then, Alex and Kara also go away to Earth-3.
As they don’t want a big wedding anymore, Iris and Barry just need a minister to get married. Thankfully, Diggle is ordained and can finally join in on the party — seriously asking, why wasn’t Diggle in the crossover? What about Thea? I should really catch up on this season of Arrow. And so, Diggle officiates West-Allen who deliver amazing vows. However, Felicity decides she wants to marry Oliver on the spot and the couple wedding-crashes West-Allen for a crossover that ends in pure, heart-eyes happiness, not only from the recently-wed, but from me and many other fans who I believe were just as delighted as I was for the epicness that was “Crisis on Earth-X”.
Yes, I know, many plot holes, just as many conveniences, but this was still amazing for the DCTV fan.
