The Flash 3×08 Review: Invasion!

As the second of four episodes of the CW’s DC Crossover event, The Flash was exciting and a little frustrating. Several events seemed like things that could have been easily avoided with a little forethought, but we did get a lot of fun interplay among the characters.

First off, I really enjoyed this episode. It was a lot of fun to watch. I get a kick out of how blasé police and government officials have become about The Flash showing up. Barely any of them even looked at him, and only his A.R.G.U.S. contact, Lyla Michaels, even talked to him. How jaded can these people be? I mean, I know there’s an alien ship crashing but there’s also a cover story about it being a “crashed DOD aircraft on a routine training mission”, so these people should be gawking just a little.

The government’s handling of the Dominators did raise some questions for me. If they’ve known about these aliens for so long, why didn’t they, I dunno, brief their awesome superhero contacts? Make a better plan than “watch and wait”? They basically sat on their butts for three months and are now begging the superheroes to do nothing while the UN scrambles for a solution. When we see the President and his advisors later, A.R.G.U.S. is the only group who points out how stupid inaction is. Of course, it’s too late and the President is captured, then killed by the Dominators to cement their Scary Bad Guy cred.

The aliens look cheesy but honestly, that didn’t distract me much. I don’t expect cinema-level CGI from television, and anyone who does is just being pedantic. Their goals are straightforward and uncomplicated. I really appreciate that, because they aren’t going to be a long-term villain who needs deep motivations that unfold over time. They need to be a big scary bad guy that gives Supergirl, Team Flash, Team Arrow, and Team Legends a reason to work together for a few episodes.

Let’s face it, the team-up is the big draw here. Watching the characters interact is a fangirl’s dream. Iris is an Oliver Queen fangirl. White Canary thinks Supergirl is hot while Heatwave is deeply unimpressed by her.

Barry Allen is having a huge problem given that his team doesn’t trust him anymore – and really, after finding out about how much Flashpoint changed things, who can blame them? It really is time that he gets the pushback he deserves on that count. He’s a sweet guy, he means well, but he did a bad, bad thing and other people paid the price. I wanted to see him really deal with it so they can get past it. This episode gave me some of that. Maybe a little too much, since there is, after all, an alien menace to deal with.

The episode treats us to some mentor-mentee bonding between Ollie and Barry. Whatever else he is, Oliver Queen is a good teacher when he wants to be.

I’m going to throw things at Iris if she keeps trying to mother Wally West, though. I understand why they didn’t want him to claim his powers, but why are they holding him back now? What possible reason could she have? He wants so badly to help. It’s no wonder he got hurt with no one teaching him to watch his back in a melee. I’m glad HR at least is willing to train him.

The whole “hey let’s walk into a trap” thing the team does as their first official group act made me roll my eyes so hard I almost sprained something. Come on, didn’t they see that coming just a little bit?

At least the end was a surprise. I’m guessing this is why Oliver is having his walk down memory lane tonight.

Overall, this was a much better episode than I expected with so many characters and storylines to cope with. I’m looking forward to continuing the story on tonight’s episode of Arrow.

What did you think of the story? Do you think it lived up to the hype? Let us know in the comments section below!

Author: Khai

Khai is a writer, anthropologist, and games enthusiast. She is co-editor (alongside Alex DeCampi) of and contributor to “True War Stories”, a comic anthology published by Z2 Comics. When she’s not writing or creating games, Khai likes to run more tabletop RPGs than one person should reasonably juggle.

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