“The Flash” Episode 408 / “Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 308 Recap: Legends of SuperFlarrow Parts III & IV

Welcome back to recap-palooza! Today we’ll be covering the third and fourth hours of Crisis on Earth-X, the hecka big crossover of the CW DC TV shows. Tonight’s shows were technically The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, but honestly except for the appearance of the Legends, you can hardly tell which is which.

Previously on the Legends of SuperFlarrow crossover, there were Nazis. A fuckton of them. It was the worst. And before we get started here, I want to warn you: there are more Nazis. At a few points, it even starts to feel like emotional manipulation, like unnecessary depictions of the horrors Nazis have bestowed. Or maybe they were necessary, to remind young people watching this show who maybe weren’t paying attention in history class that just because the Neo-Nazis carry tiki torches doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be considered a real threat and stopped at every turn. Because they made it VERY clear who the enemy was. I personally think they could have accomplished all the best parts of these crossovers without literal Nazis, but either way, that ship has sailed so we might as well enjoy them all getting punched to death, yeah?

We open where we left off after the Arrow hour, with Sara, Alex, Oliver, Barry, Mick, Jax, and Stein in a concentration camp. They notice some people have stars or pink triangles on their striped pajamas, and Jax asks a nearby gentleman what he did to earn his pink triangle. The man looks at them and says, “I loved the wrong person.” Alex and Sara exchange looks; they know damn well what the pink triangle stands for.

Barry can’t run and Firestorm can’t fuse because the collars they’re wearing are power dampening. Alex doesn’t know why she and Sara have them on if that’s the case, but it doesn’t matter. Alex is getting desperate; she can’t save her sister from here. But Sara promises her that they will save Kara.

Not able to save Kara is Cisco, Wells, Caitlin and the rest of Team Arrow, because they’re all trapped in the Star Labs cells. Elsewhere in Star Labs, Thawne watches Kara cook under the red sunlamp, saying she’s almost ready to be cut clean open. Kara asks Kara-X why so many people had to die if all she wanted this whole time was Kara’s heart but Overgirl cares not for the lives of others. In fact, she thinks people should be honored to die for her. Truly the opposite of the Kara Danvers we know and love.

Things seem bleak, but worry not, because Iris and Felicity, the ones who were told to hide because everyone thought they would be useless in this fight, are in the air ducts and ready to free their friends and save the damn day.

Back at the camp, there’s a round-up, and the leader of the camp comes in wearing the face of Sara’s father, Quentin Lance. Quentin looks at this woman standing in front of him, blonde hair, blue eyes, and asks why she’s aligned with the impure. And instead of saying, “I didn’t, your fuckwads threw me in here,” or anything else, she looks him square in the eye and says, “Because I like men and I like women.”

Lance says he killed his own daughter for that very same reason, making me feel like it was long enough ago that his own Sara didn’t grow quite old enough to look exactly like our Sara, but whichever way you shake it, it’s fucked up and heartbreaking to watch Sara listen to a man with her father’s face say those things to her.

Lance-X leads our heroes (including our new friend) out of the camp and they try to fight their way out but Alex and Sara figure out why they have collars on too: They’re shock collars. So there’s nothing they can do but follow orders. They line up and a firing squad faces them. Alex whispers a quiet apology to her sister – for not being about to save her. Her dying thought is about protecting her sister. Sara watches her father give the orders to kill them. Ready, aim…

But before he can say “fire” a cold gun shuts him right up and good old Leonard Snart shows up. Captain Cold knocks out the Nazis, gets them all into a bunker, then releases our new friend’s collar. Now able to use his powers, he flies up into the sky and light-beams the heck out of the Nazis. Once they’re out of commission, the boys lead our friends back to their base.

Meanwhile on Earth-1, Kara-X is passing the time waiting for her and Kara’s skin to soften by mocking Kara for being good and weak, saying that “they” want someone to bow to and worship and who better than she. She’s annoyed that Kara hasn’t taken over her Earth, being the most powerful one on it, saying the powerful should be eliminating the weak, and all that Nazi bullshit.

And then to round it out, Kara-X tries to single-shame Kara, accusing her of not using the heart she’s about to take. As if love can only be defined one way. As if Kara doesn’t use her heart to its fullest extent every single day, with her sister, with her friends, with complete strangers. Kara’s not too shaken though, and retorts that Kara-X doesn’t even have a heart.

Meanwhile, Felicity and Iris are taking matters into their own hands, taking down Nazis, working together, refusing to be underused anymore!

They try to free their friends from the holding cells but they’re running into some issues, so Felicity sends an SOS to the leftover Legends and they hope for the best.

Snart and The Ray (not to be confused with Ray The Atom) take the team to their version of Star City and Ray explains that he’s actually from Earth-1, too. He also shows them the schematics for the transportation station they can use to get home. The problem is, it’s dripping with Nazis and also Winn-X wants to blow it up.

Yeah, you read that right. Winn-X.

Winn-X is very rude, and doesn’t care that these strangers want to go home, he wants to destroy the portal while the three strongest villains of this Earth are on the other side of it. Alex tries to reason with him, Sara explains that they just need time, but the X-Team says it’s just too risky. But Alex says it’s worth the risk. Kara is worth the risk.

Alex goes off to talk to Winn alone, to explain that on her Earth, he’d die for her sister, that all she’s asking is some time to get home, it doesn’t have to affect the rest of their plan. He yells at her and refuses, saying there’s a doomsday weapon coming their way and he won’t budge, and it’s so weird to see a Winn that’s not so intimidated by Alex he folds at the sight of her pinky finger.

Desperate, Alex starts rooting around for a weapon. Sara sees her and asks her what she’s doing, and Alex says she’ll face a thousand Nazis alone if she has to, she’s going to save her sister.

Sara is impressed but says Alex can’t fight Nazis, not alone, and not while she’s so frantically afraid for her sister’s life. And frantic she is; Alex blames herself, says she shouldn’t have gotten so…distracted. Alex tries to express how much she cannot lose her baby girl, but Sara gets it.

And I’ll admit, since we have Earth-2 Laurel prancing around so I kind of forgot the real Laurel died. But when Sara tells Alex that she understands more than Alex might know, my heart sunk right down to the floor. Sara understands.

Losing Laurel sent Sara down a dark path, and the pain of it is still with her. Alex apolgizes for not knowing, but Sara points out that they don’t really know much about each other. Besides the fact that they’re both good at punching Nazis, and what they look like naked. Sara takes a moment to call Alex beautiful, because she’s Sara Fucking Lance and she’s classy like that.

But she says there’s something else Alex should know about her: She’s the captain of her team, and she protects her team no matter what. And guess what? Alex is on her team. So Sara promises Alex that Kara won’t meet the same fate as Laurel.

Alex isn’t really pacified, and says she just wants to get back to Maggie. Sara remembers the first thing Alex said to her and gives her a little advice: She had a Maggie, too. (Her name is Nyssa. No one ever says her name on the show anymore, but it’s Nyssa.) She thinks about going back to Nyssa all the time, but they also were just on different paths. Sara tells Alex to trust her instincts.

I can’t express to you how much I loved this scene. This is a DC superhero prime time show amidst a two-day, four-show epic crossover event with 20+ characters and a lot to cover. And they took the time to craft this beautiful scene between it’s lesbian DEO agent and bisexual ex-assassin. Alex and Sara’s interactions after their one night stand could have been all fighting or awkward conversations with no in between. But being queer isn’t the only thing they have in common. They both have a fierce loyalty to their sisters. They both have a fierce drive to fight for what is right and protect their own. They both have loved and lost smart, strong, wonderful women because of circumstances largely out of their own control. Their lives are very different, they themselves are very different, but they have some of the same scars, and they each have a little piece of their hearts that match. Not match in the way puzzle pieces fit together or even the way best friend necklaces nestle perfectly. It’s more like…seeing someone on the subway reading the same book as you. Or finding out someone else always watched Buffy from the time they were eleven and it helped shaped who they are. It doesn’t mean you’re automatically a good romantic fit, it doesn’t mean you have to be part of each other’s lives forever, but it means you have something in common that goes deeper than just having the same number of siblings.

And side note, I love how through all of this, through this emotional exchange, even through the flirting, there’s no residual romantic feelings. Would Sara kick Alex out of bed if she wanted to go for it three more times? Probably not. But neither of them are hung up on the other, nothing is imbalanced about where they stand with each other; all of Alex’s spiral feelings are directed inward. Even as she calls Sara a distraction, she blames herself for BEING distracted, she doesn’t blame Sara for distracting her. I could write a thesis on why Alex Danvers and Sara Lance are the perfect queer woman friendship duo, but we have a lot more Nazis to punch.

Also, somehow, this scene of two queer women processing their feelings all over the place isn’t even the gayest thing that happens in this second half of the crossover. Because back at the rebel camp, Ray and Snart are sort of arguing about whether or not to defy the General to get through the portal, and then, THEY KISS. ON THE MOUTH. I love this version of Snart and happily welcome him as one of us.

So they convince Winn-X to give them an hour. They plot and they plan and they’re ready to kick some Nazi butt.

Back at Star Labs, the Karas are thoroughly weakened and Thawne is about to cut into our Kara, but then Felicity cuts the power. Felicity and Iris run to Kara and free her while Kara-X is weak and Thawne is looking for them, and they help her to the elevator so they can get her some yellow sun.

Oh, also in that scene, Iris goes, “Come with me if you want to live,” because she’s been hanging out with Cisco too much, and it made me hope with all my heart that they let her be part of the action more often when everyone returns to their own time and place next week.

Unfortunately, our new badass duo doesn’t make it all the way outside with Kara before running into Metallo and getting overtaken.

While planning to get to the portal, Jax pointed out that they — a black man, a Jewish man, two queer women and two queer men and Barry Allen — don’t exactly blend in, but you know who does? Oliver Queen. So Snart drives him to the base and he poses as Oliver-X to get Lance-X to maybe open the portal for them. While he’s faking it, they let a Nazi version of the Waverider through, and also Lance-X has a surprise for him!

It’s Felicity-X. She is alone, and scared, and in her striped pajamas with her Star of David patch. Convicted of feeding starving children, sentenced to be shot in the head by Oliver-X.

And maybe Oliver knows it’s a test, but definitely Oliver doesn’t care, because he turns the gun on Lance-X immediately. The gun wasn’t loaded, because Lance-X didn’t trust him, but he fights his way out anyway, giving Felicity-X a machine gun and a pat on the back on her way out.

Barry comes to join Oliver in the fight and the rest of the team is on their way, but Winn-X decided to go back on his word and has already released the secret weapon. The weapon being the Red Tornado.

At Star Labs, Thawne threatens Felicity and tries to make her turn the power back on. She stands strong, even in the face of Thawne saying that in the future, everyone remembers the Green Arrow, the Black Canary…but nobody has ever heard of Felicity Smoak.

Which I don’t believe for a second…they probably just call her Overwatch. But before Thawne can kill her for being non-compliant, Kara steps forward, telling Felicity to give over the codes. She doesn’t want anyone to die for her.

Meanwhile at the portal, the team has another big fight, and honestly it was a little weird to see Sara with a machine gun and not relying on her assassin skills, but it’s not weird to see her and Alex team up to take down more Nazis. I will never get sick of it. I could rewatch this crossover every day until I die and I will relish in it every time.

Firestorm decides to split up to hotwire a control pad and turn on the portal the most efficiently, so they do just that, but while Stein is on the way to the console, he’s shot.

As we transition into the fourth and final hour of this crossover, Stein is down, The Flash and The Ray are having a hard time stopping the Red Tornado, and things are looking bleak.

But Stein is going down with this ship, and he army crawls to the console to finish his task. He gets hit again, but he pulls the lever before collapsing, so the breach is open and the Nazis leftover on the platform are obliterated.

The tides are turning, and Barry and Ray take down the Red Tornado with teamwork, and Sara has Stein and Jax become Firestorm so they can get Stein to the Waverider so Gideon can heal him. And finally, finally, our friends get off this Rao-forsaken world and head back to Earth-1.

Speaking of turning tides, the shift is happening at Star Labs, too, because the rest of the Legends have arrived. Ray uses his Atom suit to save Kara from getting her heart carved out of her like she was in an episode of OUAT. The ladies are here too, don’t worry.

Ray and Felicity are getting Kara to safety when Oliver-X comes in and knocks Ray out. But Felicity Smoak has had enough. She steps in front of Kara, head high, locks eyes with her enemy and says that her grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust so that her life could get ruined by Nazis. So if he wants to murder her friend, he’ll have to go through her. And even if he does go through her, she wants him to know that the resistance will never quit, they will never stop fighting.

I got chills, I won’t lie. Felicity Smoak is the best part of Arrow and watching her give it to this Nazi asshole who happens to look like the love of her life, no apologies, no trying to reason with him, just a hard no…it was wonderful.

ALSO I MEAN SHE STEPPED UP TO PROTECT SUPERGIRL. Gah, she’s the best.

Lucky for us, Oliver-X doesn’t have a chance to go through Felicity to get to Kara, because Oliver shows up and he has Kara-X and her still-vulnerable neck in his grip.

So Thawne flashes them both away, and the rest of the team takes Metallo down, no problem

Firestorm splits in the Waverider, but now they’re both kind of wounded, Jax acting as a kind of human life support for Stein.

Everyone is reunited finally, including Alex and Kara, much to Alex’s extreme relief.

Alex apologizes for suggesting a wedding on another Earth would solve their problems, and Kara gives a tired giggle and says at least fighting Nazis put things in perspective. Alex applauds her ability to find the silver lining in this chaos.

Curtis is recruited by Amaya and Zari to help them figure out how to stop the Nazi Waverider and I don’t really have anything else to say about this scene besides LOOK AT THEM.

These two beauts work with Curtis and The Ray to find it, and when they do, they also realize that Overgirl isn’t just dying with all this excess radiation, but she’s going to become a supernova. Because science.

In the med by of the good Waverider, Stein tells Jax that he knows he’s dying, and that he has to use Cisco’s formula to split them and break the Firestorm bond or else they’ll both die. Jax doesn’t want to lose another father figure, but Stein wants to do this, for Jax. Stein says, “Thanks for the adventure of a lifetime,” and even though they had been pretty heavy handed with the “Stein is going to die” imagery since hour one of this crossover (I knew he was doomed the second he said he wanted to teach his grandson chess), I WEPT. Cried a contact right out. I think this whole crossover has me overemotional. But losing a member of the Legends family, and losing a Jewish man to the Nazis, and losing Victor Garber on this show…it was a lot.

And just when I thought I was done crying, Sara comes in and kisses the top of Stein’s head to say goodbye.

Oliver asks Sara how she’s doing and she says she’ll cry at the funeral, and he asks her again, and she answers his real question: She’s not feeling bloodthirsty. She just wants to win. So her and Oliver gather everyone together and have a quick Skype chat with Oliver-X.

Oliver-X says they can end this right now if they just hand over Supergirl. Kara probably would do it if anyone asked her, but Oliver doesn’t even pose it as a question.

They are a group that consists of a bisexual woman, a lesbian woman, a Kryptonian immigrant, four women of color, three men of color, one of whom is also gay, two queer men, a woman who arguably has multiple personality disorder but is handling it like a boss, and a Jewish woman who are not backing down. They will fight as long and as hard as it takes. They have been through enough, they’re not going to roll over and let some Nazi scum take over their world. They just wont.

And the white dudes among them stand with them.

Sara steps in front of the team and says they’re going to kick some Nazi ass, for the professor.

The Nazis march, but our heroes march right back. It’s a powerful shot, and it made my heart race a little to see all my superhero friends all working together.

Fighting ensues and it’s one last beautiful dance. Kara challenges her evil twin and Overgirl and Supergirl have one final battle.

Felicity needs someone to get on the Nazi Waverider to take down its shields, so Frost skates Amaya and Zari in like a bunch of Care Bears riding a rainbow.

The ladies work together and take down the shields and Cisco gets them out just before the Nazi Waverider goes down.

Overgirl is starting to implode and Kara panics a little, but Wells tells her to throw her up, up, and away, so Kara does just that. Kara-X explodes, sending Supergirl falling back to Earth.

Oliver-X is sad about his wife dying but nobody cares because he’s a Nazi. Oliver kills him dead and I know he vowed never to kill anyone ever again, but I hope he sleeps like a baby tonight.

Nate catches Supergirl with the help of some friends so that she doesn’t go splat and dares call himself the Man of Steel but that is neither here nor there.

And so. The battle’s done, and we kinda won. Little by little, the mega-team breaks up and starts to go back to their own worlds. Snart decides he’s going to stay for a little while and kisses his Ray goodbye.

The rest of the team, before saying their own goodbyes, go to Stein’s funeral. Jax is sad he couldn’t bring him home to his family, but Stein’s wife and daughter say that he was his family, too. It’s all very sad. Especially when Sara thanks him for believing in her.

It’s all very sad so let’s move on quickly before I cry out my contact again.

Cut to a more fun scene, where Alex and Sara joke about how funny it is that going their separate ways means going to another Earth and another time, respectively.

Alex thanks Sara for putting things in perspective for her; Sara was right, she should trust her own instincts. Alex smiles at Sara and says there has to be someone else out there for her. For Sara, too. Alex says, “for more than just a night” in a way that doesn’t seem to shame Sara for the one night stand thing, but to help Sara see that she’d be a pretty good girlfriend. Sara smiles because she was kinda thinking the same thing.

And I know a very special time agent that would be just the right girl for the job. Just saying.

Sara says, “Catch you on the other side,” and Alex smiles as she walks away. (Mick asks Sara if she “hit that” and Sara slaps him upside the head, in the most Legends-esque interaction to happen on this crossover. I loved it.)

And thus ends the Sara/Alex arc. I loved the whole thing, from beginning to end, and I think each was exactly what the other needed right now. For Alex, it was a stepping stone to moving on. It was proof that other people out there are gonna wanna get with that. It was an adult conversation with another adult queer woman without too many feelings tangled up in it. It was more understanding than she even knew she needed.

This interaction is equally as important for Sara as it is Alex. Sara is used to rocking a girl’s world then immediately disappearing into another time period. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen her connect with a fling on an emotional level after having connect with them physically. Or really talk about her feelings with anyone, to be honest. But she was good at being there for Alex, and she probably liked feeling seen. So hopefully now she’ll seek that out and more, someone who understands her and who she can process feelings with on the regular.

After Sara’s gone, Alex and Kara say goodbye to Oliver, Felicity, Barry and Iris. Everyone hugs except Kara and Oliver because they’re as weirded out about their Earth-X counterparts being together as the rest of us. And with warm smiles and a wave, the Danvers girls say goodbye to Earth-1.

Iris and Barry decide that they want to just get married right here and now, and not risk any more interruptions, so Barry scoops up Diggle from Star City and he starts to marry them. Iris is so happy and she even steals Lena Luthor’s line, telling Barry that The Flash is Central City’s hero, but Barry Allen is hers.

Yes, it’s true, Iris West’s LITERAL WEDDING VOWS mirrored a thing Lena Luthor said out loud to Kara Danvers. Do with that what you will.

Felicity decides to jump in on this and makes it a double-wedding, so her and Oliver are married at the same time.

And there is blissfully no cliffhanger, because I think we’ve been through enough. So thus ends the crossover. I hope you had fun watching our faves work together, grow together, and punch Nazis together. I know I did.