This episode is the second of the four-part Crisis on Earth-X Crossover event between Supergirl (2015), The Flash (2014), Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow. The episodes in chronological order are "Crisis on Earth-X, Part 1", "Crisis on Earth-X, Part 2", "Crisis on Earth-X, Part 3", and "Crisis on Earth-X, Part 4".
The wedding is put on hold, as the heroes of Earth-1 (and a couple from Earth-38) must focus on repelling these new invaders, who are from a secret world known to the rest of The Multiverse as Earth-X.
Tropes:
- Admiring the Abomination: Mick is really hot for Killer Frost, much to the disgust of Caitlin.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: While the majority of the heroes go to confront Overgirl and her troops, Dark Arrow and a small regiment take over S.T.A.R. Labs.
- Antagonist in Mourning: Dark Arrow mourns for a little bit when he learns through a tracker that Prometheus-X has killed himself in captivity.
- Armor Is Useless: Alex manages to take out several Nazi troopers with her handgun (as they all rush at her without shooting). Apparently the Krauts prioritized snazzy leather coats and cool masks over developing basic body armor. That, or Alex aimed for weakpoints.
- Arrow Catch: Overgirl does this on the second attempt at hitting her with a Kryptonite arrow.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The three leaders find themselves locked in a one-sided Mexican Standoff: Thawne has a vibrating hand readied for Dark Arrow, Overgirl threatens to crush his wrist, and Dark Arrow has an arrow to Reverse-Flash's neck. And Thawne diffuses the situation by saying that he and Overgirl should cease with their respective threats, while Dark Arrow...should be 10% less brooding.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: When Felicity asks Oliver what is bothering him, he is quite annoyed at having to point out that it stems from her rejecting his proposal the night before.
- Supergirl wonders why Oliver has thought to arm himself with a Kryptonite arrow? Despite having being mind controlled by the Dominators on their previous meeting and nearly killing him and Barry as a result?
- Badass Boast: Overgirl, Thawne and Dark Arrow deliver several to each other when they are arguing and get into a small fight.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Oliver-X seizes control of S.T.A.R. Labs by the end of this part of the crossover.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Prometheus-X looks like he's playing into Oliver's sympathy, but in the end he reveals he's just as bad as the rest of those from Earth-X before breaking a Cyanide Pill to kill himself.
- Brain Bleach: Kara is disgusted when she finds out Oliver-X and Kara-X are a couple.
- Breaking Speech: Tommy delivers one to Oliver shortly before committing suicide.Tommy-X: ...then you really are a special kind of idiot. Your naïveté would be charming, if your weakness wasn't so pathetic. Is this how it is on your planet? Everybody's swayed by sentiment? Is everyone here really so weak!? The Reich will change that; the weak will be eliminated, your entire world will be enslaved, but you...you won't be around to witness it. He is going to feel your skull crack under the weight of his boot. Everyone you care about, everyone you love...they are going to die badly..in ways that would give even monsters nightmares. I really wish that I could live to see it.
- Call-Back: Felicity recalls she once caught a deranged serial killer from his facial cream.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Nazis keep the heroes alive because Kara will be less likely to resist as long as she knows they can still be hurt/killed for her disobedience.
- The Cavalry: Subverted. Team Arrow (minus Diggle) arrive to save S.T.A.R. Labs from being taken over by Oliver-X. He beats them all anyway.
- Chewing the Scenery: Melissa and Stephen obviously have great fun in hamming up as their respective evil version.
- Crapsack World: Harry explains that Earth-X is such a horrible place that no-one else in the multiverse wants anything to do with it. Note that one of the Earths that he considers better is a post-apocalyptic Earth where humans struggle to survive.Harry: It doesn't have a designation because it's a place so awful, so...horrific, no sane person ever traveled there.
- Crazy-Prepared: Apparently, after the last crossover, Oliver made himself some Kryptonite arrows, just in case he had to deal with an evil Kryptonian. It's not clear where he managed to get his hands on Kryptonite, since there are no known Kryptonians on Earth-1.
- Curbstomp Battle: Dark Arrow defeats Mick, Killer Frost, Dinah, Rene and Curtis quite easily.
- Cyanide Pill: Tommy-X uncorks a fake tooth and swallows some poison after his Breaking Speech to Oliver, dying for the Reich.
- Deus Exit Machina:
- Cisco is knocked out, greatly hampering the team's attempts to locate their Earth-X counterparts. Lampshaded by Harry just when they really needed him the most.
- The same conversation brings up the question of why they just can't use a certain ship with the latest tech around. Unfortunately, Jax mentions that the rest of the Legends (a third example for that matter) took the Waverider on a mission to the Stone Age, earning him a stare from Harry and Caitlin.
- Downer Ending: For this part of the crossover, at least. The team is defeated, Kara is captured and Barry and the others are placed in a concentration camp with their powers disabled. Also, S.T.A.R. Labs has been taken over by the Nazis.
- Dramatic Unmask: Overgirl, Dark Arrow and Reverse-Flash unmasks thanks to their Collapsible Helmets, revealing their faces to Kara, Barry and Oliver.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Tommy-X can't understand how Oliver would sacrifice himself for his friends, while he kills himself as duty to the Fatherland.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Prometheus and Dark Arrow seem to genuinely be friends, as Oliver-X is grief-stricken when he learns he's dead; also, Oliver-X and Kara-X genuinely love one another.
- Evil Gloating: Thawne can't resist to gloat towards Barry once the group is subdued.
- Foreshadowing: The geniuses of Teams Flash and Arrow both observe that Overgirl's blood has immense amounts of solar radiation, which is to be expected of a Kryptonian, right? Wrong, it turns out she had absorbed too much at once, and is now slowly dying, necessitating their plan in The Reveal.
- For the Evulz: It's pretty much clear from the start that Thawne's only helping the Earth-X Nazis because he wants to continue tormenting Barry.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Thawne is not liked by Overgirl and Dark Arrow due to his insufferable behavior.
- Gun Fu: During the warehouse fight, Alex puts on an impressive display of combining hand-to-hand combat and close-range pistol work.
- Hand Wave: Thawne doesn't even bother explaining how he's still alive, essentially telling Barry (and the audience) to just deal with it.Thawne: Time travel, Barry. Very confusing.
- Hypocritical Humor: Downplayed, when Oliver dismisses stares from Supergirl and the Flash for being late to a mission because he doesn't have Super-Speed like they do. It's a good thing "The Tardiest Man Alive" didn't say anything at all...
- Idiot Ball:
- When Team Arrow (minus Ollie and Dig) ambush Oliver-X, they are three combatants with ranged weapons (guns, t-spheres, canary cry) against one guy with arrows. So of course they fight him hand-to-hand, and get the crap kicked out of them. While this can be excused on Rene and Dinah's parts (machine guns are often a bad idea in any enclosed space with a lot of metal surfaces where you have four allies and only one enemy and the Canary Cry is a very predictable attack, which often requires her to strike a stance, take a deep breath, then scream, which would give Oliver-X time to stop her or at least dodge) Curtis opens the fight with a one-liner while tossing a T-Sphere in his hand. Meaning that he definitely had at least one T-Sphere with him and he was ready to use it, but he lets Dinah and Rene make the first moves, then goes in for a kick, no T-sphere in sight. It's especially galling since real Oliver has previously kicked all their asses multiple times in training sessions.
- But then again, at least half of the German forces charge the non-powered heroes with their fists. Makes you wonder, which side is more dumb.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: After taking down Rory and Killer Frost, Oliver-X asks if "anyone else wants to be a hero?" Instantly, Black Canary, Mr. Terrific and Wild Dog show up. Lampshaded by Terrific.Mr. Terrific: They wanted us to wait...but I don't think we'd ever get a better entry cue than that.
- Insistent Terminology: Averted. Dark Arrow uses the term "heroes" two feet from Sara and she passes on the opportunity to correct him that she's a Legend.
- It Amused Me: Apparently the only reason Tommy acted like a wounded victim in front of Oliver was to screw with him before he committed suicide.
- Joker Immunity: Earth-1's Eobard Thawne is working with the Reichsmen. When last we saw him over on Legends of Tomorrow, he got erased from existence by the Black Flash (after previously being erased from existence by the death of his ancestor). Lampshaded even by both Barry and Thawne himself.
- The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort: Overgirl takes Oliver's Kryptonite arrow to the shoulder because she assumed it would just bounce off and over-confidently stood still.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Before the team goes to confront their evil doppelgangers, there is a sequence of each hero suiting up.
- Love Is a Weakness: Every Nazi-counterpart of our heroes, especially Prometheus/Tommy Merlyn, mock the protagonists for being soft. Ironically, two of those Nazi counterparts genuinely love each other. Ironically, Thawne also scolds Dark Arrow in regards to his relationship with Overgirl for this, thinking that Oliver-X will hold off his conquest and prioritize saving Overgirl instead.
- Menacing Stroll: Dark Arrow does one when Harry runs away from him, effortlessly catching up and knocking him out.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: "Well, it's a good thing we have a metric ton of smart people in this building...and Rory."
- Mythology Gag:
- Oliver's Crazy-Prepared development of a Kryponite arrow further enforces the comparisons to Batman.
- Overgirl dying of solar energy overload is reminiscent what happened to Superman in All-Star Superman. It also explains why Supergirl had such apparent difficulty in a straight fight with someone who would otherwise be her equal, and why one solid punch would would be enough to disable Overgirl.
- The team are preparing a device to track down Earth-X, and Oliver thinks it's a metronome. More likely, it's another instrument entirely (maybe a tuning fork).
- Negated Moment of Awesome: Despite dramatic entrances, neither Mick, nor Killer Frost, nor Curtis, Dinah and Rene are able to do anything to Dark Arrow, who trounces all of them easily.
- Noodle Incident:
- Where exactly did Oliver get the materials (or knowledge) to make a Kryptonite arrow, anyway?
- What happened to Overgirl that caused her to absorb so much solar radiation? Was her remark about how she "flew too close to the sun" meant to be literal? If so, why did she?
- Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: Oliver-X was able to beat Team Arrow and lock them up before escaping STAR Labs.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Oliver's reaction when he realizes that Tommy-X is about to commit suicide by hidden Cyanide Pill.
- Overgirl when she is shot by a Kryptonite arrow.
- Harry when suddenly Dark Arrow is standing before him.
- When Kara learns the Nazis brought Metallo with them.
- The One That Got Away: Alex beats herself up over the one night stand with Sara, still not being over Maggie.
- Overshadowed by Awesome:
- As much of a Badass Normal as he is, Oliver is knocked out cold when he takes a punch from someone as strong as Overgirl. And lacking the element of surprise the second time, his kryptonite arrow trick works about as well as can be expected against someone with super senses and reflexes.
- After Barry and Firestorm are subdued, Oliver, Sara, and Alex, being only Badass Normal, are taken out in one hit by Reverse Flash and Overgirl.
- Parental Substitute: Jefferson reveals how painful it really is for him that Stein is going to retire, since he is the closest thing he ever had for a father figure.
- Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Played straight and lampshaded by Curtis.
- The Reveal: Part of the reason for the invasion was to find a heart donor for Overgirl. They find a match in her Earth-38 counterpart, Kara/Supergirl.
- Right Behind Me: In the Time Vault, Oliver was telling Barry and Iris about his complicated situation with Felicity, not realizing until too late that when they kept mentioning her name it was because she actually showed up.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Earth-X dopplegangers are passionate about their nazisms.
- Shooting Superman: When Ollie gets knocked down, he sees Overgirl trading blows with Sara. It doesn't go well for Sara.
- Shout-Out: Felicity describes Earth-X Oliver as "Oliver in the High Castle".
- SkeleBot 9000: Similar to the classic comic look, Metallo-X looks like this.
- So Last Season: The ongoing debate between who's faster, Supergirl or Flash, has finally ended. Thanks to his time in the Speed Force, Barry is considerably faster than when they last met. When the construction site crumbles, Supergirl flies off towards it. A few seconds later, after being knocked around by Thawne, Barry gets up and beats her to the building, while carrying Oliver with him.
- Spoiler Opening: The opening credits reveal Wild Dog, Mr. Terrifc, and Black Canary III's actors are all in this episode, even though the only one we see before the 45-minute mark is Curtis on a video screen. Sure enough, they show up to ambush Oliver-X. Well, theoretically. Possibly not since this is technically an episode of Arrow, the entire regular credits of it are shown and it's natural that those three would be in it. It doesn't even necessarily spoil the surprise, since Thea and other Laurel are also listed because they're regular cast of Arrow despite not actually being in the episode (or the crossover at all actually).
- The Starscream: In a twist, Thawne actually wants the New Reichsmen to reach their goals of Eath-1 conquest, but he voices his contempt on how Oliver-X would put saving his wife first before anything else.
- Superior Successor: Overgirl claims that her husband Oliver-X is a better Führer than Hitler was. Considering he's a successful Frontline General instead of using Armchair Military, it's hard to argue.Overgirl: Hitler was driven by passion and childish need. Oliver is ten times the man Hitler ever was.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: S.T.A.R. Labs' lax security Running Gag bites them in the ass again, when Oliver-X just waltzes in and takes over the place with virtually no effort.
- Team Power Walk: Supergirl, Green Arrow, Firestorm, Alex and Sara walks out of S.T.A.R. Labs in slow motion (and almost in a V-Formation Team Shot) as they're going to beat up Nazis.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: The Reverse-Flash who is with Earth-X is actually Earth-1's Eobard Thawne, who somehow wound up on Earth-X after being erased from time twice, and with the face of Harrison Wells. Even he doesn't seem to understand how that happened.
- Trapped in Another World: Most of the active heroes find themselves robbed of their powers and imprisoned in one of Earth-X's concentration camps.
- Unexplained Recovery: Combined with Ambiguous Situation, Thawne only makes a short handwave on how he survived being erased from existence a second time. It's also not clear from which time period he is, exactly.
- Unholy Matrimony: The Nazi versions of Kara and Oliver are married to each other.
- Weirdness Magnet: As a reason for why she doesn't accept Oliver's proposal, Felicity cites the fact that after the last time she accepted, she was shot, and during the very wedding they were just attending, Nazis appeared out of the blue and tried to kill them all.
- Wham Shot: Prometheus unmasking to reveal himself as Earth-X Tommy.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: How Curtis reacts to hearing the news of who they are going up against this time.
- You See, I'm Dying: The reason for the entire attack is that Overgirl is dying from overexposure to the sun and needs a new heart.
