Deron Generally
Deron GenerallyArrow
The CW
Season 7 Episode 9
Elseworlds Part 2
The second part of the Elseworlds crossover seems to go out of its way to remind us that Oliver Queen kind of sucks as a person.
I like how they redo the Arrow intro with Grant Gustin taking over. It also looks like the red storm has followed the heroes to Star City. After once again explaining what happened, they call in Felicity for help and Oliver decides to not tell her about the body swap. It’s a pretty dumb move that doesn’t serve the story overall, but continues the “Oliver sucks” motif of this episode.
When the trio makes their way to Gotham, they find that the crime ridden city is worse than they imagined. When they are arrested for stopping their own mugging, they are bailed out by Kate Kane after being transported to Wayne Towers. Kane’s intro and the information about Bruce going missing is interesting and adds some intriguing details to the story and the world itself. Ruby Rose does a great job as Kate, but she isn’t given much to work with until the end of the episode. Her motivation seems to be getting the other vigilantes out of the city.
Felicity and company manage to find a way to breach the red storms and discover that it’s Earth 90’s Flash trying to break through with a warning.
After infiltrating Arkham with the help of Caitlin, they find the book and manage to get it away after Barry and Oliver get doused with fear gas and start hallucinating encounters with Malcolm Merlyn and Reverse Flash. The fight gets broken up by the criminally underused Batwoman in this episode and the pair learn more about each other than they knew before. In the aftermath, they recover the book and Supergirl and Batwoman have a cute “World’s Finest” moment.
Felicity and Oliver finally have a talk that resolves some of the unspoken issues they’ve been having since his release. When Earth 90 Flash finally arrives, he warns them about the Monitor, just before he appears to get the book back. After a short fight, Barry and Oliver are told the Monitor’s plan and what this test is supposed to determine. When Deegan retrieves the book, he’s told to think bigger and everything changes again with the newest threat to Barry, Oliver and Kara being John Deegan who is now Superman.
A good episode that could have been better if the producers decided to lean more into the ramifications of the body swap. While Oliver was more charming when he was the Flash, you never really got a sense of how the switch affected him the way it was explained and shown in the Flash episode. A lot of the critical moments in the episode seemed rushed, but the humor was refreshing, especially Oliver’s belief that Batman is an urban legend and his insistence that he was the first vigilante.
Arrow S07XE09
0.00
