Aliens invade Central City on Tuesday night’s crossover episode of “The Flash,” and Barry Allen will be bringing together a team of heroes to fight the Dominators.
“It was [Greg Berlanti’s] idea to do the Dominators,” “Arrow” and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim told reporters after a screening on Monday of the crossover event, addressing how this year’s villains were chosen. “And, I don’t want to speak for Greg, but I think the way it came out … was we all collectively wanted the superheroes to face an external threat. And by external, I don’t mean extraterrestrial, I just mean not a ‘big bad’ from one of the shows, but rather, a threat that came from outside of the shows.
“And Greg just walked in one day and was like, ‘Let’s do ‘Invasion,'” Guggenheim continued of the DC comic book series, as he spoke with reporters alongside fellow EP Andrew Kreisberg. “I think we both had the exact same twin reactions – ‘That’s totally awesome, and, ‘Oh my God, how the hell are we going to do that?’ I’m a huge fan of that particular series and I’m a huge Bill Mantlo fan and that was Bill Mantlo’s first work for DC Comics after decades at Marvel, and so that particular series looms very large in my personal estimation.”
The Dominator invasion is the meat of the crossover story, but it won’t make up all of the drama. “Arrow” has some special surprises on the way for viewers, and “The Flash” isn’t hitting pause on the storyline that just saw Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) become a new metahuman speedster.
“I think that one of the things we always try to do, especially with the crossovers, is not make it feel like all of a sudden we’re in this evergreen world that’s completely disconnected from everything that’s been happening previous,” Kreisberg said.
“And … at the end of Episode 307, Wally became a speedster. That’s huge. That’s big news, and to sort of gloss over that and not have anybody react, considering the myriad reactions Joe has had to Barry becoming a speedster and then Iris finding out, felt like we’d be doing a disservice to the people who were watching ‘The Flash’ and enjoying it,” the producer added.
The first two scenes of the four-show crossover took place in Monday night’s “Supergirl,” when Kara Danvers’ family had their Thanksgiving dinner interrupted by a Cisco-made breach that didn’t quite make a full connection. And, at the end of the “Supergirl” episode, Barry and Cisco finally made it through to her Earth, and recruited Kara.
Monday’s “Supergirl” was the show’s final episode of 2016 (it returns next year), the major factor in why there was just a touch of the crossover in National City.
“Part of what made it a little bit difficult was all the other shows – ‘Flash,’ ‘Arrow’ and ‘Legends’ all have a subsequent episode to the crossovers, but with ‘Supergirl,’ it was our midseason finale, so we wanted to make sure that Episode 8 of ‘Supergirl’ spoke to what had been happening on the first seven episodes of ‘Supergirl’ and not just as a tie in,” Kreisberg said. “And then just logistically speaking, you know, last year we did two shows with a sprinkling of ‘Legends,’ and this year, we went to three shows. The idea of going to four full shows, I’m not sure we could have pulled [it] off logistically speaking.”
The Flash” airs Tuesday at 8/7c. The crossover continues on Wednesday’s “Arrow” at 8/7c and Thursday’s “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” also at 8/7c on The CW.
— Jolie Lash