Review: ‘The Flash’ – ‘Legends of Today’: Enter Hawkman and Hawkgirl

A quick review of tonight's “The Flash” coming up just as soon as my conditioner game is on point…

I watched both halves of this latest “Flash”/”Arrow” crossover last night, and I'll have more thoughts on the whole affair tomorrow night or Thursday morning. But without spoiling where this is going, a few random thoughts on “Legends of Today”:

* As always, both the major and minor crossovers tend to benefit the “Arrow” characters more, because they're so much darker by default, even though most of their actors often seem more comfortable doing light comedy. We unfortunately didn't get a lot of Funny Diggle in this one, but Willa Holland had some nice moments as Thea reacted to being exposed to full-on metahuman life for a while. For that matter, Dahrk's amusement at Flash disrupting his latest attempt to kill Oliver was a nice note for Neal McDonough to play, though he hasn't lacked for opportunities to smile on “Arrow.”

* There did, however, seem to be a lot of glossing over various characters either being let in on secret identities or just going along with new information. So Cisco lets Barry's first name slip in front of Kendra, and the next thing you know, she's not only meeting the rest of Team Flash, but soon learning the secret identities of all of Team Arrow, and a few scenes after that, everyone's just accepted what Hawkman tells them about their long shared history of reincarnation. There's a lot of moving parts in this episode, and that meant some shortcuts had to be taken in the plotting and character moments.

* I now very much want to meet the bald, pot-bellied and agreeable Oliver Queen of Earth-2.

* Casper Crump was a bit on the hammy side as Vandal Savage, a DC villain dating back to the '40s, but the action scenes with him having his way with both sets of heroes were fun, particularly Oliver rapid-firing arrows into him when Savage invaded his apartment.

* The Wells/Jay Garrick stuff was relatively self-contained (neither character appears in the “Arrow” episode) and was less interesting for Jay's suspicions about Velocity 6 than for once again pointing out the many problems of keeping people out of the secret identity loop. If Patti knew Barry was the Flash, about the existence of Reverse-Flash, Earth-2, etc., she never would have shot Harry Wells. I at least appreciate that she was willing to trust Joe and walk away when he told her to.

More tomorrow, but what did everybody think of part 1? Did our early glimpse of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, plus Savage, make you more or less interested in “Legends of Tomorrow”?

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