Arrow: Legends of Yesterday Recap

Synopsis of 4×08: Oliver and Barry hide Kendra and Carter in a remote location while they try to figure out how to defeat Vandal Savage; Felicity, Thea, Diggle and Laurel work to come up with a weapon to destroy Vandal.

Rating: ★★★★½☆

As far as team-ups go, I can say that this week’s Arrow was an epic conclusion to the introduction to the new Legends of Tomorrow show. It did a brilliant job of completing the introduction to Vandal Savage from the previous night’s The Flash episode. Unlike the previous crossovers, this week’s two episodes coincide as a crossover in the most traditional of terms, and those who don’t watch one show is going to have to to understand the other.

But it works. The one thing team Flarrow has, in spades, is chemistry. The banter is off the charts, and although each team is strong on their own, there’s no ego clashing when they are forced off the map to a farm to work together. Shout out to Thea’s shout out to Age of Ultron “Superheroes in a farm house? I feel like I’ve seen that in a movie.” The teams seamlessly worked together to help Kendra and Connor to defeat Vandal Savage… at least temporarily.

“Legends of Yesterday” essentially served as a vehicle for introducing Hawkgirl in her full form, and bringing some of the final pieces of the puzzle to the new spin-off. The origin story for Hawgirl and Hawkman and Vandal Savage are glossed over in a couple minutes maximum, leaving much of the episode to a race against the clock in terms of story telling.

The episode had solid action, but where it faltered was in the show’s leading character’s own personal story arc. Oliver’s arc with his son felt a little out of place. It did feel a little bit like William’s reveal was meant to set off Oliver’s plan against Vandal. He enters the first fight with Vandal distracted after possibly breaking up with Felicity and things quickly go completely south when he dies and Barry time travels to undo the wrongs.

Barry’s role in the episode was critical, and in many ways it made him into the star of the show rather than Oliver. In fact, Team Flash really stepped up in the episode. Barry and Cisco both had a spot on the center stage of story arcs while Diggle, Thea, and Laurel seemed to kind of fade into the background of the story. Although the episode was the second part of a crossover event, the show being called Arrow kind of makes me feel like we should focus a little bit on Team Arrow.

All of the really great moments definitely laid with the Flash. Arrow has been going on a bit of an upswing this season in my opinion, but the introduction of Oliver’s son William really throws an unnecessary soap-opera level wrench into things. As if we don’t already have enough issues with Vandal Savage and Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn. Let’s bring back Olicity angst.

As much as I love Oliver and Felicity together, this rebirth of another potential angst mine is not something I signed up for. The fact that when given the chance to undo his mistakes, when warned by Barry that lying to Felicity would endanger his relationship with her, he chose to make the same mistake twice is headache inducing.

I’m sure this is meant to say something about Oliver and his inability to trust people and his fear of losing what is good, but hasn’t anyone told him that you can’t have your cake and eat it too? My major gripe is that it feels like the Oliver that has matured as a result of finally forming a healthy relationship with Felicity has taken a huge step back and it’s all at the price of starting drama. I signed up for a superhero show, not The Bold and The Beautiful.

But that was the second-string plot, and the main plot line managed to hold all of my attention. Watching the team finally come together, watching Kendra gaining a hold of her abilities as Hawkgirl and taking on Savage with the Flarrow team was great.

As was seeing the snippets of her past life as Chay-Ara and Connor as Khufu, which helped set the stage for the romance between the two of them. Chay-Ara and Khufu promised a level of chemistry that we might see in the future from Kendra and Connor, who still seem a little awkward with one another, especially with Cisco around.

Of course after the heroes turn Savage to dust and save the day we know it’s not over. Anyone who was wondering how Savage was going to make a comeback in Legends of Tomorrow can now look to Malcolm Merlyn. You really have to wonder what kind of deal the new Ra’s struck with Savage. One moment he was telling Oliver to keep his daughter out of it, the next moment he’s knee deep in a scheme to bring Savage back on the map.

This obviously isn’t the last we’ll see of Savage, but it looks like the road ahead pushes that all on the back burner (or rather makes it the spin-off’s problem) while it focuses on Oliver’s baby daddy situation.