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Invasion! (The Flash) title card "Things were looking a little grim, but part of me was, admittedly, a little excited for a 'reunion' of old friends."

Cisco Ramon[src]


This episode is part of a larger crossover series, Invasion!.

For other uses of "Invasion!", see Invasion! (disambiguation).
"That's what you've all proven here. Meta-humans or not, superpowers or not... you are Earth's mightiest heroes."
Kara Danvers

"Invasion!" is the seventh episode of the second season of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and the twenty-third episode overall. It aired on December 1, 2016. The episode is the fourth part of the four-part crossover, Invasion!, with the eighth episode of the season two of Supergirl, the eighth episode of the third season of The Flash and the eight episode of the fifth season of Arrow.

Synopsis[]

Cast[]

Starring[]

Special guest star[]

Guest starring[]

Co-starring[]

Plot[]

Oliver, Diggle, Sara and Ray return alongside Nate, Amaya and Mick to the S.T.A.R. Labs after escaping from the Dominator ship (and dropping Thea back to Star City). Barry, Kara, Cisco and Felicity are there welcoming them back. With the knowledge that the Dominators have some kind of weapon ready against Earth, the team decides to find out, what it is. After reviewing the footage from 1951, Nate decides to go with Amaya and Mick to the past to see if they can capture a Dominator there, and interrogate it. Cisco and Felicity, thrilled about time travel, also come along. Stein decides to go to S.T.A.R. Labs to reverse-engineer a piece of Dominator tech to see if he can create a counter measure for the Dominators. The team then receives a message, that the new President wants to meet them. Kara is thrilled, but Oliver tells her to remain behind, as he needs to feel normal after his ordeal from the Dominators. Kara reluctantly complies, but is angry with him for telling her this.

In S.T.A.R. Labs, Stein is attempting to create the tech with Caitlin's help. She notices Stein is having headaches, which don't seem normal. He needs some help and Caitlin has brought his daughter, Lily to help. Stein is reluctant to have her to help, due to the fact that she is a time aberration he created, and also he doesn't feel she is of any help. But after she tells him she has a degree from nanotechnology from MIT, he agrees, but is still uneasy for him to work with a daughter he doesn't even know.

Nate, Amaya, Mick, Cisco and Felicity use the Waverider to travel to 1951. After arriving, the Legends tell Cisco and Felicity to remain behind as tech support. Outside, they encounter the site, where humans and Dominators are fighting. Realizing they can't intervene, they wait. Inside the Waverider, Felicity asks Cisco, why he chose to come along. As much as time traveling and seeing the Waverider was exhilarating, Felicity determines, that the actual reason was, that Cisco had to get away from Barry, as he is still mad for Barry creating Flashpoint, which caused his brother, Dante, to be killed, and Barry hasn't agreed to alter time to bring him back.

Back in the present, Oliver, Barry, Diggle, Sara and Ray meet with the President's entourage, but there's no President with them. In fact, they are government agents. At the same time in 1951, Nate, Amaya and Mick encounter a lone straggler from the Dominators and move in to capture it. As soon as they overpower him, a group of agents appear, and their leader, Smith, captures the Dominator and them. The leader is the same leading the agents in the present. As the heroes take out the agents and corner Smith, he explains that they once had peace with the Dominators and that Barry broke it when he created Flashpoint. He tells them they made a deal with the Dominators: to hand over Barry, and they will leave Earth alone. Heroes knock him out.

In the past, Cisco and Felicity realize Nate, Amaya and Mick are in trouble and they take guns along to rescue them Inside a prison, the Legends talk with the Dominator, who tells them they came to do reconnaissance on humanity to see if they would rise to become a threat. The Dominator is taken away for torture and at the same time Cisco and Felicity blast their way in. They agree to save the Dominator, hoping that saving him will get him to dissuade the Dominators invasion in the present. They succeed and the Dominator escapes, and the team returns to the present.

In S.T.A.R. Labs, the overwhelm Stein experiences gets the better of him, and Caitlin doesn't understand, why he treats her daughter like a complete stranger. That is exactly the point, as to Stein she is a complete stranger. He then explains to Caitlin, how he caused a time aberration (in "Compromised") in 1987 by encouraging his younger self to be more close with Clarissa, and the result was Lily. Despite that, Caitlin tells him Lily is his daughter, and right now Stein needs her. Stein goes to see Lily, who is about to leave, and they agree to try again. Eventually, Stein begins to see she is his daughter.

In the hangar, while Oliver is attempting to dissuade Barry from giving himself up, Nate realizes their time travel didn't seem to have any effect. Using the Dominator tech they brought with them, Cisco vibes with Nate, and they end up inside a Dominator ship. They encounter the Dominator they saved and he tells them that the emergence of meta-humans has made the Dominators deem, that they are a threat, and he now sees that Cisco is a meta-human as well. Cisco attempts to explain meta-humans protect Earth, but that doesn't help. The Dominators then declare their intent to drop their weapon, Meta-Bomb on Central City to annihilate meta-humans, not caring for collateral damage. As the vibe ends, Nate and Cisco realize they caused this, when they freed the Dominator in 1951. Having now seen first hand, what his meddling with time has caused, Cisco finally realizes the reason why Barry never agreed to save Dante, and how bad Barry feels, when he created Flashpoint: changing the past can make the present worse.

Barry declares to everyone his intent of surrendering to the Dominators, as doing so will save everyone. As he is about to leave, Oliver tells him he will not allow Barry to do it. Barry wonders with what army, and Kara says this one, with the entire team behind her. Everyone (even Mick) tells Barry, that the team sticks together, and maybe the Dominators are right: they are villains, but this is their chance to find out. And after Cisco tells him Barry is his friend, Barry agrees. Stein arrives with a device, that can stop the Dominators, but they need to be attached to them individually. At the same time, the Dominators launch their forces and drop the Meta-Bomb. The team head out to engage them, while Sara and Cisco take the Waverider with the intention to stop the bomb.

The heroes engage the Dominators, distracting them in order to allow Barry to attach Stein's devices on them. During the fight, Oliver is knocked down from the building, but he is saved by Kara, and without saying anything, thanks her. Sara and Cisco find the bomb and use a tractor beam on the bomb, but the bomb is too big for the beam: they only manage to slow down its descent. Felicity informs that there are still Dominators all over. Barry and Kara speed out to attach the devices on them. Sara calls out to Firestorm to help with the bomb, to transform it into something harmless. Jax believes he can't do it, but with Stein's encouragement, he manages to transform the bomb into water. As the final device is attached, Felicity activates them, and the invasion is stopped. The Dominators retreat and leave Earth.

The new President holds an event, where she thanks the heroes for saving the planet. The heroes then have a victory party. Oliver, Barry and Kara (the three greatest of the Arrowverse), have a private talk about how they saved the world, as each one of them has saved it once before; Oliver saved the world, when he stopped Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E. by destroying Darhk's Genesis plan[1]; Barry saved the multiverse, when he defeated Zoom[2]; Kara saved her Earth from Myriad by lifting Fort Rozz out to space[3]. Oliver apologizes to Kara for his earlier behavior towards her, and they officially become friends. Kara then wants a group hug, which they do despite Oliver's reluctance. Later, Smith arrives, with the intention of covering up the incident. He gets cold reception from Nate and then Kara comes to tell her about the D.E.O on her Earth, and that she suggested to their president he be sent to Antartica. Getting the message, Smith is defeated clearly angry, and Nate tells him, that maybe now he will be more friendly to strange visitors from another planet.

Cisco arrives with an interdimensional extrapolator for Kara, telling her she can use it whenever she feels or needs to come visit Earth-1. Kara thanks him and tells Oliver and Barry to call her if they ever need her help. Kara then opens a breach and returns to Earth-38.

As the party ends, Oliver and Sara ponder what would their lives be, if they never had gotten on Queen's Gambit, reminiscing their experience while being captive by the Dominators. They agree it would be good, but not full. They hug as Sara leaves for the Waverider. Afterwards, Oliver and Barry are having a beer in a bar, and also ponder their lives. They both agree that their lives are not normal, but it is full with being heroes.

Production[]

Preparation ran from September 16 until September 26, 2016. Shooting ran from September 27 until October 12, 2016, with a break for Canadian Thanksgiving on October 10.[4]

Videos[]

Trivia[]

  • This is the highest rated episode of Season 2 with a rating of 8.9 on IMDb.
  • This is the first crossover episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow​​.
  • This is the first episode of the series not to feature Amy Pemberton (Gideon).
  • This episode marks the first official appearance of The Flash on DC's Legends of Tomorrow​​, though his voice was heard in "Shogun" and "Abominations".
  • This episode marks the final on-screen appearance for Donnelly Rhodes before his death on January 8, 2018.
  • When Agent "Glasses" Smith tells the team about the Dominators, he calls them Xenomorphs, a reference to the Alien film franchise.
  • The Dominators visited Earth in 1951, landing in Redmond, Oregon. Oregon also happened to be the U.S. state where the potential existence of alien life was introduced on the TV show The X-Files during the pilot episode back in 1993.
    • The Dominators first appearing on Earth in 1951 may be a reference to Area 51; a U.S. Air Force base which, according to a popular conspiracy theory, is kept secret by the government because aliens have been spotted there.
  • When Felicity Smoak and Cisco Ramon get on the Waverider, they say, "This ship is... (Felicity); Automatic (Cisco); Supersonic (Felicity); Hypnotic (Cisco); Funky Fresh (both)". This is referencing Ciara and Missy Elliots' song "1, 2 Step".
  • When Felicity is linguistically challenged after the time jump, at one point she says, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" really fast. This is a reference to the well-known Star Trek TNG episode "Darmok", in which the aliens speak entirely in metaphors. The phrase she spoke means "working together" in the metaphor-based language.
    • Another Star Trek reference is made when Cisco says, "Set your phasers to stun."
    • The bomb the Dominators are using to wipe out all meta-humans on Earth looks nearly identical to the bomb the Xindi were gong to use to wipe out all humans on the Star Trek program "Enterprise" during Season 3 of that show's run.
  • When Nate, Amaya, and Mick land in Oregon in 1951 and leave Cisco and Felicity on the Waverider before the three go to find a Dominator, Nate says, "Have fun storming the castle." This is a quote from the 1987 film The Princess Bride, which Cisco notes and objects to Nate using the film against him.
  • When they manage to capture a Dominator, Mick starts burning it with his Heat gun and says, "Squeal, you pig!" This is possibly a reference to a famous quote from the 1972 film Deliverance.
  • Cisco refers to a Dominator as "E.T.", an alien from the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
  • Felicity says, "Oh, frak.", which is a fictional version of "fuck" first used in the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series.
  • Cisco asks Felicity if she has seen the TV show Stranger Things regarding what the government might do to the captured Legends, indicating that the show exists on Earth-1.
  • Caitlin says to Professor Stein, "You're really taking this whole Absent-Minded Professor thing to a new level." This is a reference to the 1961 film The Absent-Minded Professor.
  • Mick tells Barry, "But when you got a crew, you don't take a hit for the rest." This bears a resemblance to what Leonard Snart told the Legends back in "Pilot, Part 2"​: "If you take out one of [his] crew, you pay the price." This shows that Mick does indeed have a sense of honor similar to Snart's.
  • During the party at the end when Ray looks at Kara, he tells Felicity that she reminds him of his cousin. This is a reference to the fact that Brandon Routh portrayed Superman in the 2006 film, Superman Returns.
  • When Kara leaves after talking to Agent Smith about his reassignment to Antarctica, Nate suggests that next time, Smith should be "a little nicer to strange visitors from another planet." This could be a reference to the Supergirl first season episode "Strange Visitor From Another Planet" and is also the tagline from the original Adventures of Superman TV series.
  • Kara calls the superheroes on Earth-1 "Earth's Mightiest Heroes". This is the nickname of Marvel's Avengers, who are in charge of protecting the Earth from superhuman threats.
  • Just before returning to Earth-38, Kara tells everyone that if she is needed, she is "one call away". This is a reference to the Charlie Puth song "One Call Away", which includes the lyrics "I'll be there to save the day" and "Superman got nothing on me". The song was also featured in the final minutes of the first season finale of Supergirl, "Better Angels".
  • The name of Martin Stein's daughter is revealed as Lily Stein.
  • It's revealed in this episode that Cisco can "vibe" another person with him without tech equipment.
  • It's revealed in this episode that Barry is the winner of the duel between him and Oliver at the end of "The Brave and the Bold".
  • Due to budget considerations, Thea was dropped from this episode and Supergirl's participation was minimized.[citation needed] As an explanation, Oliver mentions dropping Thea off in Star City after her ordeal in the previous episode, "Invasion!", and initially decides to sideline Kara for most of the action due to his distrust.
  • In the original draft of the episode, Lynda Carter was intended to play the new POTUS of Earth-1, acting as a doppelgänger of Olivia Marsdin, who is the POTUS of Earth-38. At the suggestion of the studio, the role was changed, as they thought it would be too confusing.[5] Eventually, Lucia Walters got the role, and an original character was created.
  • When Mick is commenting of Nate's new Costume He refers to him as a "Star Spangled Idiot". This could be a stab at how much the costume looks like Marvel's Captain America's Costume.

Goofs[]

  • The bullet that comes out of the agent's gun is much too large to have been fired from that diameter of gun barrel. Also, the entire shot is poorly timed as the gun recoils too fast relative to the speed of the bullet.
  • Maisie Richardson-Sellers accidentally slips into her natural British accent when discussing how to escape from the prison in the 1950s.

References[]


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