It’s the superhero equivalent of a Champions League home-and-away tie. In Tuesday’s episode of The Flash, scowling, vengeful bowman Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) turned up in Central City looking to turn a bad guy into a pin cushion. In Thursday’s episode of Arrow, scarlet speedster Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) heads over to Starling City to help Olly run down a villain who throws lethal boomerangs. It’s a genuine, honest-to-goodness superhero TV team-up, and it’s about time.
There are few things that will tickle the pleasure centres of a longstanding comics reader more than a good, old-fashioned team-up. The Platonic ideal sees the two heroes meet and then immediately throwdown, the result of a genuine misunderstanding, an evil outside influence (brainwashing is a favourite, and is used in this crossover) or just because they really annoy each other. It’s an enactment of all those playground/office/messageboard arguments that start “who would win in a fight between ...” Then, after that initial smackdown, the heroes shake hands, acknowledge their newfound respect and go after the real threat.
It’s a trope as old as comics themselves, with both Marvel and DC publishing long-running series – Marvel Team-Up and The Brave and the Bold, respectively – predicated entirely on superpowered characters going on exuberant team-building exercises. But it’s only now, when we’re drowning in comic-inspired TV shows, that this sort of crossover could happen on-screen.
Think of poor Tom Welling in Smallville, slaving away as a not-quite-Superman Clark Kent for 10 long series. Clark accumulated plenty of superfriends and enemies over the years, but none of them had their own TV show. The last time it happened might have been when the Green Hornet (a scrappy one-season series notable only for co-starring a young Bruce Lee as Kato) crossed over with Adam West’s Batman in 1967. In recent years, the closest we’ve come are occasional Buffy/Angel crossovers, or those episodes of CSI and NCIS where investigative squads from other cities are introduced in advance of their own spinoff.
This Flash/Arrow crossover was always on the cards, since both series come from the same producer, Greg Berlanti, and are screened on the teen-friendly network The CW in the US. (Thankfully, someone at Sky1 had the foresight two months ago to schedule both shows so the crossover could take place the same week.) As well as sharing creative DNA, they’ve been intertwined on-screen from the outset, with affable Barry being first introduced as a non-superpowered crime scene investigator in the last season of Arrow. Then, in the first episode of The Flash, one of the first things Barry did after being struck by lightning and attaining super-speed was to sprint over to Starling City to get some hero advice from Arrow. Olly even suggested Barry’s superhero codename.
If these interlinked episodes show how baseline similar the two series are – a superhero protecting their own patch, with a geeky/attractive support group and a production line of baddies to bring to justice – it also highlights a key difference. Arrow is tortured and torturing, even if Amell manages to find some humour in his character’s grim relentlessness. But Barry is that rare thing – a superhero who seems to actually enjoy having powers. Gustin appears to have taken some of cues from Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man: this Flash is enthusiastic, occasionally bashful and cute; a quippy whippet.
So is this team-up the greatest bit of fan service ever, in an age where we are all increasingly fangirls and fanboys? Not quite – three seasons in, you get the sense that the Arrow creative team are actively looking for ways to amuse themselves. This growling, gritty incarnation of Oliver Queen may be far removed from the traditional comics character, who was essentially Robin Hood, complete with feathered cap and a little curly beard. But a fortnight ago the writers managed to manufacture a reason for Olly to use a trick arrow with a boxing glove attached to the business end, the longstanding signifier for the original Green Arrow’s comic goofiness. Meanwhile, Berlanti is hard at work developing a new Supergirl series. Next time, it might have to be a three-parter.
Have you been watching The Flash and/or Arrow? How do you think the two measure up? Let us know in the comments below.
