After pitting Oliver against a psychotic, love-obsessed archer and teasing Digger Harkness, a.k.a. Captain Boomerang, Arrow is taking next week off, but the show hasn't left its fans empty-handed. Last night, the CW aired the first promo for the highly anticipated Arrow and The Flash crossover kicking off on December 2 with the appropriately named Flash episode “Flash vs. Arrow.” Why is it appropriate? Well, judging from the preview below, the two heroes aren’t on the best of terms.
Well...that was brutal. While it looks like Oliver scored a few blows and even managed to block a punch, Barry has the edge in this fight. Oliver may have the fighting and archery skills, but that won’t be enough to defeat someone who can move faster than the blink of an eye. Barry’s ego has also inflated significantly. Granted, what he’s saying is true, but there’s no need to make your fellow vigilante feel bad about it.
My one complaint about the preview is that the CW didn’t come up with its own stylized logo combining the Flash and Arrow symbols Batman V Superman style. This is a special occasion that requires more flair than just pairing the show titles next to each other.
In the first half of the crossover, Oliver and Team Arrow head to Central City to investigate a mysterious boomerang, but Oliver is quickly recruited by Barry to help take down Ray Bivolo, a metahuman who can manipulate emotions. After their capture attempt goes wrong, Oliver tells Barry he still has a lot to learn, prompting Barry to go after Bivolo alone. When he finds Bivolo, the emotion manipulator fills him with rage, and Barry soon goes on a rampage across Central City, forcing Oliver to take the necessary action to stop his friend.
Barry’s super speed may give him a huge advantage over the Starling City archer, but it’s been my experience from years of comic book reading that heroes who have been brainwashed don’t have the same degree of control of their abilities as they do when their minds are clear. That may give Oliver an advantage to stopping Flash, along with assistance from Teams Arrow and Flash. As viewers saw in “Going Rogue,” Cisco created the cold gun as a contingency in case Barry turned out to be a bad guy. With Felicity’s help, the S.T.A.R. Labs team could create another complicated gizmo to either stop Barry in his tracks or undo Bivolo’s control over him.
If you want to see an extended preview of the crossover, make sure to tune in to next week’s episode of The Flash, which will feature Arrow villain William Tockman, a.k.a. The Clock King, antagonizing Central City.
