This episode of The Flash and tomorrow’s episode of Arrow are being used to set up Legends of Tomorrow. Which is fine; it already seems to be shaping up to be a better team up than, oh say, Batman vs. Superman.
We get introduced to Vandal Savage here. Like most of these sorts, he really doesn’t care about actual subtlety in any of his plans. He just leaves a trail of corpses on his way to whatever goal it is that he is pursuing. Which strikes me a s the sort of thing that alerts your enemies, but maybe that’s just me. Also, much is made of the absolutely ancient flint knives this guy uses. Riddle me this; if you are an immortal knife nut, would you keep using the same knives throughout the millennia? Or would you upgrade over time, maybe keeping your originals as a fallback? It’s just one of those little things I think about. It’s the sort of thing that could easily tip your hand, making the series they’re setting up kind of pointless thanks to carbon dating. Not to say you can’t get your hands on really old weapons, but still.
Anyway, Vandal Savage has birdperson hawkperson GPS, because he beelines it to CC Jitters, where Kendra and Cisco are having a late night select-a-date. He decides that giving a long preamble to his murder of Kendra is a good idea, giving Cisco enough time to clue Barry into what’s going down. Barry stops Savage, who disappears as mysteriously as he entered, and Cisco totally blows Barry’s cover.
The majority of the episode is then dedicated to finding some way to keep Kendra safe from the immortal knife-wielding asshole that doesn’t seem to really stay dead, ever. Barry decides that this guy isn’t really like the metahumans he usually fights, opting instead to call Oliver into things. Which actually works out to Team Arrow’s favor, but that’s not important. Barry manages to iRobot a sketch of Vandal Savage for them to run facial rec on, finding a picture of him from the 70’s looking exactly as he does now. Things get a bit heated between Barry and Oliver, before Felicity steps in and suggests they move things to a more social setting. Unfortunately, Vandal Savage crashes their party, and Speedy loads his chest with arrows to Oliver’s dismay.
Things get even more complicated when Hawkman shows up. He really just wants Kendra to awaken, but he didn’t really figure on everyone else not being cool with him swooping down and taking her. They have a big old fashioned hero fight, and after Hawkman gets his ass beat by Barry and Oliver, fills them in on some of the reasoning behind Vandal Savage’s obsession with killing Kendra, and him. They continually reincarnate , and have been for over 4000 years; each time Vandal Savage tracks them down and kills them, apparently deriving his own immortality from the act.
They figure out that Vandal Savage was headed back to Central City to steal The Staff of Horus thanks to Malcolm. Savage plans to use it to kill the Hawkpeople, so Barry and Oliver go off to stop him. They get their asses kicked due to the fact that they got there too late to stop him. Meanwhile, Kendra jumps off a building, finally awakening to all of her past lives. Poor Cisco pretty much got shafted again.
The B plot pretty much revolves around Harry and Caitlin trying to find a way for Barry to match Zoom’s speed. They decide to make a drug that will increase the amount of oxygen in his blood stream, called Velocity 6. Just as they’re finishing up, Jay shows up and gets very upset about it; he considers the connection to the Speed Force more that some bit of science. Things get complicated when Patty spots Harry while he’s picking up some of the ingredients they need to synthesize the drug and trails him back to STAR Labs. She puts a bullet in him, and only Jay can help by taking the drug and phasing the bullet out of his chest. Jay remains absolutely against Barry using the drug, but you can probably guess how that’s going to turn out.
Final Thoughts
- You have no idea how hard it was for me to avoid doing a Harvey Birdman joke
- Seriously, the look on Oliver’s face when Vandal Savage gets loaded with Arrows is priceless.
- Vandal Savage; The DC universe’s villainous immortal Geico caveman.
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