Arrow - 'Legends of Yesterday' and 'Dark Waters'

Teamwork!
Actually, this really shows up that the Flash has the only costume in Team
Flash, while Team Arrow has masks for all.

'Legends of Yesterday' is the follow up to the Flash episode, 'Legends of Today', and brings Teams Flash and Arrow to Central City - or a farmhouse just outside it, in a nakedly owned tribute to Age of Ultron - so that Oliver can learn to fight in the sunlight. Savage uses Merlin to send a message asking for a meeting, where he demands Chay-Ara and Khufu be handed over to him, or he will burn Central City to the ground with everyone in it.

As Kendra's memories of Chay-ara return, the teams prepare to fight. Cisco creates a pair of insulating gloves to allow Barry to seize the staff, while Oliver goes behind Felicity's back to try to get to know the son he never knew he had. Unfortunately for Oliver, this is The Flash, so Felicity finds out and is pissed, dumping him. Elsewhere, Carter pushes Kendra to recall her abilities as a fighter by tapping into her anger. Oliver insists on taking a minimal team to confront Savage. Kendra fails to tap her powers, Oliver is off his game, and the gloves don't work. Vandal kills Hawkgirl and Hawkman, the staff goes off boom and everyone dies except Barry.

No, really. Everyone dies, except for Barry, who runs back in time (phew.)

In the revised timeline, Oliver is prewarned that Felicity will dump him for keeping secrets, so he keeps the secret more secretly (yay for not learning anything!) Barry also pushes Cisco not to let Khufu's cock-blocking get him down, and so Cisco is able to help Kendra access Chay-Ara's memories through her goodness, not rage. This not only properly unlocks her powers, but shows them that the meteors that made Vandal Savage immortal are the key to defeating him. Barry nicks a chunk of meteor and Cisco extracts the 'Nth metal' it contains to use in the gloves. This time they take the whole gang to the fight and use the staff of horus to turn Vandal into dust (which Merlin nicks, telling ash-Savage that he owes him.)

I find it hard to express my disappointment that Vandal Savage is only 4,000 years old instead of 50,000, with his backstory swapped out for the character Hath-Set ('house of set' is a weird-ass name for a priest of Horus) to link it to Hawkgirl and Hawkman, and that he ends the episode uncharacteristically dead. I suppose it was the only way to resolve his hunt other than having him kill his prey and probably half the cast, but... I just like the immortal cave man.

And now the cheerful Christmas episode.

In 'Dark Waters', Oliver proceeds with his mayoral bid, and when his harbour clearing initiative is attacked, opts to out Damien Darhk as the leader of the Ghosts. In retaliation, Darhk kidnaps Thea, Felicity and Diggle, threatening to kill them with an algae-based gas he's been growing in the bay so that Oliver will have nothing left to fight for. Laurel and Malcolm (dressed as Green Arrow) intervene and Merlin almost kills Darhk, but apparently some spell protects him (it's actually a bit obscure, but he's up and showing off a perfect underground cornfield a couple of scenes after almost being exploded.) We also get to meet some more of HIVE's leadership, and get a glimpse at their plan, which seems to be leaning towards global algae-gas apocalypse, with a chosen few surviving in their subterranean version of Kansas.

Oliver makes another speech and proposes to Felicity, who - not knowing that he's lying about his son - accepts and is then killed in an ambush, while Darhk enjoys Christmas with his oddly retro family.

The season has been working hard to make us feel that death is going to have a sting this year, but as my girlfriend predicted, this has actually had the effect of softening the blow, partly because we knew it had to be Felicity and partly because with all that protest I actually have more expectation of a reversal, despite the destruction of the Lazarus Pit and Felicity's text book mouth-bleeding 'for realsies dead' head-loll. I'm not saying I won't be cut up if she's gone, she's always been a favourite with us, but that the shock value wasn't there.

Anyway, now the winter break, while we get caught up on Downton and Sleepy Hollow.