First crossover event between television series "The Flash" and "Arrow"
"Flash vs. Arrow" is the inaugural Arrowverse crossover event, broadcast on The CW, featuring episodes of the Arrowverse television series "The Flash" and "Arrow". The event began on December 2, 2014, with "The Flash" episode "Flash vs. Arrow" and concluded the next day with the "Arrow" episode "The Brave and the Bold". The crossover sees Team Flash (Barry Allen / Flash, Caitlin Snow, and Cisco Ramon) helping Team Arrow (Oliver Queen / Arrow, Felicity Smoak, and John Diggle) take on the boomerang-wielding villain Captain Boomerang, while Team Arrow helps Team Flash confront the metahuman Roy Bivolo.
A crossover between the two series was announced in July 2014, after Barry Allen had been introduced in "Arrow"'s second season ahead of the debut of "The Flash". By the following September, the scripts for each episode had been written, with filming occurring shortly before the end of the month and into October 2014. The crossover sees every main cast member of each series who appear at least in their own series, with additional actors and characters also reprising their Arrowverse roles.
The episodes received positive reviews, with critics calling the crossover enjoyable and praising the producers for bringing the two series together while keeping the episodes as self-contained adventures. They also highlighted the fight scene between the Flash and Arrow as living up to the hype. Ratings for the episodes were exceptional, with both being the highest watched episodes of each show since their respective series premieres. A subsequent crossover occurred the following year, titled "Heroes Join Forces".
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Plot.
Roy Bivolo, a metahuman with the power to send people into an uncontrollable rage, uses his powers to rob the Central City bank. Police detective Eddie Thawne proposes to capture the Flash because he was at the crime scene, but is rejected by the captain. The police track Bivolo to a warehouse, where he uses his powers on a cop to facilitate his escape. Barry Allen arrives to save Joe West, but is almost injured himself before Oliver Queen, as the "Arrow" vigilante, arrives to stop the cop. Later, Oliver informs Barry that he and his team are in Central City tracking down intel on a killer who uses lethal steel boomerangs. Barry and his friends suggests that they team-up to catch each other's targets and Oliver reluctantly agrees. Oliver tries to teach Barry to be more mindful of his surroundings, but Barry decides to go after Bivolo by himself. Bivolo uses his ability on Barry's mind; but because of Barry's speed, its effects last longer and he begins to snap at those he cares for.
Eddie continues to persuade his superiors to form a task force unit to capture the Flash, expressing his zero tolerance for vigilantes. When an enraged Barry, as the Flash, attacks Eddie, Oliver tries to stop Barry, and the two engage in a fight. Oliver manages to wrangle Barry long enough for Harrison Wells and Joe to use strobe light to reset Barry's emotional state. Afterward, Barry and Oliver capture Bivolo and place him in the pipeline prison at S.T.A.R. Labs. Due to the incident, Eddie forms a task unit to arrest the Flash. Barry confirms Oliver's belief that the former has still a lot to learn. Oliver advises him to stay away from Iris West, with whom Barry is in love, for a while, because men with secret identities as vigilantes never succeed romantically. Oliver asks Team Flash to keep his alter ego as the Arrow, a secret. A new mysterious metahuman able to manipulate fire appears in Central City.
In a flashback set in Hong Kong, Oliver learns how to torture suspects to gain information. In the present, Oliver and Roy Harper locate Digger Harkness, the boomerang-wielding killer, where they find A.R.G.U.S. operatives looking for him as well. Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon arrive in Starling City to help Felicity Smoak investigate Sara Lance's homicidal murderer. Digger attempts to kill Lyla Michaels, Roy, and Oliver, but Barry instantly arrives and stops him. Later, Lyla reveals that Digger was part of the Suicide Squad. When Oliver uses his extreme interrogation methods on a Russian mob member in order to locate Digger, Barry questions how emotionally stable Oliver is with his past tragedies to torture people. Digger locates Oliver's base and wounds Lyla before escaping immediately. In order to leave town, Digger plants five bombs around the city. While Oliver captures Digger, Barry uses both of their teams to defuse the bombs simultaneously. Digger is incarcerated on Lian Yu with Slade Wilson. Before Barry and his team's departure to Central City, Cisco and Caitlin gives Oliver his suit improvements and utilities, he and Oliver learned their lessons and decide to have a friendly duel.
Cast and characters.
Main.
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Guest.
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"The Flash".
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Production.
Development.
The first indication of potential crossover events in the Arrowverse occurred on The CW during the 2013–14 television season, when Barry Allen was introduced in the eighth episode of "Arrow"'s second season ahead of the debut of "The Flash". In July 2014, it was announced that the eighth episodes of the third season of "Arrow" and the first season of "The Flash" would be a two-hour crossover event. The crossover was originally planned as the seventh episodes of each series, but was pushed back due to the large amount of work needed to accomplish it. In particular, the schedule coordination of trying to "jam another episode into the 23-episode schedule for each of [the] shows." Marc Guggenheim, creator and executive producer on "Arrow", explained that there was "no financially responsible" way of executing the crossover, with budgets being blown, long hours and the actors having to film scenes from both series on the same day.
Andrew Kreisberg, creator and executive producer on both series, said, "It's really going to be an adventure with the Arrow and Flash on both episodes. Watching the two teams come together and fight alongside each other, it's one of the most fun parts, ... we just don't believe in waiting. We really believe in accelerated storytelling." Kreisberg explained that since they are all comic book fans themselves, they have all debated the age-old question of which superhero would win in a fight; "So, the idea that [the Flash and Arrow] would fight each other in one of these episodes was one of our earliest ideas, and that the cast members would have that Comic-Con argument on camera was one of our earliest ideas." Greg Berlanti, creator and executive producer on both series, explained that "crossovers are part of [the characters'] DNA, ... and if we waited ..., then we would be depriving the audience of something we all wanted to see".
In October 2014, Kreisberg described the episodes as very important to both Barry and Oliver and what they are going thorough, while also promising "one of the biggest surprises for "Arrow" of all time in "The Flash" episode". Guggenheim added, "It's like the bomb underneath the table, and I think part of the fun is waiting to see when Oliver is going to learn what the audience learns on "Flash"." It was later announced that another secret would be revealed in the final moments of "The Flash" episode that will help "introduce the next phase of "The Flash" in a big way". In the episode, Oliver runs into an ex-girlfriend, last seen pregnant with his child in season two of "Arrow" and had been told by Oliver's mother Moira to tell him that she'd lost the baby and disappear. It is revealed to the viewers that she has a child and it's presumed to be Oliver's. After the airing of the episode, Guggenheim confirmed that indeed it was Oliver's child. At the end of the episode, Robbie Amell, who played Ronnie Raymond—Caitlin's former fiancée presumed dead after the particle accelerator explosion—appears as Firestorm using his powers. In 2019, looking back at the crossover, Guggenheim recalled it seemed "so hard at the time" but in comparison to later crossovers, "it was embarrassingly easy... but the two storylines of each episode were relatively separate from each other. So, it wasn't that narratively ambitious."
Writing.
The scripts for the "Flash vs. Arrow" crossover were written in mid-September 2014, with Berlanti and Kreisberg creating the story for the two episodes. Berlanti drew inspiration from science fiction action television series "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman" for the story, while Kreisberg took his cues from the final episode of the fourth series of "Doctor Who", titled "Journey's End", a crossover featuring the characters of spin-off shows "Torchwood" and "The Sarah Jane Adventures". The teleplay for "The Flash" was written by Ben Sokolowski and Brooke Eikmeier, with "Arrow"'s written by executive producers Guggenheim and Grainne Godfree.
In late September 2014, Guggenheim revealed that the "Arrow" episode would be titled "The Brave and the Bold", a reference to a title shared by many comic book series published by DC Comics which feature super-hero team-ups, including the Flash and Green Arrow. Guggenheim said: I've never had so much fun writing a script before[.] ... It was such a blast to work on... I keep telling everyone that we should try for Avengers. It's these two heroes together with a big production value. ... There's the opportunity for inside jokes, and seeing all of the characters together. What happens when Cisco gets his eyes on Thea? There are moments like that, that you just can't do in a normal episode...It's just so much fun. In October 2014, the title of "The Flash" episode was announced as "Flash vs. Arrow". Kreisberg revealed that the writers' rooms for both shows were merged while working on the scripts for the episodes, similar to "throwing two casts together". Both episodes were written as self-contained, with Kriesberg explaining, "[W]e were very conscious of not everybody who was watching "Flash" was watching "Arrow" and vice versa, so we wanted to make sure they both were self-contained episodes".
Filming.
Filming of the two episodes occurred from September 24, 2014, until October 8, 2014. "The Flash"'s episode was directed by Glen Winter, and "Arrow"'s by Jesse Warn. The fight scene between the Flash and Arrow in "The Flash" episode was shot over three nights. Because this was the first time Stephen Amell's character fought someone with superpowers, he had to change the way he performed stunts to accommodate the special effects. Comparing the filming of both series, Grant Gustin described "The Flash" shooting as "really tedious," working with "a lot of plate shots that are empty shots of the area we are going to be in" and later added in post-production, as opposed to "Arrow" where "they shoot it from the perfect angles and what you see is what you get". Gustin also recalled at times it got confusing on set because they were shooting both episodes at the same time.
Music.
On December 18, 2014, WaterTower Music released a selection of music from "The Flash"/"Arrow" crossover episodes, as well as two bonus tracks from their respective 2014 mid-season finales. Discussing the challenge of merging the themes of both shows into a cohesive score, composer Blake Neely noted that "It wasn't difficult because I originally designed the two shows to have styles and sounds that could merge and live together when necessary, but also hopefully stand alone as two distinct music worlds."
The two bonus tracks were included on the album because "they proved very popular with the fans of the special event". Neely said, "As we were coming to completion and [the album] was about to go, I got all these tweets about these two pieces that people were loving, [and] I just had this idea, let's throw them on as bonus tracks... The fans asked for it and they got it."
All music composed by Blake Neely.
Release.
Broadcast.
The "Flash vs. Arrow" crossover episodes were shown at an exclusive fan screening at the Crest Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles on November 22, 2014. Afterwards, Amell, Gustin, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards, Danielle Panabaker and Carlos Valdes were joined by executive producers Berlanti, Kreisberg and Guggenheim for a Q&amp;A panel.
The first part of the crossover, "The Flash", was broadcast on December 2, 2014, followed by part two on "Arrow" on December 3, both on The CW. The crossover was simulcast