【Passion's Peak (2002)】

This post contains spoilers for Season 3,Passion's Peak (2002) episode 8 of The Flash, titled "Invasion."

Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) finally got some face time with the other superheroes that populate The CW's "Arrowverse" in Tuesday's installment of The Flash, which served as the first part of the network's much-anticipated "Invasion" crossover.

In addition to meeting other members of Team Flash besides Barry (Grant Gustin) and Cisco (Carlos Valdes), Kara got acquainted with the heroes of Arrowand Legends of Tomorrow, including Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and his sister Thea (Willa Holland), John Diggle (David Ramsey), Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) and Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) -- all of whom ended up being abducted by the Dominators before the hour was over.

To find out what happens to them, you'll have to tune in to Wednesday's Arrowfor part two of the "Invasion" crossover, which also happens to be Arrow's 100th episode.

The nostalgic hour will feature appearances from departed Arrowalums like Katie Cassidy, Jamey Sheridan and Susanna Thompson, in addition to paying homage to some of the show's iconic villains.

But before we get there, let's unpack some of the revelations we discovered during The Flash.

A crime-fighting duo?

Unlike Flashpoint, it's not Iris (Candice Patton) who agrees to team up with Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) to figure out his new super powers this week -- it's H.R. Wells (Tom Cavanagh). Naturally, we assume that chaos will ensue.

"It will not go well," Flashshowrunner Andrew Kreisberg confirmed to reporters on Monday. "But... what I love about this version of Wells -- and he’s said it himself before, but we actually show it rather than just tell it -- he is a genius in his own way. He’s not a mathematical genius and he’s not a physics genius the way the other Wells were. But he has the capacity to see it in other people. And he has the capacity to see other people’s talent and how to mine it and how to grow it. He sees that in Wally."

The odd couple dynamic will be a valuable one for Wally, Kreisberg teased: "It’s an interesting relationship because a version of Wells was so important to Barry in Season 1, and a version of Wells was so important to Cisco in Season 2, and then this year it’s Wally who gets this version of Wells that, on the face of it, may not be the world’s greatest teacher, and yet every episode we find that moment for him to drop this wisdom bomb on everybody else that shocks them. It’s kind of why they let him stay around when he’s not providing any actual true value to the team, that he really does have this value in keeping the team together."

Early edition

Barry's Flashpoint jaunt will continue to have lasting repercussions -- especially now that the rest of the heroes know about it -- but perhaps the biggest ongoing concerns relate to things yet to come. Firstly, the newspaper article from the future regarding The Flash's disappearance has been changed, and is no longer written by Iris West-Allen, but a different reporter completely. "It's going to have further complications," Kreisberg teased of Iris' missing byline.

And then there's the message from the future version of Barry that Jax (Franz Drameh) and Stein (Victor Garber) discovered on the Waverider -- one that warns no one can be trusted, not even Barry himself. "The message from the future relates to Flashpoint, but it also may relate to something else coming up," Kreisberg said cryptically.

Justice for all

Eagle-eyed comic book fans may have noticed that the STAR Labs facility where the heroes assembled looks a little familiar -- it's designed to pay homage to the Hall of Justice, which is used as a meeting place for the Super Friends in the 1970s animated series of the same name.

"We were talking about where to put it—we were talking about maybe it was an old warehouse or whatever," Arrowand Legendsshowrunner Marc Guggenheim said. "Someone said something that made me think, 'You know, there's this building in Cincinnati that is the basis for the Hall of Justice in the Super Friends. I'm sure there's stock footage that we could then alter.' That's what we ended up doing. I was so giddily happy. It's probably my favorite thing in the whole crossover: the Hall of Justice. Props to Encore who did an amazing job of altering it in all the right ways. Putting the waterpool in the front and the sculptures ... 10-year-old me can die happy."

Super trouper

Viewers may have noticed that while this week's episode of Supergirlsets up the crossover, the show itself isn't fully involved in the Invasion storyline in the same way the other series are. That's by design, Kreisberg said.

"Part of what made it a little bit difficult was all the other shows – Flash, Arrowand Legends-- all have a subsequent episode to the crossovers, but with Supergirl, it was our midseason finale, so we wanted to make sure that episode 8 of Supergirlspoke to what had been happening on the first seven episodes and not just as a tie in," he explained. "And then just logistically speaking, last year we did two shows with a sprinkling of Legends, and this year, we went to three shows. The idea of going to four full shows, I'm not sure we could have pulled [it] off, logistically speaking. Especially because – hopefully people didn't realize it, but Kara was not in a lot of episode 7 of Supergirl, where she was captured by Cadmus, specifically to free her up for five days so that she could appear in all these other episodes."

As for whether the other heroes will ever make it over to Supergirl's National City, Kreisberg didn't rule it out, teasing, "Maybe next year."

The Invasion crossover continues in Arrow, which airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on The CW.