“Crisis on Earth-X Part 1” Includes a Nod to Last Year’s Crossover

The Arrowverse crossover event, “Crisis on Earth-X” kicked off tonight, but before things got deep into the action there was a clever nod to last year’s “Invasion!” event.

Spoilers for “Crisis on Earth-X” below!

Early in the first hour of the crossover, Iris West (Candice Patton) is trying to take care of some final details before the wedding, and one of those details? Making sure that everyone has RSVP’d to the wedding. While it seems like the non-heroic friends and family of the happy couple were able to RSVP in a timely fashion, the Arrowverse heroes were a little slow to do so, and it becomes clear why. In Star City, Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is a little busy fighting ninjas, the Legends are off in Robin Hood’s England, and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist)? Well, she’s fighting an alien threat.

That alien threat turns out to be a random Dominator. Supergirl quickly deals with the threat, but not before exasperatedly pointing out that Dominators are “so last year.” As fans will recall, last year’s crossover, “Invasion!” saw the heroes deal with the Dominators, an alien race with mind control powers. The aliens, who had visited Earth before, returned to determine just how much of a threat humanity is now that metahumans exist. Upon learning about Barry Allen’s (Grant Gustin) manipulation of the timeline, they demand he surrender or they’ll use a weapon that will destroy not only all metahumans on Earth, but kill millions of normal humans, too.

Ultimately, the assembled heroes are able to defeat the Dominators’ weapon and force them to retreat. But a Dominator pops up now and again, most recently a baby one with young Ray Palmer in Legends of Tomorrow‘s “Phone Home” episode, so seeing Supergirl take one out at the start of this year’s crossover is a fun nod to the past without being too far-fetched.

“Crisis on Earth-X” is a four-hour event that will air on November 27th and 28th beginning at 8 p.m. and running for two hours each day; Supergirl (8 p.m. Monday), The Flash (8 p.m. Tuesday) and Legends of Tomorrow (9 p.m. Tuesday) will remain in their normal time slots but Arrow will move from Thursday to a 9 p.m. Monday placement for the week.