The eagerly anticipated “Elseworlds” crossover kicked off tonight and while fans of The CW‘s Arrowverse already knew to expect the debut of several iconic DC Comics characters, there was one appearance that fans didn’t exactly see coming.
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Spoilers for tonight’s episode of The Flash, “Elseworlds Part 1,” below.
Tonight’s episode saw Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) dealing with the unsettling situation of having swapped lives thanks to the machinations of Dr. John Deegan (Jeremy Davies). Now living life as The Flash — and being mistaken as Barry Allen to boot — Oliver finds himself having to get acclimated to his newfound speedster powers in what amounts to on-the-job training: taking on a heist at Ivo Labs in Central City.
As one might guess, that takes a bit of getting used to for Oliver but it’s more than just the robbers that he has to deal with. There’s a robot involved as well. While it takes a bit of time for Cisco to bestow upon the metal behemoth his name, that robot turns out to be none other than Amazo.
In comics, Amazo also a robot and an enemy of the Justice League. Designed and created by the mad scientist Professor Ivo, the android has the ability to duplicate the powers of every member of the Justice League which makes him an incredibly dangerous and difficult to defeat villain. In comics, Amazo starts out simply as mindless robot controlled by his single directive, but over time the android’s ability to adapt to situations led him to developing sentience. That, combined with his ability to duplicate powers, makes him a potentially unstoppable villain.
The Amazo introduced tonight has some similarities to his comic book counterpart, too. Team Flash finds the robot incredibly difficult to defeat and discover that the robot is copying powers but for fans of the Arrowverse, there are other interesting details to consider. Tonight’s appearance of Amazo is not the first time the name has been mentioned. On Arrow, the Amazo was a ship led by Anthony Ivo — the ship where Sara Lance and Oliver Queen both ended up prisoner during some of the five years Oliver was presumed dead. Arrow’s Ivo was a scientist who was using prisoners on the ship to further his research to “save the human race”. He was ultimately looking for Mirakuru, a serum created by the Japanese army in World War II to give people superhuman powers and strength.
Mirakuru is the other interesting detail about the robot Amazo in tonight’s episode. It turns out that the robot is using Mirakuru as part of its power duplication, making the robot’s appearance not just a nice tie to comics but to Arrow as well and is just one element that delivers on the high praise Amell had for the event during a Facebook Live back in October.
“The crossover is fucking bananas,” Amell explained during a recent Facebook Live. “It’s crazy… I think that this will be the best crossover event that we do. And not just the best but the best by a really, really wide margin. And I think that last year was fantastic.”
“‘Crisis on Earth X’, I think that’s what it was called, that was pretty crazy and getting to play doppelgängers was pretty crazy,” Amell continued. “When Greg Berlanti first talked to me about why he wanted to do crossovers, it was because it’s for the fans. It’s so people can watch characters and scenarios that combine their favorite things on TV or introduce them to new things on TV. But you also get this license to do things that we could never do in the vacuum — especially on Arrow — that we can never do in the vacuum of just our show.”
What did you think about Amazo’s appearance in tonight’s “Elseworlds” installment? Let us know in the comments!
“Elseworlds” continues with Arrow on Monday, December 10th at 8/7c, and Supergirl on Tuesday, December 11th, at 8/7c.
