CWIf you're not already crazy excited for Flarrow—that's The Flash and Arrow crossover on The CW—you need to get excited immediately.
The two-night masked vigilante extravaganza is here, and trust us, it's amazing. Even after just night one, you won't be able to stop smiling. Between the two episodes, you'll get basically everything you could ever want as a Flash or Arrow fan: jokes, crazy stunts, awesome fights, people with their shirts off, evil boomerangs, Diggle being utterly hilarious and so much more.
It all stems from a pretty simple concept: Team Arrow has tracked a bad guy to Central City, so they've come for a visit. But of course, with Oliver Queen involved, it's never really that simple.
"When Oliver shows up for the first time in the Flash episode, it's kind of out of nowhere," Flash star Grant Gustin tells E! News. "It's at an unexpected time when something drastic is absolutely needed and he shows up at the perfect moment."
Gustin might think it's the perfect moment, but Barry isn't as sure, and basically the two heroes don't get along from there. Fortunately, their disagreements culminate in the Greatest. Fight. Ever.
It's not just the vigilantes who have to come to settle their differences—the shows kind of have to do that too, since one show is goofy and filled with bright colors, and the other one could not be darker.
"It's funny, because the Flash episode is almost a comedy about how serious Arrow is," executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told us, "Everyone on The Flash is sort of making fun of the Arrow people for taking everything so seriously, and then conversely what's interesting about the Arrow episode is that Barry and Cisco and Caitlin get a real lesson in just what kind of world the Arrow people live in…"
Arrow star Stephen Amell stressed the importance of that lesson for Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin, telling E! News: "[The Flash characters] being in Starling City and them going through a couple of situations that are sort of life or death with people who are important to us sort of changes their perspective a little bit and maybe better equips them to handle challenges down the road."
Emily Bett Rickards was excited for Felicity to get to hang out with Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker)—another woman in the same sort of situation. "I think it's really important for Felicity for her and Caitlin to get to work together, two women in the same realm, where there's an understanding and there's no secrets, and to get to talk to another woman about that sort of thing," she said.
And Caitlin's not the only Star Labs inhabitant Felicity will be bonding with. "Felicity and Cisco have a really strange similarity that's subconscious and sort of underlaid," Rickards told us.
Speaking of Cisco, the "ultimate fanboy" possibly has the greatest time of all over these two hours, and the actor, Carlos Valdes, didn't have such a bad time either. "[Cisco] started geeking out about Barry being in his life, and then being part of Barry's team...But now you're adding an additional element, which is hanging out with Arrow and Team Arrow, and that's huge, and I think parallel to that, I binge watched Arrow before I got on The Flash, so I was familiar with the show, and I knew the foundry and I knew the characters, so it was actually a weird experience for me to actually be feeling what my character was feeling."
Caitlin's reaction, on the other hand, was a little less excited, and more overwhelmed, according to Panabaker. "For Caitlin, especially, seeing everyone in Star Labs is crazy. Dealing with the newness of the Flash and Barry, and then all of a sudden the Arrow's in there and he's very serious and he's very scary, so it's a lot to take in."
Now, you might remember back at the beginning of this post that we mentioned Diggle being hilarious. That was not a joke. We first heard the news from the Flash himself. "David Ramsey steals this episode," Gustin told us, "He's just so funny, and the first time that he sees Barry use his powers, his reaction is ginormous and brilliant."
Gustin wasn't kidding. We expect many, many GIFs of Diggle's utterly perfect reaction to be all over the Internet by the end of the night. Of course, Diggle himself couldn't be more humble about the praise.
"This is really getting out of hand," Ramsey said when we told him we heard he was funny. "I mean, I know what I do as an actor is brilliant, but…"
Aside from Diggle's hilarity, there are a few twists and turns that are sure to blow your minds, especially when it comes to Mr. Queen, according to Kreisberg.
"There's a moment with Oliver on the Flash episode that's one of the biggest things we've ever done on Arrow, and we're actually doing it on The Flash. I think fans are gonna lose their minds over that, because it's a great big bombshell."
For one last little tease, we asked Rickards what will be trending by the end of the crossover.
"There's a good salmon ladder bit," she said before adding, "I think #putoutthefire will trend."
Take that as you will.
The Flash airs tonight at 8 p.m and Arrow airs tomorrow at 8 p.m. on the CW.