Spoiler Warning: While this review won’t delve deep into spoilers, there will be a general overview including some spoilers, so if you haven’t yet seen these episodes don’t read on.
The CW’s juggernaut DC crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths has aired the first three parts this week, with two more parts coming in just over a month’s time concluding, what is, without doubt, the biggest television crossover event in history.
Not only has the Arrowverse’s annual crossover event combined The CW’s five main DC shows of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and Batwoman, but also we learned that not only is almost every live-action DC series past and present connected through the in-canon vast Multiverse but so is the majority of DC Movie history.
Indeed, shows such as Black Lightning, Birds of Prey, Smallville, 1960s Batman and even Lucifer have all been confirmed to exist in the Arrowverse, as have some DC movie universes such as Tim Burton’s Batman universe and Christopher Reeves’ Superman which expand into the Brandon Routh incarnation of the superhero seen in the 2006 movie Superman Returns.
Also, while it has not yet been confirmed by any official sources, Jason Todd and Hawk of DC Universe’s Titans made a split-second appearance before being obliterated by the antimatter that was sweeping the Multiverse wiping out every reality, from the mainstay Earth-1 to Lucifer’s Earth-666 and beyond. They don’t call it “Crisis on Infinite Earths” for nothing.
After a build-up to this crisis not only in the first half of the current seasons of the Arrowverse shows but from the beginning of The Flash as a show, the all-powerful Monitor aka Mar Novu gathers his team with the assistance of Harbinger, the cosmically-empowered Lyla Michaels, who brings together the main players of the five Arrowverse shows…although only three current Legends have appeared in these three episodes with former main cast member Wentworth Miller making a surprisingly welcome return as an alternate reality Waverider’s A.I. named Leonard.
Part One of the crossover takes centre stage on Supergirl’s Earth-38 as the first attempt to defeat the villainous Anti-Monitor and save what remains of the Multiverse takes place. Not only do we see old friends reunite, but also new partnerships forming including Brainiac 5 and Atom as well as Iris West-Allen and Lois Lane.
The episode ends with the supposed dramatic death of Oliver Queen after a selflessly heroic fight to the death with the Anti-Monitor’s poorly rendered Shadow Demon army.
Part Two is the Batman v Superman story DCEU fans are crying out for, forget the Snyder Cut, Batwoman’s Crisis episode not only gives fans Kevin Conroy as a live-action elderly Bruce Wayne paying homage not only to Batman Beyond but also The Dark Knight Returns but also gives us a Superman overload as Jon Cryer’s Lex Luthor travels the Multiverse with the Book of Destiny in an attempt to kill every Superman in existence.
This gives fans the opportunity to become reacquainted with Smallville’s Clark Kent, now de-powered and living the rural domestic life with his wife Lois Lane and daughters, but also a return for Brandon Routh as Superman 13 years after portraying the Man of Steel in Superman Returns. We also see a brief glimpse of another deceased Superman as well as the bloody broken glasses of Kevin Conroy’s nemesis Superman of Earth-99.
The third part of this epic crossover sees twists, turns, deaths and leaves fans on the edge of their seats wanting to know how this story will conclude and whether or not these seven or maybe eight characters remaining in the entire Multiverse can defeat the Anti-Monitor and save reality.
However, a final two twists in the tale firstly sees the recently resurrected Oliver Queen become the new Spectre inheriting the burden from Jim Corrigan, while Tom Cavanagh’s newest character Pariah, who in reality is Harrison Nash Wells introduced at the start of the current Flash season but turned into the Pariah as penance by the Anti-Monitor for freeing him from his prison, finally does something rather than appear and disappear and transports the Monitor’s seven Paragons, who are beings from across the Multiverse, but in reality are mostly from Earth-1 or Earth-38, who are the only beings who stand a chance of defeating the Anti-Monitor, to the long-forgotten Vanishing Point saving them just in time from obliteration.
Now Earth-1’s White Canary, Batwoman, Flash and Ryan Choi, Earth-38’s Supergirl and Martian Manhunter, and Kingdom Come Superman are all that remain to defeat the Anti-Monitor.
That is until the last minute twist of Lex Luthor rewriting the Book of Destiny which turned him into a Paragon, taking the place of Kingdom Come Superman meaning all seven Multiverse Paragon’s are now from only two Earths.
All the mainstay actors do a great job at showing just how far they have come from when they started out in the Arrowverse, relative newbie Ruby Rose holds her own better than she did during her debut Elseworlds, and seeing the returning DC TV and Movie alumni even for minor cameos should make any DC fan happy.
Crisis on Infinite Earths returns with the concluding two episodes on June 14, 2020.
