(Warning: This story features spoilers from all three episodes of The CW’s “Elseworlds” crossover)
The CW wrapped up its big “Elseworlds” crossover Tuesday night, but the producers are already looking ahead to next year’s big event.
And it will be an adaptation of one of the most famous DC Comics storylines: Crisis on Infinite Earths. At the end of Tuesday’s “Supergirl,” Oliver (Stephen Amell) gets a call from Batwoman who says that Dr. John Deegan (Jeremy Davies), the doctor who initially rewrote reality to body-swap Flash and Arrow, has made a new friend. The episode then cuts to Arkham Asylum and we hear a conversation that Deegan is having with… somebody, where he says “The stage is set… worlds will die.”
The episode ends, but not before the words “Crisis on Infinite Earths” flash across the screen followed by “Fall 2019.” While this pretty much confirms that The CW will adapt the famous storyline, a few developments in Monday’s “Arrow” alluded to this.
At the end of “Arrow,” the heroes, along with John Wesley Shipp’s Barry Allen from the 1990s-era “Flash” TV show, end up meeting The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), the guy at the beginning of the crossover who gives the book of destiny to Dr. Deegan. The Monitor, who is a key player in the “Crisis” comic-book story, reveals that the whole “let’s reset reality” thing was just a way of testing various universes to see who would be strong enough to fight an even greater foe that’s coming.
And if that wasn’t a big enough hint, The Monitor even describes this as “a crisis is coming.” “Elseworlds” also feature the ominous red skies that, in the comics version of the story, heralds that the walls between dimensions are breaking down.
When initially asked about it during a screening with reporters last week, the “Arrowverse” producers didn’t exactly bat it away. Now we know why.
“You’ll have to stay tuned,” Robert Rovner, co-executive producer of “Supergirl,” told reporters during a Q&A session last week about the crossover. “We already know a lot about what’s going on in next year’s crossover,” “Arrow” showrunner Beth Schwartz added.
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” was a best-selling 12-issue series running from 1985 to 1986 that replaced the DC multiverse, which since 1961’s “The Flash of Two Worlds” had explained the company’s varying and contradictory continuities, with a single streamlined universe and a complete reboot of most DC characters. It was a critical hit and a best-seller for DC, and is credited with popularizing the idea of large-scale crossovers in comics.
In the series, the Monitor’s evil counterpart, the Anti-Monitor, attempts to destroy all of the different universes with the goal of becoming the sole ruler of whatever is left. He’s eventually foiled but at a staggering cost: the surviving five universes are merged into one, and a huge number of classic DC characters were killed off, seemingly for good… including both Supergirl and Barry Allen.
Uh oh, fans of the CW’s DC shows. Uh oh.