The CWThis Crisis is really causing some problems, huh?
Tonight's ep of the giant CW crossover ramped things up as half the crew searched for a way to bring back Oliver and the other half worked to slow the rapidly moving wave of anti-matter that was threatening to destroy every single thing ever.
This brought in John Wesley Shipp as the Flash from Earth-90, and Cress Williams as Black Lightning from Black Lightning, whose family and universe had apparently been destroyed. This was the moment from the episode that really gave us pause, because we just don't feel like it's likely anyone from Black Lightning would let these other shows destroy their universe. That means there's hope that everyone could come back, which makes the stakes feel just a bit lower. So hopefully there are some tricks up some sleeves as we head towards the end of this, we thought at the time, before we learned just how many other Earths we were gonna lose tonight.
As it turned out, we lost them all. All of them! All the Earths are gone! And so is almost everybody!
As the anti-matter wave was about to hit the waverider, destroying the last remaining people, whoever Tom Cavanagh is currently playing sent all the paragons away, leaving behind a few more people we had to watch disappear, including Iris, Black Lightning, Kal/Clark/Superman/Tyler Hoechlin, and Tom Cavanagh himself.
The Paragons, including Sara, Barry, Kara, Kate, Brandon Routh Superman, J'onn, and a scientist played by Osric Chau, all ended up at the Vanishing Point, a location outside of time that used to be the headquarters of both the Time Masters and the Legion of Doom. Except then we learned that it was not Brandon Routh Superman who had come with them. It was actually Lex Luthor, who had once again been messing with the Book of Destiny and decided to come along for the ride.
"So, what do we do now?" he asked, which is a great question.
One big surprise we were not expecting tonight was the arrival of Tom Ellis as Lucifer, from the Fox-turned-Netflix show Lucifer. He's apparently an old friend-ish of Constantine, and he helped the crew get to Purgatory in search of Oliver's soul. They found it there, and after a little bit of a tussle, Oliver's soul chilled out and hugged his BFF Diggle and his daughter Mia.
They were all on their way out of Purgatory when they ran into Jim Corrigan/Spectre, who explained that it was Oliver's destiny to light the spark and save all of the universes, canceling his plans to head back to his body and sending his pals home. So it seems as if it might be up to Oliver's soul to save the day, which isn't the worst thing in the world.
Everything we know so far is below, but we won't know anything for sure until 2020, which feels like a long, long wait.
"For us, it really resets a lot of what's happening on Supergirl, the second half. That's another thing that was challenging about this crossover that's different from the others is that it's a really kind of huge event and impacts everything going on on the show, so it's fun to see what happens," said showrunner Robert Rovner.
"We have some fallout on Batwoman. It's a little tricky because our characters aren't yet exposed to this notion of multiple universes and superheroes with powers and stuff, so there's a fine line, but I think it will have a really kind of shocking resonance," said showrunner Caroline Dries.
"During the Crisis, Barry will do something that is very significant that will have ramifications for the remainder of season six of Flash," said executive producer Marc Guggenheim.
"It changes literally everything on Arrow," said showrunner Beth Schwartz, and Kat McNamara echoed that. "It really does change everything. It's all about sacrifice, and all about everything that has been built over the last eight years, and this whole universe that started with Oliver on the island…they'll come to a head and change forever in a lot of ways."
"As our prequel, it sets up our season, both mythology and Sara Lance's trajectory coming out of it…this hits her pretty hard in a good way," said showrunner Keto Shimizu.
Crisis has been teased since last year's crossover, so the showrunners had quite the storytelling trick to pull. It serves as a prequel to Legends of Tomorrow's season five, and is also a major part of Arrow's series ending. The crossover wasn't fully written before the Legends writers room came together or before many of the episodes leading up to Crisis were written, so putting it all together was, to quote Marc Guggenheim, "Weird."
While the cameos and unexpected team-ups are fun, the writing teams were determined to make sure that "at the core of it, we really wanted to keep track of the mains from all of our shows and have them go through something really incredibly significant for their character," Shimizu says. Some real s—t is going down in this crossover, and you can trust us on that.
Just how do you manage the schedules of every single cast member of five (or six or seven) different shows? Guggenheim says it's way more low tech than you might think and it involves many scraps of paper on a board filled with multi-colored boxes—one color for each show. "We literally sit there with a paper cutter and move literal strips of paper" over the course of several days, he explained.
The comic the crossover is based on was a chance for DC to reset 50 years of continuity. The Arrowverse is only eight years old, but Guggenheim says, "The way we sort of looked at it was it's an opportunity to if we want to fix something, it's there, if we want to change something it's there, if we want to set something up, it's there." So truly, anything could happen.
The Crisis on Infinite Earths comic killed off Barry Allen and Kara Danvers and merged all of the earths, and while this version is not going to do all of those things (probably?), there are plenty of nods and similarities, including the fact that each episode represents one of the 12 covers from the comic. "It's our version of it, but it's definitely meant to be evocative of the original," Guggenheim said.
Oliver had moments with most of Team Arrow in the last pre-crossover episode, but the crossover will also give Sara Lance a turn, which was particularly important to Legends of Tomorrow's Keto Shimizu and Arrow's Beth Schwartz, "in order to remind the audience how far they go back, and how embedded her history is with his, and how important he is to her." Plus, Sara gets to see Oliver as the father he now is.
Mia's introduction to Sara is particularly important, since Sara is such a huge part of Oliver's past. "She and Mia are very similar people in that they both are very strong-willed and they both will not hesitate to speak up and fight for what they believe is right, and for what they believe is the right thing to do, no matter who tries to stand in their way." They work together in a "unique way," McNamara says.
Mia Smoak hasn't been a part of the crossover before, so this will be a lot to take in. "She grew up in the woods with Nyssa Al'Ghul, and suddenly she's on a spaceship," McNamara says. "Confronted with superheroes and aliens…she's trying to grasp some sort of logic and understanding in all of this, while dealing with one of the most traumatic experiences of her life." Having dad Oliver there definitely helps, at least.
Mia's still coming to terms with Oliver's fate, but at least she now realizes she can forgive him and just keep going. "There's a potential that it could all be ripped away from her very quickly and far too soon," Kat McNamara told us. "I think she understands that there's not much she can do, but she's not gonna go down without a fight."
Much has changed for new parents Clark and Lois, and for Bitsie Tulloch, who was six months pregnant while filming last year. "Just the fact that I wasn't throwing up on set was a huge win for me last year…so yeah, [this year] was much more fun," she told us. But more than that, "the stakes are higher" and it felt like "the end of one era and the beginning of another."
The new baby adds both drama and comedy to the crossover. "As a new parent myself… you're scrambling all the time. It doesn't matter how big of a superhero you are, like when a baby's crying, you don't necessarily know how to make the baby stop crying. I think it's going to be really fun for the fans, seeing Superman being a new dad. It's really cute, and Tyler was just so darling," Tulloch says.
While Lois will always be putting her baby first, she gets a chance to work with fellow journalist Iris West-Allen. "They worked really well together," Tulloch says. "And I think there was a lot of mutual respect, both of them really putting their heads together to contribute to the situation…It's different. Lois doesn't have super powers, other than she's wicked smart."
Clark and Lois, who are getting their own pilot, now feel much more established in this universe, and Tulloch felt like the role was a lot more hers this time around. "I did notice I felt like they were writing for me this time," she says. "Some of my lines, I was like, oh, they know I can…it felt like they were writing for me, a little sassy, if you will."
We've been told for a year now that Oliver was going to die, which meant "we spoiled our own story," Guggenheim said. "So if Oliver dying isn't the surprise, what is the surprise—the timing of him dying. Hopefully we do surprise the audience—that's absolutely the intention—but we also really establish the stakes that going into the next four hours, wow, if Oliver Queen can die, then no one is safe."
Lazarus Pits had been retired from the Arrowverse, and now we've seen that it's not going to be so easy to bring Oliver back that way. "The complication that you saw at the end of hour two is just another confirmation that [Sara] should have trusted her original instincts," Guggenheim says, and Shimizu added that Sara was "very lucky to get out the way that she got out, and it's sort like lightning striking twice."
Smallville's Clark Kent belongs on that farm, so Dries explained that there was no other place to put him. "Tom was joking when he was there, oh, that cow recognized me," she said, going on to explain that "it felt incredibly necessary" to make it so Clark had given up his powers. Tom Welling loved the scene. "He said to me, you guys have basically written the one scene that I can't say no to," Guggenheim said.
Brandon Routh's Superman was always going to be in the Daily Planet when we first saw him, and it was always pitched to Brandon that Superman and Ray would meet and interact. Routh was also supposed to be in the Superman costume even more, but the costume added an extra hour to production time, and an hour can save a ton of money, so she's sometimes just dressed as Clark Kent minus the glasses.
Kate just killed future Bruce Wayne while protecting Kara, but Dries says that instead of weight on her shoulders, Kate will see it as if she looked at her future in the mirror. "She's like, is this who I'm going to become? And that's why it's so important that she's establishing this relationship with Kara, who can kind of talk her off the ledge." And we should absolutely, definitely be worried that she kept that Kryptonite.
Guggenheim said that not only are there still cameos to be announced, but some haven't even been finalized and filmed yet. Pretty much anybody could show up over the course of the five episodes, especially in the final two parts, and there's one he's particularly hoping for…but he gave no specifics.
Crisis on Infinite Earths returns Tuesday, January 14 at 8 p.m. on The CW.