Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 1 [Supergirl S05E09] Review: Worlds WILL Die

Supergirl, Season 5, Episode 9: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hour One

Finally, we get to the Crisis! It's... it's taken a while for me to actually get to reviewing the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Arrowverse style, and it's taken a long, long while, hundreds upon hundreds of episodes of Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and a couple of Batwoman before we finally build up into this massive crossover. And, like most crossovers, there's the inherent amount of flaws that goes into it, namely the lack of focus thanks to the sheer amount of characters involved, and this being a live-action crossover, it also suffers from the same problem that previous CW crossovers have -- absent actors from each show's respective cast. Plus, there's the whole bit about how so many of the main characters -- Barry and Oliver in particular -- have character arcs that are tied into the Crisis itself, and those are honestly the ones I have the biggest expectations for. Writing these reviews up as I watch these episodes for the first time, these are more of my reactions to the episodes more or less scene-by-scene than an actual review. It's a bit of a departure from my usual fare, but I would argue that this huge crossover is cause for something like that, right?

And this episode starts off with a quote straight from the original 1985 mini. I have the TPB on my shelf somewhere, because I am a geek, and I remember this monologue. "In the beginning, there was only one, a single black infinitude." And we get to see a bunch of worlds, and here go the cameos! It's pretty interesting to see just who they manage to get back, and at this point it's clear that CW's Crisis is less about telling something epic and more about being a celebration of DC comics' history on live-action in general. We get the expected Earth-X cameo with the Ray from CW's own material, and Earth-9 being Titans with cameo of Jason Todd and Hawk from that universe is not too far-fetched. Titans is still on air, of course. But Earth-66? The '60's Batman show with Burt Ward as Robin making a "holy crimson skies of death" joke? Or Earth-89, the Tim Burton Batman movie in 1989 with Alexander Knox's actor of all people making a cameo? Anyway, all of these Earths get a quick glance and get wiped out. If you know who these people are, it's such a neat treat, and if you don't, well, these are, like, superheroes and other Earths being consumed by red skies and walls of white antimattter.

And then we cut to Earth-38, the Supergirl universe, where we get freaking Wil Wheaton from Star Trek playing a random domosayer yelling that things are about to get fucked because things are falling apart. We get a random cameo from one of last season's antagonists, Spike the shape-shifting alien dragon, who goes berserk, and Supergirl has to do what she usually does and fight the threat. Or, well, calm Spike down enough to return into iguana form. Since this is airing on Supergirl's time slot, we can get most of the Supegirl cast running around, and we get to see Brainiac, Alex and J'onn gathering together to face this huge Crisis. It's bigger than Leviathan, apparently, and from what we've seen of Leviathan so far... yeah, it doesn't really take much to be bigger than it. J'onn has apparently been briefed by the Monitor about the Crisis between episodes, and he basically shows up and gives everyone a bit of a recap, talking about how last year's crossover with Dr. Destiny is all part of a plan to get them a bit more prepared.

And Earth-38 basically ends up becoming the sacrificial lion, so to speak, similar to Earth-2 at the beginning of Arrow, because the Anti-matter wave has finally reached Earth-38. And it's not just wiping out Earth, it's wiping out other planets, too, zipping through floating Argo City. We cut to something that we don't really see much of in the actual Supergirl show, and that is Superman and Lois's daily life in Argo post-retirement. And that's dealing with baby Jonathan Kent's diapers without powers... something that's actually kind of an absolutely stupid move when you live in a superhero world, because this means that neither Superman nor any of the Kryptonians there can do much in the face of a wave of destructive anti-matter that's about to wipe out Argo City from reality itself. Joined by Kara's mom Alura, we get to see Superman and Lois shoot out baby Jonathan Kent into space on a rocket as Argo City is obliterated by the anti-matter wave.

And it's extremely effective. Sure, Superman isn't like, the most relevant character even in the history of Supergirl as a show, but he's been around enough for us to really care about him, and both Superman and Lois's scene of blissful peace is genuinely well-done enough that anyone who isn't caught up to Supergirl will still feel a pang of loss from seeing motherfucking Superman himself lose this peaceful life he's been living in. Alura's cameo is also welcome -- I honestly forget she's still alive considering just how rather poorly shoehorned-in she was in season 3, but it's still a welcome cameo and another familiar face we're piling up on the pile of corpses. After all, seeing all these other Earths get wiped out (which will be back in some fashion after the crossover, but still) is just kind of a statistic, but actually being able to put faces to the casualties is nice.

It's just slightly undercut by me laughing at how the literal first response of "shit, our planet is being destroyed" for a Child of House El is to launch their baby into space.

Anyway, Argo City in Earth-38 has gone kablooey, and Earth-38 itself is next. But we cut away to Earth-1, where we get a bit of a rehash with the final pre-Crisis episode of Arrow, with Oliver and the time-traveling Mia having a talk before the skies turn red and Lyla Michaels, now Harbinger, show up to gather them, and she bugs off to Central City to also pick up the Flash (who's just sort of running around trying to figure things out) and to Gotham City to pick up Batwoman (who's beating up random Wonderland Gang thugs to find Alice). Oh, and also, Ray and Sara are in a bar in Star City and Lyla just picks them up.

Lyla beams everyone over to Earth-38, and I guess these, plus Supergirl, are going to be our main cast that move from show to show and aren't burdened with disappearing off-screen because of real-life actor stuff. But apparently Harbinger also saves Superman and Lois Lane from being wiped out when Argo City blew up, and brings them to this gathering of the inter-dimensional super friends. Batwoman punches Lyla in the face for interrupting her search for Alice, and we get a glorious, golden line from Brainiac: "this one... speaks to rabbits."

It's just kind of a shame that all this actor-juggling stuff means that unless we pull off another Crisis on Earth-X, we're not going to get a full assembly of, like, all of the supporting characters. How cool would it be for Harbinger to actually bring in, like, Diggle, Felicity, Arsenal, Speedy, Black Siren, Wild Dog, Black Canary, Killer Frost, Vibe, Elongated Man, Steel, John Constantine, Charlie, Gary, Mia, Connor and so many other major supporting characters from the four main long-running shows? We could've had Kid Flash, or Jesse Quick, or Mr. Terrific, or Nyssa, or Firestorm, or Hawkman and Hawkgirl, or Lightning and Thunder or one of the Vixens, or Deathstroke, or Ragman, or Ultraviolet, or Ma'alefa'ak, or Guardian, or Mon-El, or Saturn Girl... I can dream, can't I?

Anyway, since this is airing on Supergirl's time slot and with a majority of her cast, Kara gets a bit of a focus here as she calms everyone down and tells everyone present that she trusts everyone in the room with her life. And... it's a bit questionable because she knew Kate for like, an hour in last year's crossover, but okay, sure. I'll bite. It's also a bit questionable that Kate apparently trusts Kara's declaration that she immediately unmasks in front of everyone. I did love the little "ooooh it makes a lot of sense" bit from Oliver, but I felt like Kara and Kate maaaaybe needed a bit more screentime somewhere because while the conversation between them in Elseworlds was sweet, we're suddenly asked to believe that they're suddenly Oliver/Barry or Barry/Kara levels of crossover-BFF and that feels pretty forced. (Also, Barry, Sara and Ray show up a bit later than others for no reason)

Anyway, with all our characters assembled and Kara handwaving anyone's suspicions, we go immediately to the Monitor and Harbinger briefing everyone about what the hell's going on. Earths are being wiped out, and they're going to make their last stand in Earth-38, where they have to protect a gigantic Quantum Tower, which the Monitor apparently had placed on some strategic Earths. Which... okay yeah sure why not. We get a bit of obligatory bonding between Brainiac and Ray (who 'speak the same language') and Ray trying to give Kate's suit an upgrade (which Kate refuses to let Ray touch) and later on we get Sara commenting on Oliver being a parent (which is heartwarming), but then things quickly get into moving the plot forwards. The Monitor name-drops the name of our antagonist, Anti-Monitor, and the fact that he has an army. Also, Jonathan Kent's pod gets sucked into a wormhole, so in this already fast-moving crossover we still have a side-quest.

Apparently Jonathan is stuck in Earth-16's Star City... which is also in the future, in 2046, and this is Legends of Tomorrow's "Star City 2046" episode. I'm sure like three people in the audience really wish that the huge crisis episode would address the discrepancies between the 2040 shown in Arrow's future vision and the one-off standalone episode from early Legends of Tomorrow, and how it would totally be a great thing to finally address that Star City 2046 is a completely different Earth. Like, I feel like this could've been something we address in an episode of Arrow or Legends or the upcoming Canaries. Like, I'm all for bookkeeping, but this one feels particularly random and shoehorned in. Anyway, Lois, Sara and Brainy go off to get Jonathan from Earth-16, and Brainy claims that he's great with children. I believe him.

We're still in Supergirl-the-show, and apparently the alien refugees from the past couple of seasons are lending their alien ships to help evacuate Earth-38, loading up everyone on Earth into their ships. The cast of Supergirl realize that they need to get Lena Luthor's help to rebuild that huge Daxamite Portal from way back in season two to evacuate everyone to Earth-1, but they're not on good terms with Lena! Oh no!

Superman, meanwhile, is absolutely morose. He just lost Argo, and his son is off in some time-lost dimension or whatever, and he has a huge feeling of guilt that they are seemingly giving up on Earth-38 and we get a neat little speech from Kara about how Asgard Krypton isn't a place, it's the spirit of hope and the people and whatnot, and Krypton will never die if they keep fighting for it. Pretty standard stuff, but it works in context. Meanwhile, Oliver gives Mia a brand new Green Arrow suit, which is a nice small moment and one that builds up well from the Oliver/Mia stuff in the pre-Crisis Arrow episodes.

And then... Oliver and Barry! Oliver snarks about how Barry is late for the Crisis (he's been doing recon, apparently), and Barry just shrugs off about how he's supposed to die in this Crisis. Oliver is absolutely angry and calls out the Monitor, demanding to talk, and apparently despite being on their side, the Monitor's sort of... duped Oliver with some specific choice of words. Apparently the deal that Oliver made with the Monitor in Elseworlds only extended to Barry and Kara's deaths in Elseworlds, and Barry's death in this Crisis is still apparently set in stone. Oliver is absolutely angry, but with the whole 'we need to stop the worlds from ending' stuff is sort of taking priority.

Kiiiinda think that this could've been a better plot point to be explored in Arrow instead of, oh, I dunno, the little search for random trinkets that sort of go nowhere. Like, all the Arrow episodes leading up to the Crisis are great nostalgic pieces, but then we get rushed moments like this that I feel would've been a better fit for the "do we trust Mar Novu?" episodes instead of something ambiguous like "oh, the League of Shadows kinda-sorta have myths about him maybe".

Alex, meanwhile, meets Lena and all but begs for her help, but Lena's clearly not up to forgiving Alex or the Superfriends just yet, still sore about the whole Claymore incident. It's actually neat -- considering how rushed so many events that happen in the Crisis ended up being, I do like that we're not rushing through one of the more slowly-built-up character developments in Supergirl just for the sake of 'everyone's working together'.

And then we cut to the Quantum Tower, where the main character squad basically suit up and do a badass walk. Oliver calls the shot, telling them to defend all of the strategic positions from 'enemies we know nothing about'. Okay, sure. There's an earthquake and the Super duo fly off to contain damage.

And then we cut to Earth-16 and I can tell you that I really didn't give a shit about this part of the crossover. It's well-acted and all but I feel like more Oliver/Barry/Monitor stuff, or literally any interaction between any pair of characters that are running around in the show would've been far, far better. Old Oliver (Oldliver?) of 2046-Earth-16 has taken the baby and he's absolutely baffled when he fights Sara, because she's supposed to be dead. Didn't Sara meet Oldliver in Legends? I can't be arsed to check. Basically we sort of cut back and forth between the Quantum Tower scenes and this one and it's a nice, heartwarming conversation between Sara and an old Oliver ("You became a hero, a father, and the Gambit set off a chain of events none of us could've ever dreamed of" and "You're a good man... on every Earth") but at the same time Ikind of wonder why or how this is relevant to anything that's going on. Considering what happens in the episode, I'd definitely like it better if this was done to Earth-1 Oliver, y'know? It's well acted for sure, though.

Anyway, in the Quantum Tower, the Anti-Monitor's forces is just a massive swarm of Fake Dementors called Shadow Demons. It's absolutely accurate to the comics' version of Crisis on Infinite Earths sans context, but it also kinda feels lazy? Again, I understand why this must be done, we need action scenes and the Shadow Demons are probably a lot easier to animate, but still. We do get Ray and Kate teaming up and Kate allowing Ray to 'improve' her Batarang, using some sort of light beam combo to blow up a swarm of Shadow Demons. We get a particularly awesome sequence as the Flash and the two Supers actually enter the battle, two god-like superhumans that zip around and unleash eye beams and stuff.

We also cut to Earth-38's evacuation efforts, where Dreamer is yelling and telling people not to panic via large screens, Dreamer and Kelly Olsen are also running around helping the evacuation (for all the good they do), and I do like the random bits where we get a cameo from Brainiac's old Legion ship. Lena and Alex... sort of basically begrudgingly work together and go through the staple of spouting a bunch of technobabble because if the quark galleon theory whatsits is applied inversely then it's sure to open the portal even though it's risky. Lena's kind of obviously happy to have someone smart to bounce ideas off of, but at the same time not even Alex rescuing her from a half-collapsing building is enough to make her be in a forgiving mood.

There's a bit of neat superheroing bit as Flash zips around and murders Shadow Demons, while the two Supers fly up and unleash their heat vision to activate solar panels and get the Quantum Tower operational or whatever. It's action scenes and whatnot, and eventually Superman and Supergirl fall from exhaustion, but they manage to buy enough time for the evacuation portals to be opened by Lena and Alex. Also, apparently Kelly randomly has James's old Guardian shield. Yeah, bet you're feeling so much better being a small-town reporter instead of helping people evacuate a dying world, aren't you, James?

I kinda wish we had a better sense of the conflict, though, because the Monitor shows up at this point yelling about how the battle is lost, and they have to retreat and save their resources for battles to come. The Monitor then slowly teleports Batwoman, Atom, Supergirl, Superman, Mia and the Flash away... couldn't you do that for the other populace of Earth-38? I kinda wish we had known about the limits of Monitor's powers, even if they are arbitary ones. Anyway, as everyone gets teleported away, Oliver refuses to go until the planet is evacuated, and somehow manages to zap the Monitor with an arrow, stunning him and preventing him from teleporting Oliver away.

Y'know what would've been better? Maybe instead of hunting for some random sci-fi technobabble in one of the Arrow season 8 episodes, wouldn't it be better to foreshadow the fact that Oliver made this anti-Monitor arrow, and he chooses to use it to save people or something along those lines? Again, I feel like the pre-Crisis episodes really could've been a lot better at building up the actual huge events that happen in the Crisis.

As it is, the Monitor is unable to zap Oliver away, while Oliver Queen drops his arrow, and charges straight towards a swarm of Shadow Demons, making his final stand as the ships evacuate Earth-38.

The Monitor reveals to the Crisis Crew in Earth-1 that 3 billion souls out of the 7.53 billion people on Earth-38 had been evacuated. (Did Nia and Kelly on the ground bite the dust? Or Alex and Lena in the lab?) Yeah, but what about all the other planets in Earth-38's universe, Novu? We then get the random appearance of Pariah, a.k.a. Nash Wells, who has been... transformed and is serving penance to bear witness because apparently he was responsible for freeing the Anti-Monitor. Was that what happened in the sewer temple of doom scene in the Flash? It's the scene that gets replayed over and over in the pre-Crisis episodes of all the other shows and I really didn't realize that it was what was going on. Again, as with a lot of the other things about this Crisis crossover, I think I'd like it better if this had been foreshadowed a bit better. Like, buildup is nice, but when you jump from the oblique mystery to an exposition, I feel like they could've set up that the Anti-Monitor is masquerading as the Monitor and talking to Pariah, or that he actually let something loose instead of being sucked into the random sewer-rune or whatever.

Pariah's arrival is sort of met with kind of a shrug and a slap on the wrist by those present. Oh, and Lois, Sara and Brainy return from their Earth-16 side-quest. And... well, Oliver's dying body is teleported by the Monitor and ends up dying as he gives up the mission to Barry and Kara specifically, and his final words are to his daughter Mia, telling her to find her mom. And then Oliver Queen dies.

...that's not how I expected Oliver to go out, and certainly not how the Monitor expects him to, either, because this was not the ending the Monitor or Pariah foresaw. Obviously there's more to it since we have four more parts to go through and I'm pretty sure Stephen Amell is billed as a star in all of them, so it's going to be interesting to see where it goes. But at the end of the episode Supergirl's world is gone, Oliver Queen is allegedly dead, and we don't even have any idea what the Anti-Monitor is and why he's destroying worlds! And... and, well, I think some of the complaints I make this episode sort of sums up what I feel about this crossover so far. It's fun, it's hype, it's energetic and all, but I really do wish that for this huge grand finale for at least one facet of the Arrowverse, I really do feel like they could've done a lot better in making the buildup to Oliver's fate, to Pariah, to the Quantum Towers or the Shadow Demons or Anti-Monitor a fair bit more coherent. And, of course, that Earth-16 side-quest was utterly random.

Still, we have four more episodes to go, and despite my grievances, I am still excited enough by this episode to continue on with this!

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Pariah, a.k.a. Kell Mossa in the comics, was one of the couple of original characters introduced in 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, and Pariah was the greatest scientist from his unnamed Earth -- his experiments in attempting to view the creation of the universe resulted in the Anti-Monitor learning of his existence, and destroyed his Earth with waves of anti-matter, and indirectly caused the Anti-Monitor to begin his crusade in wiping out all the Earths in the multiverse. The Monitor saved Kell from the destruction of his Earth, but also cursed him to be Pariah as punishment, causing him to teleport from Earth to Earth to witness the destruction of each and every Earth as the Anti-Monitor moves through the different universes.
• That "single black infinitude" speech is lifted basically verbatim from the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries. The visuals aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough! Huge towers appearing all over the world, as well as Shadow Demons being the enemy, are also part of the comic-book Crisis. A character was also evacuated via a spaceship in the comic-book Crisis in the same manner as Jonathan Kent, Alexander Luthor Junior of Earth-3, the first Earth to be destroyed in the comic-book Crisis. 
• The earths that are destroyed in the opening montage:
• Earth-89 is the 1989 Batman movie, with Robert Wuhl reprising his role as the reporter Alexander Knox from that movie, while the Danny Elfman theme plays in the background. A newspaper notes that "Batman captures Joker" -- Joker, of course, was the movie in the 1989 movie, even though he, um, died at the end of that movie. We'll forgive this goof, since, y'know, it's the Joker. The image on that newspaper was apparently lifted from the movie's official comic adaptation.
• Earth-9 is the currently-running Titans show, with Hawk and Jason Todd showing up via archival footage. 
• Earth-X is featured in 2017's CW crisis crossover, "Crisis on Earth-X", where the Ray is among a bunch of heroes fighting a world overrun by Nazis and evil versions of CW's superheroes
• Earth-66 is the '60's Batman TV show, with the location identified as Gotham City and Burt Ward reprising his role as an elderly Dick Grayson (apparently walking Ace the Bat-Hound?) and delivering one of his signature "Holy [insert something ridiculous here]" lines.
• Wil Wheaton's character proclaiming doom'n'gloom is a homage to a similar scene from Superman II, holding a replica of a sign from that movie.
• As I mention above, Earth-16 is the Legends of Tomorrow Season 1 episode 'Star City 2046', where the time-traveling Legends meet a future where Oliver Queen is an old cyborg and is working with Connor Hawke, the Green Arrow of the future, to fight against a dystopian Star City. As Arrow's seventh season has its own future-Star-City (circa 2040) it's gotten increasingly difficult to reconcile the two, and this episode officially decanonizes 'Star City 2046' from being Earth-1's future. 
• Spike last appeared in the Supergirl season 4 episode "Call to Action". 
• Plot references!
• The whole Dr. Destiny stuff was part of the Monitor's attempt to test the mettle of the heroes, which happened last season's "Elseworlds" storyline. 
• Alien refugees have been around in Supergirl since its inception, but really became a plot point in season four. The Daxamite portal, meanwhile, was a huge plot point in season two. 
• We've seen both Luthor and Zod (in a sense) before, but Lois Lane name-drops Doomsday as another one of Superman's greatest enemies while he's dealing with baby Jonathan's diapers. 
• Sara and Ray lampshade how the crew of the Waverider apparently insisted on 'no more crossovers'. They did miss out on the previous year's crossover, and I wonder if there's some internal conflict that ended up with most of the Legends cast being unable to show up for most of the Crisis.