The Flash, Season 5, Episode 9: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hour Three
So this third episode of Crisis on Infinite Earths actually aired at the end of 2019 before a mid-season break until the CW shows resumed in... late January, I believe? Or early February? Regardless, this was a place where there's actually a real-life cliffhanger break between the end of the episode and the beginning of the second part of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Because I was pretty dang behind on the CW shows, though, it means that I'm going to be able to catch up with Crisis almost immediately afterwards without the benefit of mulling over what's going to happen for a month or so.
Anyway... we start off Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 3, with Earth-203, where Huntress is calling Oracle while the camera does some slow-motion pan, but New Gotham gets consumed by the anti-matter wall, and Huntress gets herself killed. This is another one of our 'past DC TV shows' cameos, from 2003's Birds of Prey... and I'm not familiar enough to know anything about the show other than it's the source of actress Rachel Skarsten, who's playing Alice over on Batwoman. Still, like the Smallville one in the previous episode, it's probably a nice nod to fans of the show who's tuning in to this one. More and more I realize that CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths is more of a homage to DC's live-action history than anything. And... and it's kind of a shame, since we're at the halfway point and it's pretty clear that the main storyline of the Crisis is definitely just going to revolve around the central 'paragons'. I get that the complexity of arranging shooting locations and juggling so many actors meant that we probably couldn't quite get as cohesive a storyline as, oh, Infinity War or something, but I kinda expected more, y'know?Anyway, we cut back to the Monitor talking about how he wants to find the three remaining paragons, and because this is technically an episode of The Flash, the supporting cast of Flash is allowed to show up while most of Arrow, Supergirl and Legends' casts are still conspicuously off-screen. Cisco, Caitlin and Ralph show up, and I do like the little gag from Ralph really loving the fact that this is the "All-Star Squadron" while the other members of Team Flash lampshade how this is Ralph's first crossover, with him having missed out on Elseworlds last year.
(Speaking of which... yeah, I don't think them building up Psycho-Pirate last year is going to actually be followed-up upon. It's a shame, having Psycho-Pirate and maybe Dr. Destiny around as a sub-boss instead of endless waves of generic shadow monsters is probably a bit more exciting)
Anyway, there's a bit of a recap, before we get a bit more of a focus on poor, poor Supergirl muttering about how she really, really wants to get Earth-38 back. And while we, the viewers, know that the main focus should really on dealing with the threat instead of trying to reverse the changes (which will come with the resolution of beating the villain), can you really blame Kara for really trying super-hard to bring her world back? After all, unlike Barry or Oliver, Kara hasn't spent the majority of this year's season accepting that she has to move on from a loss that's about to come in the crisis.
We get the very quick and shrug-worthy revelation that J'onn J'onzz and Barry Allen are both respectively the paragons of honour and love. Sure, yeah, why not? At least they get something to do. And some random dude called Ryan Choi is the Paragon of Humanity. And while I am excited, being a fan of Ryan Choi from the comics, it feels really, really eye-rolling for us to spend so much of an already jam-packed part of a huge crossover to introduce a new character. Like, couldn't they have used someone like... oh, I dunno, Joe West or Luke Fox or someone who's just a regular human dude instead? It's really kind of bizarre.
Also, John Diggle has arrived on the set of the Crisis and he is absolutely livid that he's lost both his best friend and his wife off-screen. And... and for someone whose whole arc in Arrow's final season being that he's so afraid of Oliver Queen having to fight his final fight alone... actually having that happen is absolutely sobering for poor Diggle. It's just such a shame that, like everything else in this crossover, we don't get enough time to let this really settle in. It's great that they address this at all, because we're three episodes in and I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding Oliver's anticlimactic death, but we breeze through things so fast that it barely registers. Diggle is angry at Sara for letting Oliver die under her watch, then he confronts the Monitor for being a gigantic tool, and we get the random revelation that the Monitor has realized that Lyla has been 'corrupted' and sort-of brainwashed by the Anti-Monitor. Oh, and by the way, this is the first time the cast has ever heard of the name 'Anti-Monitor', and I think it's the first time the audience does as well.Which, by the way, is pretty dang stupid pacing. I can sort of forgive the whole Paragons thing being only introduced last episode, but the fact that apparently Mar Novu knows all about the Anti-Monitor, and that even Lyla's corruption is something he 'guessed' but he didn't do anything about? The way that the buildup to the Anti-Monitor is really kind of dumb -- the original comic has its own share of problems and is messy in its own way, but at least the buildup to the Anti-Monitor is handled interestingly, in that we're shown that the Harbinger reports to the Monitor in shadow, and also addresses him as the Monitor, so that when the actual reveal that there's an evil twin situation going on, both the Anti-Monitor's existence and Harbinger actually being mind-controlled instead of the Monitor secretly being evil is actually a huge plot twist. Here? It's done absolutely out of nowhere, and the show really doesn't have an excuse -- we could've have spent part of Arrow's meandering "let's figure out what Mar Novu is all about" storyline prior to the Crisis, or Flash's stupid "Nash Wells dicks around a sewer and magic runes" bit to at least foreshadow part of this, but nope. Here's the Anti-Monitor, here's your villain, he wants to eliminate the multiverse and wipe everything out and the Monitor kept this secret from our heroes because reasons.
Vibe and the rest of Team Flash arrive in Earth-1's Central City, in the super-secret sewer of doom that Nash Wells dicked around in the past eight episodes of The Flash. Nash himself shows up, as Pariah, to 'bear witness to tragedy' or whatever, and Cisco just quickly vibes the memories from Nash to figure out what the fuck's going on, which ends up amounting to basically figuring out the order of the glyphs to press.
Supergirl, meanwhile, wants to use the Book of Destiny to bring back Earth-38. Which... fair enough, if I could bring back my dead world by wishing on a goddamn plot device book, I would, too. Kate kinda-sorts helps Kara out, meanwhile, and does so while breaking Luthor's arm while interrogating him, which is awesome. It's apparently evil to do so because use the Book of Destiny at such a huge scale, and you'll go mad like Dr. Destiny. And Kara... still wants to go through, because all this 'paragon of hope' stuff is really getting to her because as far as she's concerned, she's lost her world and stuff and there's not too much to hope for thanks to that.
Meanwhile, in perhaps the best unexpected crossover is Earth-666. John Constantine brings Diggle and Mia over to Earth-666, with god-damned Lucifer of all shows. Like, I've been watching Lucifer on and off since its rough first season all the way to the fourth season... and I enjoyed it immensely, even though I don't review it on this blog. And Earth-666 is apparently the world of Lucifer, and of course Constantine knows all about Lucifer Morningstar, who stumbles out of his bar with a woman on each hand, does his "what it is you desire" shtick, and I absolutely love seeing Lucifer and Constantine play off each other, the two asshats being asshats and stuff. Lucifer then does his whole swagger as he hands off a card with the drawing of the devil playing a piano, then buggers off, telling Constantine that it'll allow them to enter purgatory for a limited time to retrieve Oliver Queen's soul. And as someone who watches Lucifer, this is an awesome cameo because I genuinely didn't think that it would ever happen or if it's even something I needed, but it's... again, kind of another egregious cameo that sort of ends up feeling more like a distraction than part of a cohesive story. Anyway, Constantine, Diggle and Mia have the plot device, and they enter Purgatory -- real mystical magical Purgatory, this time around, instead of a Chinese island whose name means purgatory, but of course since it's Oliver's purgatory, it takes the form of Lian Yu, and the spirit of Oliver Queen has apparently lost his memory or whatever.
Team Flash, meanwhile, is zipping around and they figure out that behind the magic sewer wall is the Anti-Monitor's domain, which is... just a pretty underwhelming sci-fi room, but apparently this is where the Anti-Monitor stashed his Anti-Matter Cannon, and it's the source of the anti-matter wave that consumed Earth-38, Earth-2, and all the other cameo Earths. Okay, sure. Also, this random sci-fi room in the sewers is apparently the 'nexus between the Anti-Matter universe and ours", which... okay, again, yeah, sure. Also, we get the revelation that Earth-90's Flash, a.k.a. John Wesley Schnipp's Flash, has been kidnapped by the Anti-Monitor in-between crossovers in yet another random revelation that really came out of the writers' ass and could've been foreshadowed at some point in the past year of Flash episodes. Earth-90 Old Flash is apparently forced to run on the Cosmic Treadmill, which is also protected by a forcefield that stops our heroes from helping him, and is basically forced to be a hamster in a wheel to power the Anti-Matter Cannon. Vibe uses his powers to warp Flash-90 out of the Cosmic Treadmill, but apparently there's a failsafe that allows the Anti-Matter Cannon to enter a "destroy all earths at once" mode.Which... wait, if that's an option, why didn't the Anti-Monitor do so in the first place? It's not like he has any real reason to wait and twirl his non-existent mustache as the Earths are consumed one by one. Also, apparently, the Anti-Monitor fired it on Earth-2 as a test firing, so the Monitor being a dick to Oliver for disobeying his instructions in Arrow's season premiere is really just the Monitor being a complete dick.
Oh hey by the way, at this point we meet Ryan Choi in Ivy Town, Earth-1, and he's just a regular dude coming home to his regular wife and he's trying to pass off the huge red-skies-of-doom as atmospheric changes. Iris, Ray and Ralph show up, show off their powers and quickly try to get him to go abroad the Waverider, but since Ryan Choi is just a Regular Guy(tm) he declines their offer and decides to go home to his wife. Okay yeah.A far more neat scene is the short, quiet scene between Lois Lane and the Monitor. We get the revelation that there are only seven Earths left, and Lois's short talk with the Monitor reveals that the Monitor had also lost his family in the past, and Lois basically ends up talking to the Monitor and humanizing him a little to the audience. Lois then talks to Superman-96 (the Routh one) who then gets a very, very vulnerable talk about how he couldn't save his world, and how he had made a promise to keep fighting no matter what. We get a gloriously cheesy and corny speech that Brandon Routh completely nails when Lois asks him about why he added black to his logo -- because in the darkest time, hope cuts through. Crisis as a whole is kind of a hot mess, but small character moments like this really do make it kind of watchable.
Back to the Anti-Matter Cannon or whatever! It's apparently Pariah that summons Black Lightning over from his show, where Earth-BL just got vaporized by an anti-matter wall. Why didn't Pariah show off his earth-jumping powers a bit sooner? Why didn't he save more heroes and assemble a small army of, like, alternate-universe Supermen? Why didn't the other heroes do that too?Anyway, Black Lightning keeps yelling about how they need to send him back to Freeland, because poor Jefferson doesn't even know anything about alternate earths or whatever. We get a pretty short bit of Black Lightning zapping around Flash and Killer Frost a bit, before he calms down, Pariah drops the bombshell that Earth-BL just got destroyed, the Flashes beg him for help, and poor, poor Jeff, faced with the loss of his family and his entire world, quickly puts aside his grief (a bit too fast to be humanely possible, honestly) to be a goddamn superhero, and he unleashes lightning hell to contain the energy from the anti-matter cannon.
More conflict elsewhere, as Batwoman stops Supergirl from opening the Book of Destiny. Kara is all determined that she has to use the Book of Destiny to restore Earth-38 and promises Kate that she wouldn't be like Evil Old Bruce, while Kate wants to stop Kara from destroying herself. Kara pulls out the 'Supergirl' card and tells Kate that she can't stop her. Kate then talks about how she wishes things were different and that she wishes she was hopeful like Kara, and how she needed to protect Kara since if they lose Supergirl they're all doomed, and then we get a fight with Kate intending to rescue Kara from a decision that will probably kill her. Okay, that's... that sure is an interesting spin on the Batman-vs-Superman plot.
Barry-1 and Barry-90 both enter sped-up time to talk to each other, and Barry-90 basically tell our Barry that sometimes he needs to take a step back to see the bigger picture, and Barry realizes that this is what the Monitor meant, that this is where the Flash dies and vanishes in the crisis, giving up his life to save all of the Earths. Or, well, the seven that are left, anyway. They have to reverse the treadmill's velocity to destroy the machine and the anti-matter wave. It's all neat, while Black Lightning says his school teacher motto ("where's the future, whose life is this" and all that) which is corny as hell but also pretty on-brand for Jefferson Pierce as a character. It's also kind of appropriate set next to the backdrop of two Barry Allens basically talking about sacrificing themselves to rescue the god-damn world.
In Purgatory, Diggle, Mia and Constantine are still contending with the angry ghost of Oliver Queen, who's sort of rampaging for no real reason other than to give us another action scene in an already packed episode, and Diggle's apology to Oliver for not being there and his talk about being Oliver's brother shakes him out of his angry craziness. Okay.
Meanwhile, back in mundane-people-land, Iris meets up with Ryan Choi, and gives him a pep talk about how she's also a human that's not an alien, metahuman or vigilante, and all she wants to do is to be with her family, and that humans remind superheroes what they are fighting for and stuff. We get a brief flashback to a conversation that happened off-screen as Team Flash prepare to go off to stop the Anti-Matter cannon, of Barry telling Iris that she's the only one who can talk Ryan Choi over because her heart is her superpower or whatever. And the 'running home to you' line is a sweet callback and all and Iris saying all this on the backdrop of Barry about to consider sacrificing himself is neat and all, but this entire Ryan Choi plot really feels tacked on and without too much of a tension -- Ryan himself is such a blank slate that I really don't care if Iris is able to convince him or not.
Speaking of Barry, we get a scene of him talking to Caitlin and Cisco, saying farewell and hugging them and bidding farewell... before Barry-90 suddenly zips in, stealing our Barry's speed, and then delivering the huge punchline -- the Monitor said that "The Flash must die in the Crisis", but never specified which... so it's Barry-90 that's going to make the sacrifice.
Which is a fucking cop-out if I ever saw one.
Like, it's pretty fucking stupid, huh? At least with Oliver Queen choosing to die at the hands of Shadow Demons to save a civilians from Earth-38, you get the sense that Oliver is dying on his own terms or whatever. Barry-90 is a character that we barely know, and, sure, there's the argument that he's the star of his own show in 1990, but on the other hand after all the buildup of Barry Allen dying in the Crisis ever since season one, it's a massively stupid cop-out to have him sort of just get replaced because 'ha ha, the prophecy never specified which Flash'. It also sort of steals our Barry of the huge, epic moment that his comic-book counterpart has, running so hard that he saves all of the multiverse from being destroyed and all. It's... it's a goddamn cop-out.
Anyway, Barry-90 disintegrates as he runs so fast, getting a brief flashback to his 1990 show, and tells our Barry to keep riding the lightning, before disintegrating and leaving his emblem on the ground. The Anti-Matter Cannon blows up, the wave disappears, leaving only one universe left, Earth-1. Okay.
In Purgatory, Constantine wants to get Oliver's soul back to his body... but then randomly Jim "Spectre" Corrigan shows up... and it's the Spectre, sure, I'm a huge comic book geek and I know who he is. But the CW universe had never had any hints of the Spectre existing at all (the closest is a still-human Jim Corrigan in Constantine) so for anyone without any sort of comic-book knowledge, some random ghost dude just showed up and went all "I'm someone else, I'm something else, a Spectre" and talks about how Oliver is going to have to embrace his destiny to save everyone. It's completely random and yet another one that is something that could've done with some explanation in previous episodes. It's really dumb because this could've been a huge, epic moment, but yet it's sort of confusing.
Constantine, Diggle and Mia get teleported back to the waverider, and as much as the Lucifer cameo is pretty cool, this does kind of make their little side-quest feel even more pointless since we could've instead had Oliver wandering Purgatory and actually meeting Jim Corrigan/Spectre and had the whole storyline progress in a bit more organic of a manner, or whatever.
We cut to Barry and Jefferson drinking on board the Waverider, and it's neat that they're basically building up Jefferson to be Barry's buddy in the same way that we built up Oliver/Barry, Barry/Kara and Kara/Kate. They bond over their issues with their respective dead, heroic fathers, about how Henry Allen and Alvin Pierce were good men who never gave up and they didn't raise any quitters, and they'll rage against the dying of the light and all that jazz. It's a neat scene set against the backdrop of all the chaos going on.
Speaking of the chaos going on, instead of an actual fight, Supergirl and Batwoman... doesn't! Kate tells Kara that she has the biggest heart, and gives Kara the Kryptonite gauntlet thing, telling her that even though Old Bruce lost hope, Kara never will... and Kara tells Kate to keep it, since she has the courage that she'll never have to use it or whatever. It's a nice scene and everything, but I do think that it felt dragged on for a bit too long, and under-explored at that.
Anyway, with most of the plotlines in this episode relatively done and over with, all the heroes gather on the Waverider's bridge. Black Lightning totally fanboys over two Supermen, because Superman is a comic in Earth-BL, and both Supermen has the most adorable goofy "I'm not sure how to react to a superhero fanboying to me" look on their faces. They are about to discuss how they'll find Harbinger... only for Harbinger to show up, with amnesia, and she can't remember what she was doing. Some of the heroes quickly realize that Pariah's presence on the ship means that a great tragedy is about to happen, since that's part of Anti-Monitor's curse on him, and that Anti-Monitor wanted Harbinger on the ship. And Harbinger gets taken over by Anti-Monitor, and beats the shit out of Diggle before ranting about the end of the Age of Heroes, and everything the heroes hold close.
And for all the messiness of the lead-up to this, it is pretty cool to see Superman-98 and Black Lightning immediately charge the possessed Harbinger only for Harbinger to just beta them and toss them around, while Diggle begs Lyla to wake up from the possession. The Monitor tells Pariah that humanity's fate lies on him, before we get a Dragon Ball style beam-war between Harbinger and Monitor with the Monitor and Anti-Monitor referencing events in their backstory the audience isn't privy to, and then the Monitor blows up and the Anti-Monitor absorbs his power.
This re-starts the Anti-Matter Wave again, because yeah sure why not, and Earth-1 itself gets consumed and everyone in it dies, while the Waverider, in orbit, is the last thing to get consumed by the anti-matter wall. The Anti-Monitor rants about how the infinite universes are gone... and then Pariah finally remembers he has teleportation powers, and shoots out the glowing yellow energy and teleports the Paragons away, sending out the energy beams to touch Superman-98, Ryan Choi, Flash, Martian Manhunter, White Canary, Batwoman and Supergirl.
We get an absolutely cool series of fight as Iris West, Earth-38 Superman, Black Lightning and Elongated Man stare down the possessed Harbinger, defiant to the end and trusting that their fellow heroes are going to fight the Anti-Monitor to their last breath... before the anti-matter wave reaches the ship and wipes everyone on board out. That's the huge cliffhanger... everyone dies except for the Paragons.
Pariah sends them to the Vanishing Point, the point outside space-time that starred in Legends of Tomorrow's first season, which is actually a pretty cool usage of a huge plot point that the CW shows have basically forgotten all about -- I'm not sure why it doesn't get wiped out alongside the other Earths, but okay, yeah, sure, the Vanishing Point's weird and excluded from anti-matter wave destruction or whatever.
And then... Superman-Routh starts to break apart, energy leaking out of it, burning to death and gets himself replaced by Luthor, who used the Book of Destiny to rewrite reality and turn Luthor into the Paragon of Hope instead of Superman. Okay, that's... that's totally on-brand with what Luthor would do, I suppose. Anyway, cliffhanger time, and these six heroes and one villain are going to have to find a way to somehow re-enter a dimension that's wiped out and fight the Anti-Monitor and restore everything! Will they be successful? Will Oliver Queen become the new Spectre? Will Ryan Choi be an actual character? Will the next two episodes pull out any more random plot points out of its ass? Find out in a month! ...or tomorrow, when I review Crisis part four.
Anyway, as much as I enjoyed parts of this episode, Crisis has been kind of a mess, huh? Like, it's a grand old time and I sure as hell enjoyed watching this, but comparing it to CW's previous crossover episodes, this one is probably the messiest and the most confusing with so many random plot points shoehorned in without much explanation or whatever.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
Which is a fucking cop-out if I ever saw one.
Like, it's pretty fucking stupid, huh? At least with Oliver Queen choosing to die at the hands of Shadow Demons to save a civilians from Earth-38, you get the sense that Oliver is dying on his own terms or whatever. Barry-90 is a character that we barely know, and, sure, there's the argument that he's the star of his own show in 1990, but on the other hand after all the buildup of Barry Allen dying in the Crisis ever since season one, it's a massively stupid cop-out to have him sort of just get replaced because 'ha ha, the prophecy never specified which Flash'. It also sort of steals our Barry of the huge, epic moment that his comic-book counterpart has, running so hard that he saves all of the multiverse from being destroyed and all. It's... it's a goddamn cop-out.
Anyway, Barry-90 disintegrates as he runs so fast, getting a brief flashback to his 1990 show, and tells our Barry to keep riding the lightning, before disintegrating and leaving his emblem on the ground. The Anti-Matter Cannon blows up, the wave disappears, leaving only one universe left, Earth-1. Okay.
In Purgatory, Constantine wants to get Oliver's soul back to his body... but then randomly Jim "Spectre" Corrigan shows up... and it's the Spectre, sure, I'm a huge comic book geek and I know who he is. But the CW universe had never had any hints of the Spectre existing at all (the closest is a still-human Jim Corrigan in Constantine) so for anyone without any sort of comic-book knowledge, some random ghost dude just showed up and went all "I'm someone else, I'm something else, a Spectre" and talks about how Oliver is going to have to embrace his destiny to save everyone. It's completely random and yet another one that is something that could've done with some explanation in previous episodes. It's really dumb because this could've been a huge, epic moment, but yet it's sort of confusing.Constantine, Diggle and Mia get teleported back to the waverider, and as much as the Lucifer cameo is pretty cool, this does kind of make their little side-quest feel even more pointless since we could've instead had Oliver wandering Purgatory and actually meeting Jim Corrigan/Spectre and had the whole storyline progress in a bit more organic of a manner, or whatever.
We cut to Barry and Jefferson drinking on board the Waverider, and it's neat that they're basically building up Jefferson to be Barry's buddy in the same way that we built up Oliver/Barry, Barry/Kara and Kara/Kate. They bond over their issues with their respective dead, heroic fathers, about how Henry Allen and Alvin Pierce were good men who never gave up and they didn't raise any quitters, and they'll rage against the dying of the light and all that jazz. It's a neat scene set against the backdrop of all the chaos going on.
Speaking of the chaos going on, instead of an actual fight, Supergirl and Batwoman... doesn't! Kate tells Kara that she has the biggest heart, and gives Kara the Kryptonite gauntlet thing, telling her that even though Old Bruce lost hope, Kara never will... and Kara tells Kate to keep it, since she has the courage that she'll never have to use it or whatever. It's a nice scene and everything, but I do think that it felt dragged on for a bit too long, and under-explored at that.
Anyway, with most of the plotlines in this episode relatively done and over with, all the heroes gather on the Waverider's bridge. Black Lightning totally fanboys over two Supermen, because Superman is a comic in Earth-BL, and both Supermen has the most adorable goofy "I'm not sure how to react to a superhero fanboying to me" look on their faces. They are about to discuss how they'll find Harbinger... only for Harbinger to show up, with amnesia, and she can't remember what she was doing. Some of the heroes quickly realize that Pariah's presence on the ship means that a great tragedy is about to happen, since that's part of Anti-Monitor's curse on him, and that Anti-Monitor wanted Harbinger on the ship. And Harbinger gets taken over by Anti-Monitor, and beats the shit out of Diggle before ranting about the end of the Age of Heroes, and everything the heroes hold close.And for all the messiness of the lead-up to this, it is pretty cool to see Superman-98 and Black Lightning immediately charge the possessed Harbinger only for Harbinger to just beta them and toss them around, while Diggle begs Lyla to wake up from the possession. The Monitor tells Pariah that humanity's fate lies on him, before we get a Dragon Ball style beam-war between Harbinger and Monitor with the Monitor and Anti-Monitor referencing events in their backstory the audience isn't privy to, and then the Monitor blows up and the Anti-Monitor absorbs his power.
This re-starts the Anti-Matter Wave again, because yeah sure why not, and Earth-1 itself gets consumed and everyone in it dies, while the Waverider, in orbit, is the last thing to get consumed by the anti-matter wall. The Anti-Monitor rants about how the infinite universes are gone... and then Pariah finally remembers he has teleportation powers, and shoots out the glowing yellow energy and teleports the Paragons away, sending out the energy beams to touch Superman-98, Ryan Choi, Flash, Martian Manhunter, White Canary, Batwoman and Supergirl.We get an absolutely cool series of fight as Iris West, Earth-38 Superman, Black Lightning and Elongated Man stare down the possessed Harbinger, defiant to the end and trusting that their fellow heroes are going to fight the Anti-Monitor to their last breath... before the anti-matter wave reaches the ship and wipes everyone on board out. That's the huge cliffhanger... everyone dies except for the Paragons.
Pariah sends them to the Vanishing Point, the point outside space-time that starred in Legends of Tomorrow's first season, which is actually a pretty cool usage of a huge plot point that the CW shows have basically forgotten all about -- I'm not sure why it doesn't get wiped out alongside the other Earths, but okay, yeah, sure, the Vanishing Point's weird and excluded from anti-matter wave destruction or whatever.And then... Superman-Routh starts to break apart, energy leaking out of it, burning to death and gets himself replaced by Luthor, who used the Book of Destiny to rewrite reality and turn Luthor into the Paragon of Hope instead of Superman. Okay, that's... that's totally on-brand with what Luthor would do, I suppose. Anyway, cliffhanger time, and these six heroes and one villain are going to have to find a way to somehow re-enter a dimension that's wiped out and fight the Anti-Monitor and restore everything! Will they be successful? Will Oliver Queen become the new Spectre? Will Ryan Choi be an actual character? Will the next two episodes pull out any more random plot points out of its ass? Find out in a month! ...or tomorrow, when I review Crisis part four.
Anyway, as much as I enjoyed parts of this episode, Crisis has been kind of a mess, huh? Like, it's a grand old time and I sure as hell enjoyed watching this, but comparing it to CW's previous crossover episodes, this one is probably the messiest and the most confusing with so many random plot points shoehorned in without much explanation or whatever.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- More alternate Earths, including Earth-90 (1990's The Flash) which we've seen before:
- Earth-203 is the 2003 Birds of Prey TV series, something that not a lot of people remember. Ashley Scott reprises her role as Helena "Huntress" Kyle, and Dina Meyer has a voice-only credit as Barbara "Oracle" Gordon. Oddly, Rachel Skarsten (Batwoman's Alice) doesn't even show up -- she played Dinah Lance in that series. The Earth-203 scenes are shot in excessive slow motion, something that Birds of Prey was apparently infamous for.
- In addition to actually, y'know, showing up to sacrifice himself, Earth-90 Flash (last seen in the Elseworlds crossover) has a brief flashback to a conversation he has with Tina McGee from his original show, using archival footage.
- Earth-666 is the Lucifer TV show, which not many people know is actually based on a DC/Vertigo comic series. In addition to the main character showing up, Lucifer drops quick hints to other characters from the series -- his brother Amenadiel, and his 'friend' Mazikeen.
- Jim Corrigan is more well-known as the original, classic alter-ego of The Spectre, God's Spirit of Vengeance, one of the most primal and powerful mystical forces in DC comics. A policeman who was unjustly killed, Jim Corrigan was offered vengeance should he accept the mantle and responsibilities of the Spectre, sent to punish those who are truly wicked, ending his victims' lives in creatively iconic ways. Notable post-Corrigan hosts of the Spectre include Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) and Gotham detective Crispus Allen.
- Constantine lampshades that there was a Jim Corrigan that showed up in his own TV show, played by a different actor but was clearly meant to be the Spectre should Constantine not been cancelled. We're not sure if this is a Corrigan from a different Earth, or something else.
- While it's clearly a happy coincidence with the meaning of Lian Yu, comic-book Spectre has been known to reside in Purgatory/Limbo in some stories.
- Kara holding Clark-96 as he 'dies' is a mirrored version of an iconic scene in the Crisis on Infinite Earths' seventh issue, whcih features Supergirl dying as she is cradled superman.
- The Cosmic Treadmill finally shows up in a more comic-accurate look, instead of the more modern version we've seen in various episodes of The Flash.
- Despite Constantine insisting that it's pronounced "Constan-teen", Lucifer actually pronounces it as what was explicitly noted as the correct pronunciation in the comics -- "Constan-tyne".
- The Anti-Monitor's true name being Mobius is taken from the New 52 comics.
- Ralph's reaction at the gathered heroes is to call them the "All-Star Squadron", which is an actual superhero team in DC comics, associated with World War II and the Justice Society.
- Barry notes that he'll always "run home to you" when talking to Iris, which is the song that Barry proposed to Iris with in The Flash. Likewise, comic-book Barry Allen, upon returning from his death, does exactly that as the first thing he does.
- Killer Frost snarks that this is Ralph's first crossover, which is technically true -- he skipped out on Elseworlds due to actor scheduling issues.
- Earth-666 has billboards for Watchmen, yet another DC comics property.
No comments:
Post a Comment