Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 4 [Arrow S08E08] Review: At Last... the Anti-Monitor!

Arrow, Season 8, Episode 8: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hour Four

For the people watching this as it aired, there was a fairly decent gap between the airing of Part 3 and Part 4 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm watching the five-parter in a single go. And... and I thought that actually arranging the cliffhanger around a mid-season break is actually a decent move on CW's part -- it's just such a shame that Part 3 of Crisis was kind of a clusterfuck of plot points.

Part 4 of Crisis starts off in an interesting way that's probably necessary -- actually quantifying one of the crossover-original characters and giving us the origin story of Mar Novu, the Monitor. He's an alien from the planet Maltus, hailing from ten thousand years ago, and he's a happy scientist with a wife X'neen and everything experimenting with time travel and attempting to go back to the dawn of time to witness the creation of the universe. We get some neat nods to Mar Novu's future identity, with him acknowledging Xneen as 'the Monitor' and making fun of his time travel suit. And... okay, at least they're explaining this part. It's kind of grating that we're basically on the home stretch before getting some answers, but at least we're getting them, y'know? It's not like we're going to get any sort of real explanation about the Paragons of Something-or-Other or the Book of Destiny beyond 'magic object okay?' And it's a relatively decent mish-mash adaptation of various characters that were involved in the comics' Crisis of Infinite Earths, with CW Monitor being a combination of Krona, Pariah and Monitor from the comics.

We also get the fact that Mar Novu's act of observation in the dawn of time apparently caused a breach between their universe and the 'anti-universe'... except the way that the show portrays it is kind of pretty poorly done, with Novu being more confused while belting out random terms like 'anti-universe' and 'radiation' and 'my towering ambition has doomed us all'. Whatever the case, he's been blasted to the anti-matter universe, which is just some random quarry with green camera filter applied over it, and also Mobius the Anti-Monitor is just sort of hanging out. The show just sort of stops short on adapting the whole ironic "act of observation birthed an evil twin" bit, though, and we just have Novu basically stumbling into the anti-matter universe and finding his evil Star Wars reject doppelganger by accident. Again, it's neat that they're adapting an aspect of the comics, but on the other hand it's done so haphazardly, y'know?

Back to the present day, where the Paragons and Luthor are stuck in the Vanishing Point. Ryan Choi and his lack of personality basically becomes the narrator, saying ironic things like "the Paragon of Destiny doesn't believe in tomorrow, the Paragon of Hope has lost hers" and all that. It's neat to see how the other heroes are coping. Sara and Kara are sad, Kate is busying herself with fighting, J'onn is meditating, Barry has disappeared in an attempt to run real fast, while Ryan and Luthor are trying to reverse-engineer the Vanishing Point's tech. And Luthor's being a complete douche. They made the teleportation device, but there's no other Earth to teleport to -- basically the same problem Laurel-II had in Arrow's pre-Crisis episodes. Gee, it'd be nice if we had more tie-ins to the pre-Crisis episodes like this, huh?

I do love the little mean moment when Kara shoves Lex and 'volunteers' him for the teleportation test-drive. That's surprisingly dark for Supergirl to do, huh?

Anyway, Barry ends up returning, apparently thinking that he left two seconds ago... when in-universe he's been gone for months. So the Paragons were trapped there for months, huh? But then what were they eating? Or does the Vanishing Point mean that time stops for their body metabolism or something? It's the little things that confuses me. Anyway, Barry has entered the Speed Force, and that's apparently going to be their way out, because non-physical realms are apparently spared. Okay!

Meanwhile, it's the Arrow episode so we're getting some Oliver Queen -- mainly, a montage of all the final season fights in Arrow. It's neat, even if I really did wish that the Crisis episodes worked a bit better as a send-off for Oliver Queen instead of just really focusing on using him as a plot device. Oliver opens his eyes in Purgatory (apparently mystic mumbo-jumbo land is immune to antimatter walls, too, so that's yet another world that's spared) and he has green irises, and Jim Corrigan (who remains without an explanation throughout the entire episode) basically sort of vaguely mentors Oliver through his vague powers, telling Oliver that all the fights he's been through led up to this moment. Okay, yeah, if you say so, Corrigan. It's basically a generic 'you need the help of your friends' to win speech, really.

In the Vanishing Point, Barry wants to try again, but Kara ends up calming everyone down before Barry Flashpoints it up again. Also, Jedi Ghost Oliver (or, well, Spectre Oliver, I guess) show up and tell Barry that he needs to use the Speed Force to rescue everyone back, and we get another repeat of the "I'm a Spectre" line that Jim Corrigan used last part. As the Spectre, Oliver is in tune with the entire multiverse, even when it's wiped out, and it'd be nice to have some foreshadowing that the position of the Spectre exists at all, y'know? Anyway, Oliver reveals that the Anti-Monitor has replaced the multiverse with an antimatter universe, and he's also trying to travel back to the dawn of time in order to make the changes permanent. Because wiping out the various Earths isn't enough, and he also wants to wipe out the history. Because time travel apparently still works or something. Okay yeah sure. It's... it's something that I feel could've used a bit more explanation or whatever, but none of these Crisis episodes really care about explaining their own lore and we're just getting plot developments that seem to be pulled out of nowhere.

Spectre Oliver then divides up the Pargaons into different teams, sending a team to Maltus and the dawn of time to sort of... uh... stop Mar Novu from fucking up? Which would lead to a whole mess of recursive time loops, but if Legends of Tomorrow has taught us anything it's that CW writers don't give a fuck about writing a sensible time travel story. Spectre Oliver then gives Barry a boost, making him in tune with the Speed Force, tapping Barry in the forehead and apparently this 'unlocks his potential'. Some Dragon Ball Z thing is going on here. Anyway, the Spectre boost has allowed Barry to unleash some run-Barry-run stuff, dumping Supergirl, Ryan Choi and Lex Luthor in Maltus... because for some goddamned reason they still think it's a good idea to involve Luthor at all? Just ditch him in the Vanishing Point and pick him up after the Crisis is over, y'know? Luthor disappears and ninjas away at the first possible opportunity, while Ryan continues to really not have much of a personality beyond being a slightly excitable everyman.

Barry, meanwhile, running in the void of the Speed Force, sees the Anti-Monitor and the jumpscare scares him so much and sort of falls... and we get teleported to Barry... witnessing his own first appearance in the CW-verse, which is in that one season two episode of Arrow. We get a bit of a repeated dialogue before Spectre Oliver appears to Barry and tells him that he's apparently stumbled and they're stuck in the Speed Force. And... and I sort of get that they wanted to give Barry a huge moment since he doesn't get to do his heroic sacrifice from the comics, but this means that a significant portion of this episode ends up being basically a glorified fancy self-contained dream-world episode. It was neat the first time CW did it in Invasion, but it also sort of fucked up the pacing of that crossover. And here it also feels self-indulgent. It's neat to have a distraction like this if, y'know, the rest of your saga is paced and structured well, but so far Crisis has kind of been jumping all of the place in terms of pacing and storytelling.

Anyway... we barely have time to register that Spectre Oliver is some sort of cosmic hoodie ghost-god figure, and now he's apparently split apart because he's using his powers to barely hold the Paragons together and Barry has to go through flashbacks and dream-worlds and use the power of memories and good feelings to bring everyone's memories back, which honestly just feels like such a massive distraction and a waste of time. I'm always one to advocate characterization and all, but this isn't even anything super meaningful, it's just repeating and reaffirming things we already know about -- a little restructuring and having these flashbacks maybe be the catalyst of the whole 'Paragons' thing might work a bit better, but that'd require some actual planning on the writers' part.

Anyway, Barry ends up tumbling into the Speed Force... and meets DC Extended Universe Ezra Miller Flash! What in the actual fuck, this is actually something that's completely unexpected, and it's actually pretty cool considering what a gigantic piece of shit WB has been to CW over the past couple of years. We have a Flash-meets-Flash crossover... and it's pretty awesome. The two Barrys play off each other well, and I'm genuinely not sure what this is supposed to be. Is it just acknowledging that there are other Earths outside of the multiverse that the Anti-Monitor wiped out or something? My guess is that it's just a cool cameo for the sake of a cool cameo. And don't get me wrong, just like Lucifer last episode I really do appreciate Ezra Miller's Flash showing up, and I love the two Flashes complementing each other's costumes, but it's just a moment that zips by very quickly and feels just kind of gratuitous. I appreciate it, but all the cameos in the world wouldn't really substitute for a good story. 

Anyway, in Maltus, Luthor continues doing his dickishness and honestly, at this point he's starting to really wear thin. Luthor in Supergirl is pretty dang enjoyable, but here he's reduced to just basically being a token asshole supervillain who shrugs every answer with "well I'm a supervillain duh-doy, I want universal domination". Also he's upgraded himself into a superhuman when he had the Book of Destiny, allowing himself to blast Supergirl with energy beams. Okay, then, I'm pretty sure there are better powers to give yourself like Kryptonite beams or whatever, but okay, Lex, you do you. Also, Ryan Choi is there to give Supergirl a pep talk because she kinda feels down that Lex has superpowers or something? He's still pretty bland.

The other characters wake up in various moments in the CW-verse history, and poor, poor Kate and her minimal interaction finds herself randomly plonked into... an episode where Ray Palmer and Oliver Queen are discussing vigilantism and Ray is threatening Oliver about how his brand of vigilantism is bad and... and y'know what? Giving Kate focus with the Old Bruce Wayne story two episodes ago is a bit of obvious favouritism for the new show's main character, but it worked in context of the story. This is just silly, and I wonder if the scene wasn't originally written for Ray Palmer in mind.

Another scene from CW's history we flashback to is during the Invasion arc when Oliver and Kara first really meet each other during the Dominator invasion, and Oliver's all being a dick to Kara about aliens and unknown quantities and Oliver himself being overwhelmed by superhumans and alternate earths... and apparently this is J'onn J'onzz's flashback, because, uh... he shows up with his shapeshifting powers and declares to dream!Oliver and dream!Kara that 'everything is way past normal'. Oooookay that's vaguely thematically relevant? I'm sorry, I would already be criticizing the storytelling and pacing even if these flashbacks are like the most thought-provoking and character-relevant ones ever, but we're just plonking characters to sets that have nothing to do with them and it's just painfully silly.

A vaguely more relevant flashback is the Dr. Destiny fight during the Elseworlds crossover, where Barry (who was running to save the world at the time) ends up witnessing the deal that Oliver made with Novu. We get Barry interacting with Superman and Lois and getting them confused, and apparently, this is Barry... getting real!Oliver out of a flashback? But isn't Oliver like a ghost-god now and okay yeah fine whatever, show, you do what you want to do. Oliver gives a speech about how he didn't want to burden anyone else with the choices he makes, which is why he's been keeping things secret from Barry and Kara with the whole 'life-exchanging' thing. Which, by the way, thanks to the revelation in Crisis Part One really didn't end up amounting to much, huh? Oliver gives Barry some wise zen words about how "dying's the easy part, the dead are at peace, heroes keep going" and stuff.

And then it's just honestly a pretty bland sequence of scenes as Barry zips around and rip people out of their flashbacks. Sara's flashback is her own death, where Diggle and Laurel are mourning over her body... and, Barry just, uh... zips in, talks about how true heroes set examples and wakes Sara up with a zap? Okay. J'onn is giving dream!Kara and dream!Oliver a pep talk about how they will end up trusting each other, and that also gets him out of the dream? Kate talks about trust to dream!Oliver and dream!Ray and lampshades how she has nothing to do with the conversation beyond vaguely learning to trust from it. Okay, so this also gets her out?

What I'm trying to say is that this whole 'lost in the Speed Force' bit ended up being pretty much a gigantic distraction. And I thought the journey to get Baby Jonathan back from random future Star City Earth was bad!

While all of that is going on, Kara and Luthor both try to interrupt the Mar Novu experiment. Luthor hacks his way into Novu's laboratory and is relatively convincing in a sarcastic way, telling Novu that he's come there with future knowledge, and also basically selling his services as someone who can deal with the super problems, and also make sure Novu's experiments don't cause the antimatter and matter universes to clash. It's kind of whatever and just a lead-up to have a super-fight between Supergirl and a superpowered Lex Luthor, and it's not even a particularly impressive fight, but at least it's Supergirl's big moment in the crossover, I guess? I know I really enjoyed the random "Brave and the Bald" line from Luthor, that was funny. I do like that Kara is absolutely livid and doesn't take shit from Luthor after all the crap he's pulled with her, with Clark and with Lena.

While the fight is raging on, Ryan Choi finally gets to be relevant as he talks to the Monitor. Novu's defense that this is his entire life's work ends up being faced with Ryan talking about how an infinite amount of lives will be lost if he continues on with it, and I guess Ryan being a Regular Dude (tm) is enough to convince Mar Novu? It honestly leads to not much but a shrug from me. It's a decent scene, I suppose.

With Novu convinced by Ryan Choi to not continue with his potential reality-manipulating experimentation, Luthor complains about his ruined bad guy plan but there's not enough time to really process it because Flash flashes in and zips them out and transports them into the Dawn of Time in the anti-matter universe, with the terrible green filter and all. And, surprise surprise, the Anti-Monitor is there. Because all of the shit we've been watching of Kara and Ryan convincing Mar Novu to not do it? Apparently it doesn't matter, because there are infinite universes and at some point, at least one Mar Novu will open the anti-matter universe and lead to the crisis anyway. Again... okay, whatever. At this point I'm really too exhausted to be questioning the random plot twists that come out of nowhere. I just really wished that they didn't waste our time, because now it feels like both the Maltus and the Speed Force Flashback scenes in this episode ended up feeling genuinely like padding.

As the Anti-Monitor rants about destiny, even more Shadow Demons appear, while Spectre Oliver gives a huge speech about how the heroes assembled are Paragons (and also Luthor), and that they are selected for a reason (would've been nice to see why) and they... have to buy time and beat up fake Dementors while they rebirth the universe. I do like the bit with Luthor being angry that all cosmic-type beings are 'so obtuse' and how he's the only one allowed to take over the world (okay calm down you Saturday morning villain), and I do like Oliver confirming with Barry and Kara, asking them if they trust him. There's some badass running, some badass action scenes as Supergirl and Flash and Martian Manhunter and Luthor use their super-powers to zap and fly and destroy the Shadow Demons, while Batwoman and White Canary use their kung fu to beat other demons on the ground. And also Ryan Choi is there yelling.

We get the confrontation between Spectre Oliver and Anti-Monitor and this really should've felt more epic, but the Anti-Monitor has exactly zero personality and motivations, while I'm still settling in to the idea of Oliver Queen as the goddamn Spectre. They just kind of yell vague cosmic entity things at each other, while Oliver proclaims how his entire life has prepared him for this fight. Sure, all that training in the island with arrows and traps is comparable to the vague zappy energy beam fight you're having now. Sure, Oliver.

Anyway, Spectre and Anti-Monitor fight each other, they sort of float around and do a superhero landing, and the visuals for this fight is all right, I guess, green filter and samey CGI enemies notwithstanding. Oliver delivers a perfectly corny "you... have failed... this universe" line, and then some huge CGI explosion beam of light happens, the Anti-Monitor is gone, and Oliver tells the Paragons to think and believe real hard to channel the Book of Destiny or whatever and rewrite reality and make the new Earth or whatever. Again, this is yet another aspect of the Paragons and the Book of Destiny that sort of came out of nowhere.

Oliver explodes, taking out the Anti-Monitor as he watches the Earths being recreated, and tells Barry and Sara to watch over his family, telling them that he's finally at peace, telling them to keep going, never stop and protect the new world. It sure is a cool speech, and it sure is a more epic exit than the one Oliver had at the beginning of the crossover... but, again, I dunno, I still think that Oliver's death could've been a lot more resonating and coherent with the melancholy we've had throughout Arrow's season 8, y'know? It just feels like... it kinda happened.

Anyway, that sure was an episode. I'm definitely starting to lose steam at this point -- this episode is kinda messy. Not as messy as the previous one, but the entire first half of this episode felt like it was meandering around pointlessly when they really could've explained the Monitor, Anti-Monitor and Spectre thing a lot better. I dunno. It sure is entertaining, I suppose, but man is the pacing for this episode and the previous one messy. At least we're nearing the end, though, and we'll see the brave new world that Oliver turned into a ghost-god and then proceeded to blow himself up for...

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Even more alternate Earths?
• The DCEU movie series, surprisingly, gets pulled into this as Ezra Miller's Barry Allen/The Flash from Justice League makes an appearance. He also briefly mentions Cyborg while talking to CW's Flash. 
• In the comics, Maltus was a major planet, but its inhabitants weren't associated with the Monitors, not really -- it was instead the home world of the Guardians of the Universe, the race that oversees the Green Lanterns.
  
• Mar Novu's origin story as a humble scientist that just wants to look at the creation of the world and ended up causing a chain of events that resulted in the destruction of the multiverse is sort of a combination of New 52's Monitor, Krona from the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, as well as a little bit of Pariah. 
• In the original Crisis, the catalyst for the creation of Earth-Prime is indeed a fight between the Anti-Monitor and Spectre at the dawn of time, although it's significantly more grand in scale than what's presented here. It also includes more arm-wrestling. 
• Supergirl says Superman's "up, up and away!" catchphrase.
• The scenes seen here are taken from various points in the Arrowverse's history:
• Arrow S02E08, "The Scientist", where a pre-Flash Barry Allen first met Oliver Queen. 
• Arrow S03E02, "Sara", where Diggle and Laurel mourn and discuss Sara Lance's ignominious death. 
• Arrow S03E17, "Suicidal Tendencies", where Oliver and a pre-Atom Ray have a bit of an argument about vigilantism.
• Legends of Tomorrow S02E07, the second part of the Invasion crossover where Oliver and Kara butt heads. 
• Supergirl S04E09, the climax of the Elseworlds crossover, where Oliver made the deal with Mar Novu to rescue Kara and Barry.