Legends of Tomorrow, Season 5, Episode 1: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hour Five
So this episode starts off after the chaotic end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Four... and I have to preface this review by noting that despite my utterly critical review about the messiness of parts three and four of Crisis... I still kind of enjoyed it to some degree? And, yeah, part of that enjoyment kind of stems from the simple reason that I've just enjoyed a lot of these actors and characters over the years. It's just such a shame that this could've been so much better, both as a crossover, as a huge event and as a send-off to Oliver Queen, their star for the past eight years.
Anyway, after the huge magic fight between Spectre Oliver and the Anti-Monitor, we get Kara waking up in her apartment all stumbling over her glasses and whatnot, and zapping the wall with heat vision by accident when Alex wakes her up. Everything's normal now, Kara just woke up in front of the TV and no one's worried at all about the multiverse-ending crisis or whatever. Also, we never really got an answer whether Alex was counted among the casualties of Earth-38, huh? That would've given all those "Kara angsts for Earth-38" scenes some weight, wouldn't it? And Kara just gets thrusted into what seems to be her normal life, with only her as a person that remembers the events of Crisis. Alex is confused and shrugs it off as just post-battle grogginess, Nia calls Kara and tells her to super-speed her way to the Nobel peace prize and Kara just wants to wing everything for the day before asking Nia about the weird 'dream' she had...And then we get the bombshell that Lex Luthor is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and everyone in the world from Nia to all these random reporters love it. Yep, seems like in this brave new Earth, Luthor's rewritten himself to basically become a villain with good publicity as opposed to the Golden Age era hammy card-carrying villain.
As much as I am frustrated by the way they handled Luthor in this crossover, I do admit that using the Crisis as a way to retool Lex Luthor into the far less boring and far more interesting President Luthor from the comics is definitely a lot more interesting! Theoretically, anyway. Kara watches in confusion and revulsion as Luthor talks up how dangerous the world is and how superheroes are special but Luthor is also special because he's helping people despite not having superpowers. Oh, and also, Kara's attempt to vent about Luthor to Alex ends up causing confusion as Alex, too, is a huge Luthor fan now and the D.E.O. is a subsidiary of LuthorCorp.
Eventually Kara gets to talk to another Paragon, J'onn, who confirms to Kara that, no, she isn't insane, it's just that only the Paragons, who witnessed the new Earth being created, remember all the events of the Crisis. Okay, sure, that kind of makes sense, I guess, and is a neat adaptation of the final arc in the comic-book version of Crisis. Another huge twist? Of course, as everyone predicted, Earth-38 gets finally fused with Earth-1, and basically all of the CW shows are now part of one big harmonious Earth-Prime. In an attempt to stop the supervillain Weather Witch, Supergirl runs into Flash and the two are kind of confused why they are shoehorning on each other's Earth... only for Marv Wolfman (author of Crisis on Infinite Earths) to show up and ask for their autographs, confirming that in the history of this new Earth-Prime, Flash and Supergirl are apparently known to the public since forever. It's a twist that I personally saw coming from a mile away, but I do appreciate the show actually focusing entirely on Supergirl's cast members for its first scenes. With the huge revelation over, we now cut away to Pariah, who's back as Nash Wells, waking up in the dumb sewer set of Central City because of all the plot points that require resolution in this huge endeavour, it's the god damn sewer runes that they think is burning a hole in the viewers' minds. Nash wakes up with little memory of how he got here. In Star City, Sara is back on the bar and tries to get Ray (who doesn't remember anything) up to speed, and Ray is just baffled at the idea of missing out on a crossover. J'onn shows up, though, and basically uses his martian psychic powers to bring everyone relevant up to speed, which is actually pretty fun and pretty convenient. J'onn has apparently been doing this presumably to all of the relevant characters in each show's primary main cast. Okay.
Sara rendezvouses with the rest of the Arrow cast in the Arrowcave, where Diggle, Rene and Dinah are hanging out and mourning Oliver Queen, because, of course, with the creation of Earth-Prime, Oliver had also forfeited his life. Or had to serve as a ghost-god or something. It's never made clear that that honestly is probably one of the shittiest part of this live-action crossover -- the huge exit and the huge conclusion to one of its main characters is extremely vague and makes no sense to anyone who isn't familiar with Spectre from the comics. Flash and Supergirl also arrive in the Arrow-cave, and the two of them are far more bubbly and excited... before realizing that Oliver isn't back.
In STAR Labs, Caitlin is scanning Nash before J'onn shows up and brings both of them up to speed. I do like the bit where Nash is initially indignant and defiant, before J'onn gets absolutely pissed off at him, being the one who released the Anti-Monitor (it isn't really made clear prior to this episode, really), and the memory dump gets Nash morose and sad again.
And then everything goes to shit as a giant Beebo attacks Star City, and at this point I do feel like Beebo is a joke that the Legends crew think is a lot funnier than it actually is. Sure, it's off-the-walls the one time they used it to fight Mallus in season three's finale or whatever, but at this point it's an overplayed joke. Oh, and also since this is the Legends episode, we get to see the rest of the Legends cast other than Sara, Ray, Mick and Constantine. We get to see Ava and Nate in the Time Bureau eye-rolling at the crossover, while Mick ends up being the first to fight Beebo, who interrupts his book signing. We then get Flash, Atom, Supergirl, Canary and Heatwave fighting Beebo... and being pretty ineffective, only slowing Beebo down. I do like the couple of bits where Flash zips around with cables around Beebo's feet and the giant furby just shakes it off, and good ol' John Diggle's deadpan "I'm not letting my kid watch this show ever again" is perfect. Dinah and Rene being baffled at how batshit crazy crossovers are is also pretty neat. Oh yeah, Batwoman also shows up with a pretty cool dynamic entry, and figures out that the giant Beebo is just a distraction. The heroes then arrest Beebo's summoner, Sargon the Sorcerer, who gets punched in the face by Sara as he tries to rob a bank.
The hero squad then spend time drinking and socializing in the Arrowcave...and it moves quickly without a whole ton of notable dialogue until Nash shows up and moves the plot along. The Anti-Monitor's not completely gone, because the anti-matter is rising in that area. Okay though but didn't they like rewrite time itself? Why did the Anti-Monitor only show up at this specific time period okay yeah don't overthink things, I know, it's just a wacky huge crossover. I get it. While the rest of the cast do some sci-fi mumbo-jumbo talk off-screen, I do really love the scene of Barry walking up and talking to Sara as she sits on a flight of stairs overlooking a tree. These two are inarguably the closest friends to the late Oliver other than Diggle, and I do love the two of them basically taking a brief moment to reflect on their life, with Sara noting how she used to race with Laurel to the tree and now she's gone from an assassin to a vigilante to a corpse to captain of a time-traveling ship. They both note how they both had connections to their old, pre-superhero life, and for Sara, that's her connection with Oliver. For Barry, that used to be his dad, Henry Allen. And while they know that they have to move on and they've both found new families, it's nice to have a reminder of your past, y'know? That's a pretty neat little scene that I feel is massively lacking throughout the rest of Crisis, and it's scenes like this that give actual oomph to Oliver's death.
Anyway, a fuck-ton of Shadow Demons show up in Gardner Pier, and we get a pretty badass shot of the superheroes walking down the line to meet them. Wild Dog, Dreamer, Spartan, Flash, White Canary, Supergirl, Martian Manhunter, Alex Danvers, Batwoman and Superman. Oh, and J'onn's got a fancy new suit again! We get a fight against the Shadow Demons with the Flash zipping around and the Supers unlesahing eye-beams and stuff, but then the Shadow Demons sort of disappear and reform into the Anti-Monitor? Who still looks like a White Walker from Game of Thrones doing a Halo cosplay or something. The Anti-Monitor spouts generic yelling about how this is their end, and then we get more fighto-fighto.
In STAR Labs, Ray, Ryan and Nash are trying to make the doohickey to trap the Anti-Monitor in a perpetually shrinking state, while Killer Frost and Heat Wave hold the ground against the Shadow Demons... and Black Lightning shows up! He's badass, and he gets a badass entry and I do like the three characters just exchanging barbs and rescuing each other. Earth-BL just got sucked into Earth-Prime, I suppose.
Anti-Monitor quotes his comic-book counterpart about how he's "destiny incarnate, inexorable and inescapable, you are nothing, insects fated to be crushed beneath my heel without a moment's thought", but the heroes are having none of his flowery speech. He uses an eclectic mixture of random beam powers to fight our heroes, while Sara and the others refuse to fail Oliver. There's a pretty cool tracking shot of one of Batwoman's batarangs flying towards the Anti-Monitor before being blocked with his energy shield, and then everyone just unleashes heat visions, bullets and whatever the hell those beams that Dream shoots at the Anti-Monitor's shield, and we get a pretty neat shot of Sara circling the Anti-Monitor and locking eyes with him. A ground-pound from the Anti-Monitor knocks everyone down (poor Rene's just pretty much out of his league, huh) and then the Anti-Monitor becomes gigantic and proclaims the Age of Heroes as being over.Y'know, the Anti-Monitor becoming a giant might be a bit more impressive if we hadn't seen fucking Beebo do basically the same thing earlier in this episode. Anyway, Supergirl leads the 'sky team' of Superman and Martian Manhunter to fly around the Anti-Monitor and pelt him with blasts and super-punches and it's actually pretty neat. Ray tells Barry to zip back to STAR Labs and use his super-speed to help construct the Atom Bomb, which I think is cool. Flash then zips Ray back to the pier they are fighting, while the rest of the ground-bound superheroes are fighting the Shadow Demons. Anti-Monitor manages to beat the ever-loving crap out of Superman after the flying heroes fly around his head a bit too many times, but eventually we get the pretty cool, explosive entry of Flash and Atom as Barry zips through all the Shadows and Ray flies bringing the Atom Bomb to Supergirl.
There's a pretty cool bit of Anti-Monitor clutching Superman in his arms, then Atom shrinking Superman to save before Supergirl does a "throw it like a girl" moment, chucks the Atom Bomb and shrinks silly ol' Mobius down into nothingness. There is some ominous latin chanting music before Sara thanks Oliver, noting that the Crisis is over. Oh, and also we get the obligatory shrunken-Superman joke.
Ultimately... okay, yeah, this is a far more entertaining fight than the generic beam spam between Spectre and Anti-Monitor last episode, and it's a nice little last hurrah as our heroes prove that they can protect their brave new world. It does really kind of hammer home what a flat villain Anti-Monitor has been, though, since he's barely more relevant than a generic angry monster.
Anyway, conclusion time! A president lady (who I don't think are any of the presidents in the CW shows we know) addressing the public and thanking Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, for being a hero and an inspiration to us all, acknowledging his death and crediting him as a leader. We go through various families and heroes in their civilian lives, which is neat, and we also see that apparently Earth-Prime also restores Sara Diggle... I've always thought that it's weird that no one ever really comments that J.J. basically replaces Sara and erases her out of existence, so hooray Diggle for getting his original kid back! (Also, Superman and Lois have two sons at least now) We get to see various families together. Sara, Alex and Kate hanging out in Kara's apartment. Barry and Caitlin. Dinah and Rene. Sara, Ray and Mick. Nate and Ava. They're all watching the news, honouring Oliver.Please ignore the fact that so many other characters like Cisco or Mia don't even get a mention because the actors can't make it to the filming of this episode or whatever.
Anyway, we then cut to a narration by Oliver as we go through space, and apparently the Multiverse still exists -- it's just the CW shows that are merged into one. "In the end, there's a single black infinitude. Then the infinitude found release. And finally the darkness broke, filling it with life, with the multiverse. Every existence multiplied by possibility. And spread out in space and time in infinite measure. Civilizations rose and fell. Life. A precious gift, persevering in the face of every obstacle. until finally the age of heroes was born." As we cut back and forth between various shows and movies based on DC superheroes. A new Earth-2, the new Stargirl show and the Justice Society of America. Earth-12, the god-damn Green Lantern movie. Then more TV shows. Swamp Thing, Titans, Doom Patrol. And Brandon Routh Superman flying into space.
And that's a wrap. It's... it's all right, I guess. Crisis really struggled, even moreso than previous crossover attempts, in juggling way too many actors and characters while also trying its best to homage the comic-book Crisis, insert cameos to various DC live-action shows and also trying to tell a coherent story. In retrospect it's a gigantic clusterfuck, and I really wished that they had the foresight to cover a lot of the buildup regarding the Paragons, the Monitor/Anti-Monitor and multiverse rules in at least Arrow and Flash, the shows that are the biggest ones with a lead-up to the Crisis. Ultimately it's entertaining as all hell, and I did enjoy the madcap rush of superhero material I watched to get here... but at the same time, it's also kind of a huge mess.
Where do I go from here? Well, for starters, it's sure been a huge trip and I feel I'm tapped out on superheroes for a while. I'm not sure if/when I'll catch up with the rest of the CW shows, but I definitely need a break. How I'm going to handle the rest of the shows, or if I'm going to just do mass reviews for some of them, is going to depend on my scheduling for the next couple of months, which look pretty dang busy. We'll see. Still, for all of you reading my reviews of live-action superhero stuff, I do sincerely thank all of you for sticking through this very late, very clunky review series.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Oliver's "in the end, there was only one, a single black infinitude" speech was taken from the original 1996 Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries.
- Marv Wolfman, one of the two writers of Crisis on Infinite Earths, makes a cameo asking for an autograph from Flash and Supergirl. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but both Flash and Supergirl were the biggest-name heroes that Wolfman killed off in Crisis.
- The other co-writer of Crisis, George Perez, is homaged by the location of the fight with the Anti-Monitor, Perez Landing.
- Gardner Pier, meanwhile, is a reference to Gardner Fox, which, while isn't directly involved with Crisis on Infinite Earths, was the person who wrote "Crisis on Two Earths", the first multiversal crossover and the first one who used the term "Crisis" in DC comics.
- The original Crisis on Infinite Earths did end with a rebooted 'one world' universe where every previously different world was combined into an "Earth-Prime", where all of the histories of the disparate characters are folded into the "Post-Crisis" timeline. In the comics, only a specific group of people remember the existence of the multiverse at all (notably the Psycho-Pirate) although here it seems like everyone important gets to remember it thanks to J'onn J'onzz.
- The Arrowverse clearly only merged the CW affiliated shows, though, with the end of the episode showing that the other TV series and movies are still their own thing.
- Mick's suggestion of tossing the Anti-Monitor into the sun and blowing it up is actually how the Anti-Monitor was ultimately defeated in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths comic.
- Even more alternate Earths, as part of the new multiverse:
- A new Earth-2 is home to the upcoming Stargirl show, showing off its roster -- Stargirl, S.T.R.I.P.E., Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman and a female Wildcat, presumably Yolanda Montez -- which is a character that debuted in the 1996 Crisis series. Earth-2 has been traditionally the "JSA universe" in the comics' pre-Crisis timeline.
- Earth-12 is the 2011 Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie.
- Earth-19 is DC streaming service Swamp Thing TV series.
- Earth-9 (Titans) and Earth-96 (Superman Returns) are also restored, and we get more cameos from different Titans characters. Despite being a spinoff of Titans, apparently Doom Patrol is a different Earth, Earth-21.
- Sara Lance was previously retconned out of existence and replaced with John Junior thanks to the events of Flashpoint. This version of a cosmic reboot restores her while still keeps J.J.
- The STAR Labs facility from the Invasion crossover makes a return and is converted into the new JLA base, and the exterior shot establishes that the building is basically an adaptation of the Hall of Justice from the cartoon Challenge of the Super Friends.
- Various incarnations of the Justice League's conference table has had the iconic chairs with each member's logo emblazoned on the back.
- The episode closes on a monkey cage with the name 'Gleek', which is one of the pets in the Super Friends carton, and a variation of the theme plays.
- During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Luthor quotes some of the traditional Superman catchphrases -- "fly faster than a speeding bullet" and "leap tall buildings" specifically.
- They don't appear in this episode, but Felicity is mentioned a couple of times by the Arrow cast, Rory "Ragman" Reagan is alluded to by Rene, and Barry notes how he heard about the Legends' fight with Beebo from Wally "Kid Flash" West.
- Sargon the Sorcerer is the name of several characters in the DC comics. The first Sargon (John Sargent) is a man who came into possession of a mighty Ruby of Life, allowing himself to control most of the things he touches, fighting against mystical enemies and getting honorary membership into the Justice League at one point. He later only made sporadic appearances among DC's other mystics, notably assisting DC's other mystics in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The original Sargon was succeeded by his grandson, David John Sargent, who accidentally stumbled into a fight over demons over the shattered Ruby of Life, and ended up inheriting the remaining powers of his grandfather, guided by the original Sargon's ghost to become a mystical sorcerer. The only villainous version of Sargon is from the New 52 reboot, where a post-humous Sargon was mentioned as having been driven insane with his power
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