Arrow S08E10 Review: I Am Oliver Queen

Arrow, Season 8, Episode 10: Fadeout

After eight seasons, many villains and many questionable decisions, after many ups and downs, Arrow is finally over with this episode -- and standing at 117 episodes long, make no mistake... Arrow's not a great show. Its quality wavers and is very inconsistent, and there sure are several low points in its run, including an insistence on prioritizing plot twists and original characters at times. But despite all that... you don't spend eight years following a show without developing a huge amount of love for Oliver Queen and the rest of the eclectic cast of this show. It has gone... a long, long way since the very first season, where Arrow started off as a well-executed but relatively bland "dark n' edgy" superhero adaptation was a poor man's Batman. And honestly, I'll go on record on saying that as much as the showmakers tried, Oliver's death during Crisis was bogged down by trying to make it as huge and cosmically large yet also making it kind of abrupt and nowhere the huge culmination of character history that I had expected.

And "Fadeout" is... it's more of a memorial to both the character and the show more than anything, but after the funeral scene in Crisis on Infinite Earths and a couple of extra scenes last episode with Mia talking about legacy and stuff. And after season eight has been all about what Oliver Queen has learned and what Oliver Queen meant to everyone, it's kind of hard to really think of anything new. Not that the show didn't try, mind you. The deliveries that Quentin and Diggle and Laurel and Sara and Felicity had as part of their respective eulogies are amazing and will bring a tear to the side of your eyes... but at the same time, it just feels like 'the last episode' instead of the huge, far more impactful endings of Oliver's actual death, or the end of Arrow's seventh season. It's a necessary episode, but one that feels like it's going through the motions. (And part of it might be because I personally don't find Oliver's death in Crisis to be super-emotional or narratively-driven either).

It's just that the episode itself felt very, very safe. Again, it's pretty emotional, but at this point it's honestly nothing we haven't seen before even in this season of Arrow. It's a sufficient enough of a goodbye. We even have a flashback for good times' sake, this time centering around some random member of Oliver Queen's list, and it's apparently the point where John Diggle manages to convince Oliver to not kill and actually spare some of the people on his list and give them the chance to change. And random list-man doesn't change, and goes off to kidnap William in 2020, but at least Oliver gave him the chance to change, and it's his fault that he doesn't change. Or something.

There's an attempt to tie this to Mia Queen, which is actually pretty effective. Sara brings Mia back from 2040 into this episode, and coincidentally enough it's the Mia that's right after the events of the previous episode where she just saw William-of-2040 get kidnapped, and now she gets to help out William-of-2020 when he gets kidnapped. That's kind of a neat parallel. We get to see Mia interact with Felicity, with all of the glorious awkwardness that Felicity has, which is neat. We also get cameos from practically every member of Team Arrow, even freaking Ragman shows up with his rag powers! I genuinely forgot he existed in the Arrowverse!

It all basically boils down to Mia being inspired to finally take over the mantle as the new Green Arrow, and William being rescued and the whole "Oliver Queen was the first and he inspired us all" speech as they unveiled the statue. It's pretty cool, but at the same time also nothing we haven't heard before on this show.

There is also a rapid-fire attempt to really lay down the law about just what has changed in Oliver's new rebooted universe. Oliver saves Moira from Slade in Earth-Prime's version of season two. Tommy Merlyn manages to survive eight seasons of Arrow, marry Laurel somewhere down the line, and also Laurel-Prime also dies because Oliver can't fix everything*? Quentin also lives through eight seasons, yay! Not-Laurel is still around, despite Earth-2 being gone. Emiko shows up and reaches out to Thea and Moira at the end of this episode. Oh, and Roy and Thea finally shack it up and get together this episode. It's the sort of epilogue that sort of check-lists the endings for everyone, y'know? Oh, John and family goes off to Metropolis, but not before stumbling upon a Green Lantern ring, Rene becomes mayor or something, blah blah blah.

*Trying to think too hard about the changes that Oliver may have made or may not have made is going down a dangerous rabbit hole, and I don't like the implication that Oliver is personally responsible for all of the changes in Earth-Prime. 

We also have the tie-in to season seven's final scene, where the Monitor brings Felicity to... heaven or something, I guess, where heaven is apparently Oliver and Felicity hanging out in a facsimile of Queen Consolidated where they can be happy forever in heaven-land. It's a pretty satisfying conclusion in that regard, I suppose, even if, like everything else, it's an expected conclusion.

And... and that's it for Arrow, ending not quite with a bang, but certainly not with a whimper. While the show has certainly been a bit too long for its own good, Oliver Queen has grown as a character so long that watching his journey has been pretty fascinating, seeing him go from a borderline-psychotic vigilante to a proud leader of a team to finally a true hero who's truly motivated by justice and love. And... and in that regard, eight seasons of Arrow does really manage to turn Oliver Queen into someone else, into something else.  

Oh, yeah, and John Diggle found the goddamn Green Lantern ring at the end. I mean, sure, it's like on a weird glasses box instead of the dead corpse of Abin Sur, and... I dunno, I really do wish this is the crossover that we didn't get and yet I really want, instead of the random future cast? Boo.

Anyway... thank you for all of the action and all of the drama, Arrow. It's been a ride.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• John Diggle's final scene is finding a mysterious green object that fell from the sky, obviously alluding to the long-awaited fan theory that John Diggle is actually John Stewart, a.k.a. Green Lantern IV. This has been fueled many times in CW's history with John Diggle's stepfather being called Stewart, and Barry Allen of Earth-90 alluding to the fact that his Earth's John Diggle has a ring. Hooray for Green Lantern!
• Slade's appearance in the altered timeline isn't actually newly-shot footage for this season, it makes use of unused deleted footage in season two as part of a "what if" dream scenario where Oliver beat Slade and prevented Moira's death.
• The following former main cast members make a return in this episode, after being absent or only making single-episode appearances in season 8: Felicity Smoak, Moira Queen, Roy Harper/Arsenal, Thea Queen/Speedy, Quentin Lance, Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific, Tommy Merlyn, Emiko Adachi, present-day William, Nyssa al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, Anatoly Knyazev and Rory Reagan/Ragman. In addition, Sara Lance, Barry Allen and Kara Danvers show up from their respective shows. 
• Showrunner Marc Guggenheim makes a cameo during the unveiling of the statue, standing behind Felicity and Dinah.

Arrow S08E09 Review: Actually A Prequel

Arrow, Season 8, Episode 9: Green Arrow and the Canaries

So, yeah, it's been a while since I reviewed Crisis on Infinite Earths, and even longer since it actually aired. And after Crisis, there are two extra episodes of Arrow that aired to close out the season. And... and let's just put it mildly -- the huge conclusion that Arrow's eighth season was building up to? A huge climactic death for their flagship character, Oliver Queen? It's... it's not very satisfying, narratively speaking, and while Crisis is a triumph as far as being a huge epic crossover goes, as an actual cohesive story -- and, more importantly, as a conclusion to Oliver Queen's story, it's not that great. We do have two more episodes to properly send off good ol' Oliver Queen, and it's just as well that the rest of season eight has been basically a huge "bye-bye" to Ollie, because this episode is... well, it's basically a backdoor pilot for the upcoming "Green Arrow and the Canaries" TV show, a.k.a. Star City 2040, a.k.a. the least interesting part of the Arrowverse. I do think that they do have a bunch of great actors on their hands, but I just really don't care about the characters or the setting at all.

I do find that the episode at least tries to answer a bunch of questions -- like the first post-Crisis episodes of Supergirl and Flash, we get some answers about just how life after Oliver Queen remade the universe ended up being. And it basically meant that Oliver retconned all of the bad stuff that happened across Arrow seasons one through seven, but it doesn't make things too different, or something. Apparently being the Spectre doesn't give Oliver omnipotent power, though, because in 2040, the Deathstroke gang is still there, and at this point I have kind of given up really caring? They're quite literally a bunch of fakers trying to ride the wave of a cool villain with absolutely nothing that made Deathstroke cool in the first place.

The plotline is basically what you expect from a backdoor pilot, bringing in a bunch of characters -- Laurel II is here (I think she time-traveled?) and recruits Dinah and Mia into the cause of preventing a bad future, and restores Mia's memory and she angsts and grapples with the oh-so-eyeroll-inducing angst of "oh no, my fiance in this current life is actually a psychotic murderer in the old Earth-1", because in Earth-Prime, J.J. is shacking up with Mia and Connor is a relapsing criminal or something. But... I just have so little attachment to any of these characters except for Mia, so all you get from me is a shrug for all of the huge TRUST!!! drama that this episode asks me to invest in.

Oh, and there's someone going around kidnapping Bianca Bertinelli, and that's the plot of the week. Turns out it's some random dude, who pretends to be yet another Deathstroke poser, and it's not J.J., but then some other random dude kidnaps William and also restores J.J.'s Earth-Prime memories. And... I dunno, the concept is decent on paper I guess, and the execution is decently done with all the action scenes and acting and all, but it's all just so dry. That said, though, it has been one of my biggest complaints throughout season 7 and 8 that none of the Star City 2040 characters feel interesting or fleshed out, and to ask me to be interested about this new alternate-earth-rebooted version of them without me even caring for much of their original-earth version doesn't really work. Still, at least the trio of Mia, Laurel-II and Dinah are decent leads?


Anyway, I don't doubt I'll probably watch the Arrow-and-the-Canaries sequel at some point down the line, but it's certainly waaaay down the list of shows I'm interested to watch, and this backdoor pilot certainly doesn't really sell the show to me. It's not terrible, and I'm sure people are going to like it, but I dunno. All this episode earned from me is kind of a shrug. I'm sorry.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Bertinellis are, of course, the family of the superheroine Huntress, a.k.a. Helena Bertinelli. Huntress hasn't really been seen since the first season of Arrow, but apparently her family survives all the way to 2040.  
• Dinah working in a bar and being a singer is a well-known part of the comic book's Black Canary. 

Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 5 [Legends of Tomorrow S05E01] Review: What Had Been Many, Became One

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.

Oh yeah and a Shadow Demon randomly shows up to murder them, and we get a badass slow-motion zippy-spin thing. Sara and Barry quickly figure out that the Shadow Demons are hunting the Paragons down... and oh no, Ryan Choi! Powerless Ryan Choi, who is still just a regular dude protecting his baby from ripoff Dementors. The superheroes save Ryan, then they discuss the Anti-Monitor problem... Oliver-Spectre stopped the destruction of the multiverse, but didn't kill the Anti-Monitor. Mick just wants to lob the fool into the sun, while Sara is very confrontational with the fact that Nash is still hanging out with them. Ryan's huge contribution is being a science-bro with Ray, deciding to use a perpetually shrinking chain reaction to send the Anti-Monitor into the Microverse.

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.

Before we cut to Earth-Prime and a group of superheroes gathering in the warehouse that they used as a base during the Dominator invasion. Flash, Supergirl, White Canary, Martian Manhunter, Batwoman, Black Lightning and Superman. They are honouring Oliver's costume and a flame that they set alight... and we get a speech from Barry and Sara. Barry notes how Oliver believed in him even when he didn't, bringing the best in all of them. Sara thanks Oliver for always being there for her... and then we cut to Jeff just sort of wanting to be included and going "he must've been a good dude". Whatever the case, though, this basically leads to the new Earth-Prime heroes deciding to found a group of heroes, with chairs and emblems around a central meeting table... a Justice League in all but name. Again, for all the problems I do have with the pacing of this crossover, I do love that it eventually ended with the founding of the Justice League formed out of most of the most prominent superheroes in the Arrowverse, and the final shot of the Crisis is panning out of the Hall of Justice.

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

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.

Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 3 [The Flash S06E09] Review: Nothing Will Ever Be The Same

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.

Anyway... bad main writing aside, we get some neat little hints of the smaller conflicts that happen in this episode, which at least is done well. We get the revelation that Batwoman's stolen Evil Old Mean Bruce's Kryptonite gauntlet, which is pretty on-brand for any Bat-related character to do. Also, the Monitor gets to talk to Cisco, who's very unimpressed about anything Mar Novu's doing. I guess the writers realize that Cisco not having powers is kind of a stupid plot twist that sort of came out of nowhere just for angsty reasons last season, so the Monitor randomly restores Cisco's powers and reverts him back to Vibe against his consent. Cisco mocks Monitor's "voluminous mutton chops" (which got a huge laugh out of me) before heading off to Central City to find the source of the Anti-Matter waves. Also, despite being the freaking fastest man alive, Barry decides to send Iris to find Ryan Choi and bring him to the Waverider. Like, okay, it's nice that the show gives Iris something to do, but the world is ending and they need these Paragons or whatever, maybe actually make use of your super-speed, Mr. Flash?

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:

• 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.