It's time for the biggest crossover event that the
Arrow universe could come up with and while in years past, I would've reviewed the whole thing together, this time around, it's an event that has five episodes, spanning two months, so here's a review of the first three hours of
Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Written by Robert Rovner & Marc Guggenheim & Derek Simon & Jay Faerber & Don Whitehead & Holly Henderson & Lauren Certo & Sterling Gates & Eric Wallace
Directed by Jesse Warn & Laura Belsey & David McWhirter
Anti-Monitor: "It is time to end the age of heroes and everything you hold close."
In last year's crossover event,
Elseworlds, we knew this moment was coming and it's certainly been prepared for with the latest seasons of two of the shows in question. As we kick things off in the
Supergirl side of things, worlds are being destroyed and Kara herself can do nothing to save her mother, Alura (Erica Durance) as Argo City is one of the first worlds to perish but the use of Lyla/Harbinger (Audrey Marie Anderson) does however mean that most of our players are not perishing as Kara is soon reunited with Superman, Lois Lane, Green Arrow, Mia Smoak, Sara Lance, Batwoman, The Flash and The Atom and in this first part, there's a mixture of recon with some of the group, getting Jonathan Kent back from Earth 16 in 20148 where Sara briefly reunited with an older Oliver while in the present day, our Oliver ended up a casualty.
Now this early in the game seemed a little too quick to have Oliver killed off and needless to say once we move into the
Batwoman segment of things, this was something that wasn't going to stick. I did like Sara voicing concerns about bringing Oliver back from the dead even Mia wasn't so keen on listening to then. Then again, the second part did give us an interesting team up of Sara, Mia, Barry and Constantine as they managed to bring Oliver back from the dead but it took striking a deal with a certain someone in
The Flash side of things and Diggle reaching out to his "brother" in order to get Oliver back on side. Of course the biggest highlight in the second part of this installment was Iris, Lois and Clark trying to stop Lex Luthor's (Jon Cryer) one man mission to kill as many versions of Superman as he could by setting the Earth 96 version of the character (Brandon Routh) onto our Clark before Iris and Lois managed to get one over on Lex. Having Routh get to play a role he played over a decade ago was great for the second and third parts of this crossover event. It's like he never left the role to begin with.
However while I was happy to see another Superman in the mix, the only Batman we got was in Earth 99 and had become a homicidal maniac that died a rather anticlimactic death to boot. On the plus side, he was played by Kevin Conroy who made the most of his limited screentime and aside from Ruby Rose, at least Cadmus Johnson was the only other member of
Batwoman to appear in this episode, albeit as a more nihilistic and somewhat off putting version of Luke Fox. I did like the scenes that Kate had in these episodes with both Bruce and Kara and the fact that the she was getting her head around the bigger universal threats beyond Gotham.
An ongoing theme in the episodes was the fact that they are seven Paragons out there that are able to stop the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and throughout the episodes we learned that Supergirl represented hope, Batwoman courage, Sara destiny, Earth 96 Superman truth, Martian Manhunter honor, The Flash love while newly added into the mix, pre second Atom Ryan Choi (Osiric Chau) of course would represent humanity. Of course as a new father/husband, Ryan was somewhat reluctant to embrace his destiny until Iris was able to reach out to him and Ryan jumped onto the Waverider along with everyone else as the Anti-Monitor and Pariah (Tom Cavanagh) brought things to a rather interesting standstill.
By the end of this episode, it seemed that Oliver was about to become the new Spectre after the previous one, Jim Corrigan (Stephen Lobo) while Earth 90 Flash (JohnWesley Shipp) made a noble sacrifice to help save this Earth, along the arrival of Black Lightning in the third hour also helped matters to boot. It might have taken three seasons but it seems that Jefferson is now a part of this universe, even if he has lost his wife and daughters in the mix. I do get the feeling though that in the next two hours, both Jefferson and Kara are going to find their Earths merged in with Earth 1, assuming that all the deaths on the Waverider are of course reversed and can we talk about Lex Luthor replacing Earth 96 Superman so he could be a Paragon? Damn, that fella will do anything for attention.
- Okay cameos and there were a lot of them in these three hours, so let's break them down.
- Earth 9: Titans with both Curran Walters and Alan Ritchson appearing as Robin II and Hawk, then Earth 66 had Burt Ward as himself while Earth 89 had Robert Wuhl as a Gotham City citizen.
- Earth X saw a brief appearance of The Ray while Earth 75 showed us Lois grieving over a dead Superman.
- Earth 76 only gave us Mick but also a voice cameo from Wentworth Miller as the Waverider's Leo Snart.
- Earth 167 gave us Tom Welling as a retired/non powered Clark Kent and Erica Durance's Lois Lane as they both have daughters, live on the farm and Lex was not impressed with Clark being normal now.
- Earth 203 briefly gave Huntress (Ashley Scott) with a voice cameo from Dina Meyer's Oracle while Earth 666 also gave us Lucifer (Tom Ellis), who flirted with Constantine and Earth 18 also gave us a more sleazier version of Jonah Hex (Johnathon Schaech). We also got an appearance from Wil Wheaton on Earth 38 and Griffin Newman on Earth 1. I think that covers everything.
- Basically shows/movies such as
Batman (1989), Smallville, Birds Of Prey, Lucifer, Superman Returns and
Titans are now sort of a part of this universe.
Crisis On Infinite Earths has gotten off to a flying start and while this is the most ambitious and fan service driven event yet, there's definitely a sense of things being set up for the future (Mia's spin-off for a start) and the end of an era for other things. I loved so many moments, it's impossible to highlight them all and I certainly gasped at certain parts too. It's going to be a long wait for the remaining two parts of this event but I don't doubt it will be worth it though.
Rating: 9 out of 10
