Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths to be 5-Part Crossover

I don't think they ever gave what year the present was in any episode.

Technology was all over the place, as were the car models.

 

I think we saw enough modern technology to pretty easily say it was meant to be the present, just with a lot of retro stuff thrown in.

Yeah, Alexander Siddig was awesome as Ra's Al Ghul.

 

There is absolutely no reason - other than the retro Noir aesthetic - to believe that Gotham wasn't set in the 21st Century.

 

When asked Bruno Heller said

 

It's very much like Batman:TAS in that regard, which I appreciated.

 

Batman TAS was explicitly set in the 90s (which were the "present day" at the time the show aired).

 

B:TAS was following the lead of the Tim Burton Batman movies' retro-modern design mix, which was also emulated by the 1990 The Flash. And Max Headroom was doing a similar kind of retro-futuristic setting a couple of years before Burton did it (e.g. the characters used computer consoles consisting of old-style manual-typewriter keyboards and vintage TV screens).

 

^ Yes, but, as I noted, its chronological setting was the 1990s.

Gotham was visually Noir with an aesthetic modeled on 1970s New York, but offered no actual evidence that its chronological setting was anything other than the 21st Century.

 

I figured even the "modern" stuff was still turn of the century / 2005 model phones abd computers.... Was there anything that was actually BRAND new?

 

According to the Gotham wiki, there was a 2018 Mustang in two 2018 episodes.

 

Proof or Goof?

 

Which I guess still could have been some type of advanced prototype if the show was set in the early 2000s - todays sporty is last years sci fi. (I'm thinking of some Knight Rider iterations in particular.)

 

We have it from the creator's own mouth that the show isn't meant to be set in any fixed, real-world time, which seems to settle the issue. It's a fictitious alternate setting where elements of different eras intermingle, just as the Burton and Radomski/Timm incarnations of Batman were before it.

 

This is the best answer I've read. Between the technology and the intent, Gotham had to be set in the past, and I think the ambiguity was intentional, as others have pointed out. There was nothing on the show too advanced to be 20 years in the past. The point is, it seems that other than Ras Al-Ghul, there is no reason to think that Earth couldn't become the Arrow Earth.

However, it does seem unlikely BECAUSE of the Ras story.

 

The scene. It was more product placement than anything else




I view it as Bruce getting the latest things compared to Gotham citizens because he had money

He’s the future

 

I wonder what role, if any, Lyla Michaels will play in Crisis? Her namesake was a key figure in the comic book.

 

I doubt that will come into play. She's from the era when Arrow wasn't trying to be very close to the comics and so character names got used in very different ways. Generally, the Arrowverse has just let those redefined characters stand rather than trying to retcon them closer to their comics namesakes; for instance, there was no attempt to establish a romance between Teryl Rothery's Jean Loring and Ray Palmer (instead Ray's late wife was called Anna Loring, relation unknown), and no attempt to set up a rivalry between Felicity Smoak and Firestorm.

If anything, it looks like they may be setting up Oliver to play a role similar to the comics' Harbinger.

 

Not specifically about Crisis but in this video interview actor David Ramsey said Layla has a very important role this season. https://www.nerdsandbeyond.com/2019...bute-to-arrow-co-star-stephen-amell-and-more/

If anyone says this show started far removed from its comic book source. It’s worth remembering this show started in a grounded reality like Nolan’s Batman. No superpowered villains, no magic or the supernatural. The show and it Universe it in habits is so far removed from that now. In its final season Oliver Queen exists in a Multiverse with Godlike beings and aliens.

Plus Marv Wolfman who created Harbinger is co writing an episode of the crossover. It’s possible they will explore Lyla connection to her comic namesake. Not at all a sure thing of course.

Let’s not forget John Diggle having any connection to John Stewart, Green Lantern for many years was merely wishful fancasting. That we had no reason to think was ever going to happen until last year. Arrowverse likes to serve fan desires out of left field even if it contracts what has come before, anything is possible,

 

Obviously, but as I said, the record shows that that hasn't made them feel any compulsion to rewrite older Arrow characters to align with their namesakes. Keeping consistent with their own continuity is a higher priority than reflecting the comics' continuity, as it absolutely should be. They use comics elements in ways that serve the world and characters they've built, not in ways that overwrite them.

As I recall from Wolfman's episodes of the Cartoon Network Teen Titans, he's fine with adapting to the show's versions of his characters rather than trying to change them to be like his own. After all, that's what he was hired to do.

I've heard a lot more wishful musing over the years about Diggle being John Stewart than I have about Lyla being Harbinger, given that Harbinger isn't that major a character. I don't recall reading any online comments about the possibility until CoIE was announced last year, and it's only been a few times and along the lines of "Hmm, I wonder if they might do that" rather than "Ooh, I really really hope they do that." So is it really a desire?

 

That Mustang was the in-universe Lincoln Futura.