Spoilers Crisis on Infinite Earths Discussion (CW Event Spoiler Thread)

Something just occurred to me. Aside from the Paragons, the other main characters only know about the pre-Crisis history and the events of Crisis because J'onn telepathically restored their memories. But what does "restored" mean? Logically, all he could've done was to share his own memories, which would mean they still wouldn't remember anything they did in Crisis -- or earlier in the original timelines -- that J'onn wasn't there to witness. Which would mean the Earth-1 heroes and Black Lightning would have forgotten a lot about their original lives.

I doubt they're going to play it that way, though. They seemed to be treating it as if the people J'onn melded with remember everything -- as if he didn't share his own memories but somehow restored their own overwritten memories of the original history. That makes more sense from a storytelling standpoint, since you can continue drawing on the shows' past histories and don't have to constantly keep track of what parts J'onn J'onzz would or wouldn't have known about. But it raises more questions about how he could've done it.

Well, I guess there's already established Arrowverse precedent for people regaining memories of an erased timeline. Cisco remembered being killed by Thawne after the timeline was changed to bring him back, and later I think he was able to vibe pre-Flashpoint memories, while Savitar and Alchemy were able to use the Philosopher's Stone to restore both the memories and the powers of people who'd been metahumans in the Flashpoint timeline. I guess we can assume that J'onn's Martian powers just happen to include the same ability (which the Arrowverse Wiki calls "parachronal retrocognition" in the article on Julian Albert/Alchemy).

 

#overthinking

 

Another random thought I just had: The Harrison Wells of Earth-1 was murdered and replaced by Thawne a long time ago, so I wondered if the merging of Earths could mean that Earth-Prime now had its own living Wells again. But I went back and checked, and Supergirl: "Worlds Finest" established that Earth-38 had no Wells (or Cisco or Caitlin). So unless Earth-BL had a Wells, Earth-Prime is still Wells-less aside from extradimensional visitors like Nash.

 

Superwoman from the Crime Syndicate has recently, since the beginning of this century, been an amazon dominatrix version of Lois Lane.

Bitsy Tulloch gets a cape.

 

Or Erica Durance does

 

ON Harry's Law, not a comic book universe, a rape victim, felt empowered when she dressed up as Wonder Woman, and crippled men. Harry's law producer David E Kelly, used the Wonder Woman suit from the failed and reviled TV Pilot he made a few years earlier with Kelly from The Orville.



Then there's this...



The stormtrooper outfit is way cooler.

 

Somehow I'm having a lot of out-of-the-blue thoughts about the ramifications of Crisis today. The latest one: When the three worlds merged, then presumably anyone with a doppelganger on one or more of those other worlds was combined with their doppelganger. Now, aside from real-world figures known to exist on two or more of the three worlds (e.g. Beyonce Knowles, Barack Obama, or Dylan Thomas), Elseworlds established the existence of Earth-1 doppelgangers of Alex Danvers and James Olsen (which implies the existence of Earth-1 Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers and possibly Kelly Olsen as well). However, Earth-Prime's Alex doesn't seem any different from Earth-38's Alex aside from some revised memories, and I expect that to be true of all Supergirl characters.

However, there is one more character that has been confirmed to have versions on both Earth-1 and Earth-38:

Batman.

And if Alex is any indication, the mergers seem to favor the Earth-38 version -- and as far as we know, the Earth-38 Batman did not disappear 4 years ago like his Earth-1 counterpart. So what will Kate find when she gets back to Gotham City tomorrow night...?

Hmm.

Well, I doubt Batwoman will go there. But it's a fun thought.


Another thing that just occurred to me... National City is basically Earth-38's Los Angeles, and we know from Legends that LA did exist on Earth-1. So does that mean LA has been completely replaced by National City on Earth-Prime? Or are they geographically distinct enough in location that the two cities coexist now?

 

In the comics the fake cities often exist side by side the real ones they're based on. I have a vague memory of a Superman story where someone comments on how the skylines of New York and Metropolis are similar.

 

Wasn't there a bit about how Metropolis and Gotham have Statues of Truth and Justice respectively, to go with New York's Liberty?

 

Here an odd observation. The quarry where the heroes fought the demons and the Anti-Monitor reminded me of the Anti-Monitor's base where Supergirl and Flash died in the comic.

 

I realized that issue, too. My handwave would be something along the lines of the bit in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where the state of the entire universe could be extrapolated by a detailed analysis of a cupcake, because everything in the universe influences every other thing to some extent. J'onn has the Earth-Prime version of the person whose memory he's restoring in front of him, and he's been to the old Earths-1 and -38, so maybe that's enough for him to make a psychic bridge with the universe-that-was and collect the memories/souls of the old people. Which raises a related question; did the Earth-Primers get the memories of their old selves instead of or in addition to their E-P memories? It'll almost certainly become obvious in tomorrow night's episodes, but at least from Superman not knowing he has two kids, despite being from Earth-Prime, it looks like J'onn might've saved the old versions of the characters from oblivion at the expense of the new ones, but that's getting into a whole discussion of souls, persistence of consciousness, memory versus identity, and other in-depth philosophical issues I'm not equipped to deal with (though it reminds me of a part in the most recent Trek novel, Dead Endless, where a character who can travel through the multiverse is suggested to see everything as being like Plato's world of ideal forms, where alternate versions of individuals were shadows, and they all made up one person who was being expressed differently. Blows my mind to think about the ethics of the multiverse, which is why my working theory is usually more like Teal'c's from SG-1).

 

Oliver created the the universe.

15 billion years later he arranged for the paragons to be returned to approximate doppelgangers, which he had to have arranged to happen without oversite, since he is dead.

The doppelgangers, who are real people with rich lives, are either overwritten and murdered, or put in storage for later, have slightly skew lives from the paragons, and the differences are perplexing.

J'onn shared his memories of the Crisis, with the natives of earth prime, and Wells, who were not there, and might have started thinking that the paragons where loony tunes.

It's immoral for the paragons to sleep with anyone who thinks that they are together with one of paragons, like when Sisko banged mirror Jadzia, gods forbid raise the children of a man they sorta murdered.

 

The Oliverse

 

I was thinking about Jack Kirby's 4th World. The death and rebirth of the gods, facilitating a new wold per cycle.

 

I took the scene that way the first time, but on rewatch, I think Hoechlin's reading of "The boys?" might be more ambiguous. This time, I felt his puzzlement could be more like, "What's the matter with the boys?" than "I have boys now?" I think it may have been more a matter of slightly clumsy writing, playing on the audience's knowledge that he's not supposed to have two sons, than confusion on the character's part.

 

I wonder if other worlds we don't know have also been merged into our new main Earth. Would be kind of funny if the Aquaman from "Entourage" showed up. Hell not just funny but you could maybe even make him a real interesting character. Might be the first time since a fictional character from one movie was brought to life into something else since "Machete."


Jason

 

To my understanding, Metropolis was only New York in the 78 movie.

 

I think you'll find the merger magically favours the version of the city that has been on screen all this time, and not a specific Earth.

 

I mentioned Earth-90 as a possibility before, but with caveats. And most of the other pre-existing DC screen universes are Superman- or Batman-oriented, so they wouldn't really fit on an Earth that has its own current Superman and recent Batman. The only other existing candidate that wouldn't conflict with existing Earth-Prime characters is the '70s Wonder Woman. (I was going to include Shazam/Isis too, but Legends' Zari is loosely based on Isis, and the Arrowverse version of the Isis amulet has far, far more limited powers than the one from the original show, as well as a different origin.)

But that was just a role played by an actor in that show, wasn't it?

It's long been treated as a surrogate for New York in the comics and onscreen. There's a saying that's been attributed to Denny O'Neill, Frank Miller, and maybe others that Metropolis represents the more upscale parts of New York City by day and Gotham is its seedier side by night, or words to that effect. DC generally clusters them close together; the Atlas of the DC Universe put Gotham in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware. Although various other works have put Metropolis elsewhere. It was basically LA in the '50s TV series, because it was filmed there, and Smallville moved it to Kansas so it would be close to the title town. (Although Smallville wasn't established as being in Kansas until the '78 movie. Before then, DC assumed it was much closer to the East Coast, maybe eastern Pennsylvania or something like that, not far from Metropolis. I think the '40s radio series put Clark's unnamed hometown in Iowa.)

Yes, of course, as a rule. But it comes down to what serves the story. There could well be story possibilities in Batman suddenly being around again, though I doubt that fits into the plans of Batwoman's writing staff at the moment.

 

It was so it would be a very meta type of thing to do so it sounds like it would fit in well with Legends of Tomorrow. I think the actor is someone who is someone that the CW could possible get. He was big enough to be in some movies because the show was so popular but as far as I know he still is most know for Vinnie Chase so he isn't exactly a movie star. Of course I would like it just to see Aquaman square off with Killer Shark.


Jason