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

This. When I was a kid I read the golden age origin story of the Spectre. And even though it was pretty simplistic, it still gives me the shivers to this day.

 

Anyway, not that I really doubted it, but the fact that they made a point of having Constantine say that Stephen Lobo's Jim Corrigan was "not the one I know" is further evidence that the Arrowverse producers do consider the Constantine series part of their canon, since they felt the need to explain the discrepancy (something they wouldn't have bothered with if it weren't meant to be the same continuity). Although I wouldn't have minded if they'd just recast the Earth-1 Jim Corrigan, since Emmett Scanlan was truly awful in the role.

 

The CoIE we're going through now is technically the second Crisis event to hit the Arrowverse's Multiverse because of the fact that the Smallville Season 11 comics - which built to and finished with a Crisis - were considered Canonical and taken into account for Earth-167 Clark and Lois' appearance, which makes me want to see somebody who's familiar with those comics figure out how to make them fit with existing Arrowverse Canon and this new Crisis.

 

So somebody on Twitter came up with a bit of speculation so plausible it feels like a spoiler, so I'm going to code it as such:

Spoiler

Remember when Hoechlin-Clark says he always imagined him and Lois having two kids? This person suggested that they will end up adopting Routh-Clark's son Jason after his death. This would allow them to have an older "super son" for the Superman & Lois series without the necessity of aging-up Jon.

 

Interesting idea.

 

Wow, that was pretty condescending , @Christopher . I I re-quoted these, and was absolutely NOT obvious you knew about the comic connection. Zero hint that you ALSO knew about the COMIC version. @Abbey Chrimble seemed to simply want to be HELPFUL, and for those of us NOT acquainted , that info was helpful.

@Christopher , you try to be helpful in a similar way in many of your posts... why not give the courtesy of a simple thank you. No one would look down on you whether or not you already knew the info offered up.

I am not expecting any major changes for Black Lightnin or Batwoman for sure... theyhave been written in a way, it seems to me, that it could fit EITHER pre or post crisis.

Mmmm.. I didn't quite see that. The way I was interpreting things, Alice was still on the loose for several months after the Fall season arc. Batwoman was on her way to finishing that (depending on how their SPring session goes, we might see a resurgence of the Alice gang at the end of the season, maybe leading up to the point of Batwoman getting snatched for Crisis)

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We ALL knew what @Clegg Nog meant. I meant to jump in there in an attempt to be clever and say it was a Mid-Crisis Finale.

Even Clegg clearly knows this is NOT the end. But it IS the last Crisis episode of 2019, and they wiped away ALL Earths, so it IS a sort of "Ending"...

Christopher, why does your definition have to be the ONLY definition? Can you ges

@Christopher , why do you have to be such a fundamentalist about YOUR definition? Can't you just take a minute and read what he is saying. Surely you can UNDERSTAND what he is saying, even if you don't agree with it.

Personally, I totally get it. If Earth 2 and Earth -66 were permanently gone, that would be HUGE. (the latter being a nice goodbye for Burt Ward, the former being a huge permanent impact). But with ALL of them gone, we could also get all of them BACK...and in a way, where no one remembers what happened... and the emotions shared would be meaningless.

We have a couple of episodes to see if there are major changes, a virtual complete reset, or somewhere in the middle.



For me, the miniseries has been a but underwhelming... I mean, I love the cameos, but what we have been given has felt cheap...nit just in terms of effects, which I understand, but in terms of how this all fits together, and if this will be impactful long term or not. we'll see... @TREK_GOD_1 likes to give grades...for me, this is INC for Incomplete, until the last air.

 

For me I want to see changes that will continue to impact the shows even beyond this season. To me they can make some radical changes to the world but keep characters intact with current memories. Like having aliens now being on earth 1 or Lex being president or Krypton still intact. Jason

 

They can make lasting changes to the characters and their lives without rewriting the universe. After all, this has been a very traumatic and mindboggling experience for them -- facing the potential end of all existence, seeing countless people die in front of them. Even if they repair the damage to the multiverse at the end, the emotional scars will remain and will affect the characters' worldviews, relationships, and choices going forward. The larger issues like the status and history of the world are only relevant insofar as they affect the characters anyway.

So that's where the writers will start -- with what story and relationship arcs they want the characters to go through. Any changes to reality will be done in service to that. For instance, say, changing the details of Mia and William's future to set up Green Arrow and the Canaries. Or, say, aging up Jon Kent from infancy so he can be a teenager in Superman and Lois Lane. Or (as I'm hoping) bringing Harry Wells's genius back so he can be the regular Wells on The Flash once again.

On the subject of Krypton, one thought occurs to me:

Spoiler: post-Crisis Supergirl

The first post-Crisis episode of Supergirl is called "The Bottle Episode." Normally that means a budget-saving episode shot on standing sets, but in this context it's easy to guess that it's a reference to the Bottle City of Kandor. But Kandor has never been mentioned to exist in the Fortress of Solitude before. So maybe after the Crisis, the timeline will be changed so that the Bottle City is suddenly there.

 

The second episode of Crisis Aftermath was worth watching just to hear Kevin Conroy sing "Jingle bells, Batman smells" with his Batman voice.

 

That was amazing.

 

Yes.

Hopefully, you are right; Black Lightning and Batwoman rely heavily on the strongest character/history-driven stories of any of the DC/CW series, and as a result, any changes from this COIE would seriously hobble or make wrongheaded course changes all to justify this less than epic crossover. Both series would be better off treating this crossover as some one-off situation that--ultimately--did not do a thing to alter or solve the season-long (or seasons, in Black Lightning's case) problems. Regarding your theory, I don't see Black Lightning being post-crisis, since in that world, Supergirl was a comic/movie character and nothing more. Now, if Jefferson is aware of Kryptonians being more than fantasy, certainly his reactions and/or series would not have treated Supergirl as a mere comic book character.

You ask, but...

But that's almost necessary in order to preserve the established worlds of the far-and-away best, stronger series, namely Black Lightning and Batwoman.

That has been a problem with the majority of Berlanti's productions all along: they are often thinly-plotted, hack-level affairs that occasionally try to be what it never had the "goods" to be: movie level superhero productions. Its clear that three hours in there's not an ounce of substantial plotting, heartfelt character moments--anything of great consequence like the comic version, where a DC comic universe with decades of build up and the perspectives/experiences/history of a wealth of characters and their well-shaped histories was all on the line. One of a kind tension, one of a kind payoff, no matter how relentlessly (and necessarily) dark.

Incomplete is a way of looking at it, but even if you don't compare it to the legendary source, it says much that three of its five total hours have not amounted to much, which means it will all be crammed into the final two in January, which almost guarantees more forced, rushed material...and cameos.

…well, except for James Olsen so far, who was not even respected as a character enough to have as little as a one-shot call (on his sister's side). about his sister's safety. Just that completely throwaway Guardian shield bit.

 

So why do you keep watching them? And that's a serious question. If you think the shows are crap, why do you take hours out of your week to watch them, hours that could be spent watching something you actually like?

 

I liked a few moments in this so far but I don't think the writing or direction was anything special. I loved the Tom Welling scene and Kate and Kara's scenes with future Bruce. Ollie taking down Shadow Demons with a bow and arrow was a bit ridiculous. I thought the Supermen punch on should have had better motivation rather than brainwashing bullshit. I think the crossovers are good when they consolidate the action into a couple of neat scenes, like in Flash vs Arrow or the Arkham assault from Elseworlds, otherwise it looks cheap. I always prefer the scenes when you just have people confronting one another arguing different viewpoints.

 

Just saw crissis 3 episode.
My wife and I liked it, we were only disappointed that Lex replaced Routh at the end because we love Lex in Supergirl in the Crossovers he is more irritating.

And we want more Routh/Superman

 

Well, I can’t speak for anybody else, and since I didn't make the initial comment I know it was addressed to me, however at this point I’m only watching some of the shows to see what this event does to them going forward. As somebody who started out watching most of the CW superhero shows, I’m down to only Flash and Arrow at this point. I absolutely loathe the characters on Supergirl (f’n Brainy...he comes off like a Joseph Gordon Levitt on 3rd Rock imitation), I am completely bored with Legends, Black Lightning lost me early on, and I am pretty unfamiliar with the rest of the side characters (although I adore Ruby Rose as Kate Kane, so I may give Batwoman another go). If fFlash doesn’t get a radical refocus because of Crisis, I’m done with that series. The last two seasons have been pretty uninvolving to me - actually Bloodwork was awful.

There’s a dull sameness to these shows, especially Arrow/Supergirl/Flash. The same template “hero and the team of archetypes.”

So honestly I’m really watching Crisis to see if it lives up to the hype, and to see if it makes enough changes for me to remain interested in these series.

I will miss Arrow tho and will watch the spin off series.

 

I don't remember JGL's character there being anywhere near as theatrical and larger-than-life in his delivery.

 

The similarity is physical as well and my faded memory brings up JGL’s character which I found just as grating. Brainy is just one of the many from SG who just rub me the wrong way. Kara always seemed a more fun character in the crossovers.

I’m more a fan of the “lone hero with civilian supporting cast” kinda format, rather than the team of metas/aliens/secret agency/computer geek format of these shows.

Having said that, I’d still watch a Batman Family show. TAS was perfect.

 

One thing about comics that the Arrowverse captures better than anything else in live action besides the MCU (and maybe the X-Men movies) is the sense of a large hero community. And since it only has a few shows instead of a couple of dozen monthly titles, the way to convey that sense of community is to have multiple heroes per show. I like that aspect of it. Perhaps because I grew up with TV shows and movies where the star superhero was the only superhero in the entire world and the idea of a wider hero community didn't exist at all.

And really, it's just good sense to have backup. Shows where everything relies on a single hero's special ability or a single irreplaceable team are kind of implausible, because there's no fallback plan, no redundancy. It's good sense for heroes like Green Arrow or the Flash or Supergirl to make sure there are others who can carry on the fight if something happens to them.

 

Agreed with this. I feel like I'm at odds with most comics/superhero fans on this point, because the general consensus seems to be, "The more costumes, the better." But to me, that just tends to overcrowd the narrative and take away focus from the characters I'm interested in. IMO, the classic Superman template of just him, Lois, Jimmy, and Perry remains the gold standard for this kind of storytelling.

 

My issue isn't so much a team of heroes, but everyone who knows the hero, knows the identity, which defeats the purpose of the identity.

This is a trend that started with Batman, who in every movie met a pretty girl and told her she was Batman.

On Flash, it seems more people know that Barry is the Flash than don't know. Oliver went public.

Why aren't evil people going around killing anyone who Oliver is friends with?

Supergirl has told more people that Clark is Superman than Clark did.

The circle of who knows must be kept small, and that's where I think these shows go wrong.

The only people that should know Superman is Clark are other heroes that we know are impeccable, and Lois. I think that only Alex should know about Kara, not all her coworkers.