TV Show of the Week: Crisis on Infinite Earths (Semi Spoiler Free Review)

This may be the biggest crossover even in TV history. If it isn’t, I sincerely want to know what’s bigger, because Crisis on Infinite Earths pulled out all the stops during these five-part episodes.

When Arrow started, Mark Guggenheim’s words were that there weren’t going to be any superpowers in the show. Arrow was going to be a nitty gritty, dark comic book adaptation for TV, almost synonymous to that of Batman. Yeah, those words haven’t aged well. The Flash had its backdoor pilot during Arrow’s season 2, and was successfully picked up, introducing the Arrowverse with meta-humans. Arrow’s and The Flash’s first crossover was simple – two episodes, one each. As the years went on and Legends of Tomorrow had begun airing, the crossovers started getting bigger and bigger. Supergirl wasn’t originally going to be apart of the Arrowverse, but it wasn’t long before crossovers started happening with that show to. From what started as a vision of a realistic superhero show, came a multiverse filled with meta-humans and time travelling people from the future, it’s been one heck of a ride to watch develop.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was teased way back in The Flash’s pilot, and at first stated it’ll happen in 2024, which fans quickly calculated would be the show’s seventh season, when Grant Gustin’s contract was scheduled to run out. It would be a fitting end for the character to go out during the crisis, as did his comic book counterpart did. Even those plans didn’t stay together as it was brought forward to 2019 – a move which was explained in the show as meddling with time, something Barry has done many a times before.

When the crisis finally happened, I was in awe with what they pulled together. 5 shows, Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, and the newly constructed show Batwoman, all coming together for one cataclysmic event. But it wasn’t just the characters from the five shows they brought together, in keeping with the name, Crisis on Infinite Earths, they had to incorporate infinite earths, and they done their very best to capture the scale of the multiverse and who’s living inside. There were some very big cameos, most were already announced, but a couple were truly unexpected and blew everyone’s mind to pieces. They successfully canonised pretty much ever DC property Warner Bros. have within the Arrowverse, mostly via archived footage, but it was the truly unexpected cameos that have original scenes, and they actually interacting the Arrowverse cast members.

I was lost for words whilst watching that five-part event. From something that wasn’t intended to be, gradually built to become one of the biggest TV events of 2019, and as stated, the biggest crossover even in TV history (it surely must be).

The final episode saw Earth 1, which housed Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow, fuse together with Supergirl’s Earth and Black Lightning’s Earth (another show, that, much like Supergirl, wasn’t intended to be apart of the Arrowverse, but during this crisis became an integral member in saving the multiverse. Moving forward all the shows are now on Earth Prime. This undoubtedly opens for a lot more and possibly easier cameos and crossovers in the future.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)