@eggrollko
After a long month of waiting, we finally got the conclusion to Crisis on Infinite Earths and what a conclusion it was. While these final two episodes were the only two of the five episode crossover to air back to back, yet they were the ones that felt the most distinct from the rest, at times in a jarring way.
We should probably begin with the enormous elephant in the room, largest Easter egg to date in a crossover that’s been loaded with them: Ezra Miller‘s Flash from the cinematic DCEU, which now ties in nearly every single iteration of live-action DC properties in recent history. It was an amazing moment and image in an otherwise extraordinarily awkward scene.
This scene occurred in the Speed Force, which Oliver (now the Spectre, played by Stephen Amell) informed the team would be the only way to escape The Vanishing Point after being left stranded there just before the destruction of the multiverse. Barry (Grant Gustin) travels through memories of the various crossovers over the years in the Speed Force to carry his fellow paragons to the dawn of time, represented by a rather underwhelming barren quarry with a green hue.
This led to an almost equally underwhelming fight between the paragons and the shadow demons with some cringe-worthy quips at the dawn of time opposite an actually epic fight between an Obi Wan-esque Oliver Queen aka The Spectre (the only disappointing part was that, while they were surrounded by flame, Oliver didn’t bust out a dinosaur like the cover of The Spectre #29).
As Oliver defeats the Anti-Monitor, he makes sure to let the Anti-Monitor know that he has failed this universe before he shoots out a burst of energy to rebirth the Multiverse. This is followed by the paragons awkwardly staring up at the sky intently, “fanning the flames” after Oliver lit the spark. It ends with Oliver’s final death after defeating the Anti-Monitor as the paragons witness the birth of a new Multiverse.
Although I’ve mocked a lot about this episode and described it as underwhelming, that’s based on the scale of what they were going for, and how constrained it seemed by being set in a TV budget. This was a good episode of a TV crossover of relatively good shows that was attempting to do something that would almost unarguably have been more epic than even Avengers: Endgame. This wasn’t just time travel, this was a fight at the dawn of time after the destruction of the multiverse with the goal of birthing a new one. It’s hard to imagine any network TV show having the budget to do a fight on that scale justice, but overall this was good for what it was.
The final episode of this crossover was an introduction to the new universe of Earth-Prime, which includes the entire Arrowverse on one Earth and a fun fight with a giant Beebo, a final tribute to Oliver Queen, who birthed both the previous universe and this one, one last stand against the Anti-Monitor to save the new world that they’ve just rebuilt, and the establishment of a base of operations for the group of heroes of Earth-Prime, aka the birth of the Justice League.
All of that stuff was great, although it was a little disappointing not to show some supremely important moments, like the reunion of Barry and Iris. The fight with the giant Anti-Monitor was especially fun, especially the solution of putting him a state of permanent shrinkage which I found absolutely brilliant.
All in all, while the conclusion to Crisis was underwhelming given the scale of what they were trying to accomplish it was still a good, satisfying conclusion to another excellent crossover.
Ep. 4: 4/5 Antimatter Bibles
Ep. 5: 4.25/5
Crisis on Infinite Earths: 4.5/5
-Kevin Palma