Previously on Crisis on Infinite Earths, antimatter destroyed everything except the seven Paragons, who noped out to the Vanishing Point, and Oliver, who was hanging out in Purgatory (not the one in the Ghost River Triangle) with a being called Spectre. The last we left our heroes, Lex had changed the Book of Destiny to replace the real Paragon of Truth with the biggest liar of them all: himself.

Even though it feels like it has been ten thousand years since the last episode of the CRISIS, we start this episode ten thousand years ago, on Planet Maltus, where a younger, happier-looking Novu kisses his wife and tries out a temporal jump they’ve been sciencing. He ends up at the dawn of time, where he accidentally caused a breath to the anti-universe, where anti-matter is afoot and the Anti-Monitor is there.

At the Vanishing Point, it becomes clear by Ryan’s facial hair that they’ve been stuck there for months. I’m a little confused as to how he and the other humans are still alive, since obviously time is moving if he has a beard now, so his body is still doing things, but maybe there’s a Vanishing Garden somewhere. Then again Lex doesn’t have a longer beard so who knows what’s going on. He writes a letter to his dead wife, saying that things are looking bleak. The Paragon of Destiny doesn’t believe in tomorrow. The Paragon of Courage trains day in and day out for a battle that might never come. The Paragon of Honor meditates. A lot. And the Paragon of Hope seems to have lost hers.

He calls Lex a douche, which is a delight, and apparently the Paragon of Love has up and disappeared. Because love is a lie.

Eventually, Lex and Ryan work together to create a transporter of sorts, meaning they have a chance go get out of here.

Kara flatly says that Lex should be the one to test it. It’s a perfect moment because sometimes even the most hopeful, the most positive, the kindest, can reach their limits with someone and no longer have the energy to even feign politeness.

Kara is determined to get the people they lost back, and just for a moment, that little flame of hope seems to spark behind her eyes.

The machine whirls and pops, but Lex unfortunately isn’t immediately replaced by his sister or anyone more useful than him. However, unrelated, The Flash barrels in, and when everyone demands to know where he’s been for months, he insists he’s been gone for like two minutes. But time means nothing anyway, because he can’t access the Speed Force, which means he can’t undo this. There’s no way out.

Over on the post-death version of Lian-Yu, Spectre is giving Oliver all of his powers and showing him how his life lead up to this moment. He tells SpectrOliver that it’s almost time for the ultimate fight, and that it’s time to find his friends. Which is something it has taken Oliver 900 episodes to realize, and honestly I think he still needs it told to him: he needs help, and it’s okay to ask for it, and accept it.

Back at the Vanishing Point, Barry is zooming around, angry, Kara and Sara holding him back, knowing they can stop him by force if they have to.

But Oliver shows up and tells them that the Speed Force is the key and that the Paragons have to use it to stop the Anti-Monitor.

They’re surprised to see him but he explains that he’s not quite Oliver. He says he’s something… more. Which is what he’s been saying he needs to become in his intro for quite some time now, so I suppose this was always going to happen. He says they have to go to the dawn of time to fight, and gives them their mission. He sends Kara, Ryan, and Lex to Maltus to try to stop the Monitor from making the breach in the first place, and boops Barry to give him (and thus, the rest of the team) access to the Speed Force again.

Barry Flashes into the Speed Force but finds himself knocked off course and face to face with a version of Oliver who is at Queen Consolidated. Oliver explains that the Anti-Monitor attacked and scattered his friends throughout the Speed Force, and that he’s going to have to go back through important moments in the Arrowverse timeline to find them.

On his way, Barry runs into another Barry Allen… and it’s the Barry Allen from the Justice League movie. Which, after the wee bit of controversy that surrounded the DC Universe when it was clear they weren’t doing a Marvel and using the same characters in their movies as their TV shows, was pretty delightful. (Also implies the existence of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, just saying.)

Up (over?) on Maltus, Lex fucks off almost as soon as he lands on Earth, much to Kara’s chagrin. Kara finds him and fights with him; he’s so convinced that brain will beat brawn, but what he doesn’t realize is that she’s not brawn at all. She’s heart.

He goads her into asking what he wants and he goes full Pinky and the Brain and says that he wants to take over the universe. Oh, also? When he was fiddling with the Book of Destiny, he gave himself powers. Even though part of his whole deal is that he hates that some people are naturally more powerful than others but whatever.

Lex ends up using these powers to knock Kara and Ryan out and in case you forgot he’s a sociopath, he whistles while he walks away from their unconscious bodies.

Ryan wakes up first, I would assume because Kara needed to RELAX and the only way she was able to do so was to be knocked clean out, but as soon as he wakes her and she scans him for permanent damage, they’re off. Ryan doesn’t feel much like a Paragon (even though he somehow survived a blast strong enough to knock out a Kryptonian), but Kara reassures him that the fact that he’s even there, willing to help, means he’s special.

He calls her the Paragon of Pep Talks and calls Lex a “selfish asshat” and frankly I like him and wouldn’t hate it if he stuck around post-Crisis. On any of the shows. Kara agrees and then tells him to get ready to fly.

Then.

She says.

UP. UP. AND AWAY.

Say what you want about this Monitor/Anti-Monitor stuff (What I’ll say is: it’s boring and I don’t care about it) but moments like this are what my nerdy, cheese-loving heart LIVES FOR.

Meanwhile, Barry is zip-zapping around the Speed Force and starts collecting friends from different points in Arrow. He eventually finds Oliver in last year’s crossover memories, and Oliver tells him about the deal he made to save Kara and Barry. He tells them that dying is easy, dying is peace, but it’s the people who have to keep going, keep fighting, who are the real heroes. In other words, “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”

Barry ends up back at one of the times Sara died, dressed as the Black Canary, Laurel and Diggle standing over her. Barry zaps Sara awake and doesn’t even let the sisters, whose current experience is that the other is dead, hug for ONE SECOND before whooshing her away again.

On Maltus, Lex goes to find the Monitor and tries to offer him knowledge of the future in exchange for abilities he will come to possess. But as he’s explaining the Crisis to Novu, Kara shows up to spoil his fun.

While those two fight, Ryan talks to Novu and talks him down from doing this thing that will surely destroy the universe. His calm and reasonable nature sways Novu, who calls him remarkable.

Meanwhile, Kara is telling Lex all the things he’s done to piss her off, but the thing she says the loudest and the angriest is, “You betrayed Lena.”

But before their fight can go too far, The Flash Train comes to pick them up and takes them to meet up with the rest of the Paragons at the dawn of time, in the anti-matter universe.

The Anti-Monitor chuckles at their attempt to stop him, because even though they stopped this Monitor, one will still come. So instead, at SpectrOliver’s command, they fight.

So the heroes all join forces; even Lex, because he values his own life above all else. While the Paragons take on the shadow demons, Oliver takes on the Anti-Monitor, blasting all the dementors away with one beam and his catchphrase (but Crisisified): You have failed this universe.

Realizing Oliver still needs their help, Kara tells them to all focus on their Paragon qualities and Care Bear stare at the Anti-Monitor.

After the Anti-Monitor is gone, Barry flashes him and Sara up to Oliver’s side, where they have to say goodbye again. It’s another speech that’s bigger than the events of this episode. It’s not just Oliver saying goodbye to his old buds Sara and Barry. It’s not even just Stephen Amell saying goodbye to Caity and Grant. It’s Arrow telling Legends of Tomorrow and The Flash to keep going; the world still needs them. Both of them. It was a mentor saying goodbye to his colleagues, a man saying goodbye to his friends, a show saying goodbye to its spinoffs. Arrow walked so The Flash could run. So Legends could fly.

Oliver tells them to look up, and through their tears they see a new universe forming. An end and a beginning.

And thus ends Part 4 of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Arrow Hour, the Darkest Timeline.

PAGE TWO: PART FIVE! 

Part 5 of the CRISIS is the Legends of Tomorrow hour and you can tell almost immediately. Kara wakes up in her brightly lit apartment, glasses askew, and almost laser-beams her unflinching sister to death.

Kara remembers being a Paragon and the multiverse ending, but Alex doesn’t. She thinks it’s because Kara fought a white martian last night. As Kara pulls up the news story about it, Alex says she has to go meet up with Kelly, and it’s soon becoming clear that Kara was launched into a timeline that’s similar to the one she left pre-Crisis, but not quite the same.

Before Alex leaves Kara looks at her sister and tells her she loves her. Alex thinks her sister is being a little weird but returns the sentiment without hesitation. The Danvers Sisters are reunited, this world can’t be all bad, right?

But then Nia calls Kara, who is saving a spot for her at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, which seems like significantly less of a to-do than in the original timeline when Kara won it, but that’s fine by me because in this timeline, the winner is Lex Luthor. Much to Kara’s horror, Nia stands up and claps and expresses gratitude that the prize went to a deserving man.

Lex gives a speech about having no powers but dedicating his life to fighting for humanity and winks at Kara, implying he knows damn well that this timeline is broken.

Kara suits up and stomps around the DEO, mad as hell. Alex has nothing but nice things to say about the big boss (because the DEO is a LuthorCorp subsidiary) and even says he’s Supergirl’s #1 supporter — well, #2 next to Lena.

And here are my questions: if this is the timeline we keep forever, what even is Lena doing? Since LuthorCorp isn’t L Corp but she’s still in National City, clearly? Also, is this a cop-out for healing Lena and Kara’s relationship on-screen? Or is Kara going to have to come out to her AGAIN? Is Lex really going to be around more? Did Lena go through the trauma of killing her own brother for nothing? I just feel like Kara needs to get her hands on the Book of Destiny and fix a few things is all I’m saying.

Anyway, J’onn shows up and he remembers too, so it seems just the Paragons retained their memories. Alex says a report came in so Supergirl flies downtown to punch something.

Kara finds a beautiful woman with a staff of power that for a second seems like it could be Nico Minoru but then when you remember she’s Marvel not DC, you realize it’s the Weather Witch.

Kara doesn’t recognize her, but is ready for a fight, until Barry runs in and takes her out, apologizing, saying she’s from his show. Kara asks what he’s doing on her Earth, but he thought she was on HIS earth, and they’re confused until an old man (a cameo by Marv Wolfman, co-creator of the comic book version of the Crisis on Infinite Earths) says he loves when they team up and asks them to sign a photo of when they’ve done it before. They’re confused but kind of excited that it seems like their timelines converged on the same Earth.

Elsewhere on this same Earth, Sara is wandering around, also confused.

She finds Ray in the bar she was at when she got picked up for the Crisis, but J’onn shows up and explains everything, even giving Ray all the memories he needs to be up to speed. Sara says that if everyone else is back, maybe Oliver is too, and despite J’onn’s warnings, she runs off to Star City to find him.

But all she finds is a very sad Diggle and Co. Diggle hates that Oliver died twice and he wasn’t there either time, but Sara reassures him that Oliver knew he cared about him, Oliver loved him like a brother right back. Sara has been hanging out with Kara enough that she still has a sliver of hope that Oliver could still be alive, but Felicity ran a global search; he’s gone. Sara is so, so sad.

J’onn’s next stop on his Memory Restore Tour is Central City, where he updates Caitlin and Nash Wells. Wells feels rightfully guilty about causing all this, but there’s nothing he can do about that now.

Barry and Kara are actually pretty excited that it seems like everyone is here on one Earth, in one universe, everyone brought back to life, but Sara says Oliver is still gone. The puppies don’t understand; but everything seemed better? How can Oliver still be gone?

Diggle suggests that maybe it was the only way, that his sacrifice is the only reason things seem relatively okay now. But before they can ruminate on it further, they hear a loud furry stomping outside. And at first, I was afraid it was Grodd, the gorilla who has been terrorizing CW shows for years now, but it was way, way better than that. It was a giant Beebo.

Everyone is mostly confused but Sara is not so she springs into action, calling her girlfriend, who accuses Team SuperFlArrow of kidnapping her for the crossover they specifically said they weren’t doing anymore.

Ava says that this Beebo isn’t made of totems like the last one, and Sara tells Ava to keep the team on the Waverider, but Mick is already down there, doing an autograph signing for his romance novels.

Kara and Barry aren’t sure what to do, never having encountered a giant, bumbling children’s toy, so they let Sara take the lead.

Sara immediately shifts into Captain mode, giving Kara, Barry and Ray their orders, which they don’t hesitate to take. They try to trip Beebo, and he weebles and he wobbles but he won’t fall down. Batwoman drops in to help and Kara gets so fucking GIDDY to learn that Kate is on this Earth, too.

They quickly realize Beebo is a distraction and pivot to find a bank robber, who they easily take down and then settle in for some celebration champs.

Realizing she’s not drinking with the rest of them, Barry goes and finds Sara outside reminiscing about her childhood. Sara tells him about a tree that her and Laurel used to race up, and how in retrospect she thinks Laurel always let her win because Sara was such a sore loser. Despite all that’s changed, she feels like a sore loser again now, because even though so much is better, Oliver is still gone. He was the last tether to her old life, the last person who knew her Before. Before Lian Yu, before the League of Assassins, before the Black Canary, before the White Canary, before Captain of the Legends. Before it all.

But Barry reassures her that those early connections aren’t all she has. Family isn’t just who you grew up with, or who you’ve known the longest. It’s who you find, who you connect with now. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t there when you learned to ride a bike, or got your heart broken for the first time. It’s okay if they’ve never met your sister or your father. Hell, it’s okay if you’ve never talked to them about all the times you’ve died. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t know you then. It just matters that they know you now.

Sara agrees. The Legends are her family, they have been for a while, and she’s grateful for them.

Before they can continue this very sweet conversation, a shadow demon attacks Barry and though he and Sara take it out easily since they’re basically Putties from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, they don’t love the implications of it.

When they realize it’s likely the shadow demons are going specifically after Paragons, they worry about sweet baby human Ryan and head off to save him and his family.

The team gathers around because they need a plan. The Anti-Monitor is alive and they need to stop him once and for all. Using their science-brains, Ray and Ryan decide that, since anti-matter, like matter, cannot be created nor destroyed, they can destabilize him so that he shrinks indefinitely. Sara doesn’t quite understand it but that’s not her job, so she orders them to make that happen while she leads the fighters back to the dementors.

Sara feels a little like they’re back at square one, but our lil Paragon of Humanity assures her they’re not. Sara says that either way, they’re not going out without a fight. (Actually, she says “going down” and then smirks a little like when I’m in a meeting and say something smart but then realize it could also be misinterpreted but you have to keep looking semi-professional.)

The Super Squad (including Alex and Dreamer!) heads downtown to fight the dementors, and I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I do so love a superhero lineup.

The shadow demons eventually swarm into the Anti-Monitor himself, slinging threats at the Paragons, arrogant as ever.

Oh and by the way, Killer Frost and Mick Rory interact, going sass for sass, which is super cute, and then Black Lightning shows up to save their asses, so he’s back/fine too, which is also great.

Back at the battlefield, Sara gives an amazing and inspiring leadery speech, that I’m sure Kara was super proud of, about how they won’t fail Oliver, they won’t let his sacrifice be in vain. They won’t fail this world.

They all shout, “For Oliver!” which made me more emotional than I would have liked, and charge forward, thus beginning the boss battle of the Crisis.

The Anti-Monitor seems to know new tricks though, because he starts to get real big — or maybe Rita Repulsa really is on a balcony somewhere making her monster grow.

Kara leads the sky team up to punch and poke at the Anti-Monitor’s big dumb face while Barry runs off to help the nerd brigade finish their shrink bomb. When it’s done, The Atom flies it up to Supergirl, who was just about to go into the splash zone to save her cousin, which the music implies would not have ended well.

Ray tosses Kara the bomb, saying, “Throw it like a girl.”

And she smiles and chucks it right at the Anti-Monitor, who immediately starts to shrink.

Sara quietly thanks Ollie for being her inspiration, and for his sacrifice.

The President (a woman, but not President Wonder Woman, so I guess whoever took over for the corrupt mean dude) addresses the nation while we do a scan of all our heroes. Lyla and Diggle are happy on their couch, while their son John Jr. plays nearby… and LITTLE SARA RUNS IN. This was so not a big deal to a lot of people but I have been FURIOUS for YEARS that one of the times Barry fucked with the timeline, Diggle’s daughter Sara, named for the then-dead Lance sister, was completely erased and replaced with a little boy. So I am unreasonably delighted that JJ and Lil Sara both exist now.

Also delightful? Alex and Kara are in the loft watching the news…with Kate Kane!!

Lois is fine, but now she and Clark apparently have TWO sons. Caitlin and Barry are fine. Ava and Nate are watching. Everyone is listening as the President thanks Oliver Queen for his sacrifice, and honors him as a hero, offering him a moment of silence.

Oliver’s voiceover starts and he starts to retell the story about how the multi-verse was born, and we flash through a few of the other earths, like the one with StarGirl and the one with the Teen Titans. But now it’s the age of heroes. And now we just have one Earth: Earth Prime.

Our heroes (well, most of them) gather together to have a little memorial for Oliver, his suit standing proud in its case. Kara steps forward and thanks him for giving them hope again.

Barry thanks him for believing in him, Sara thanks him for changing her fate for the better. Kara lights a little arrowhead-shaped fire pit and they mourn their fallen friend.

Jefferson Pierce is still there, and he says that he never met Oliver but he can tell he was a great guy based on all this. But he does have a question…why are they in a crumbly old building? Barry gets excited saying it’s actually an old Star Labs building but that now it can be their own little crossover hub. A room of integrity. A building of virtue.

A Hall of Justice.

Jefferson questions the need for such a thing, but they all kind of laugh at the sweet summer child for not knowing how often they’d need to team up. Kate reassures him that she was the new kid last year, it’s very cute.

Barry heads back to a lump under a sheet and pulls it back to reveal a round table.

They notice the chairs all have their emblems on them. A chair for all of them. Including the Green Arrow. Sara thinks it’s perfect.

They all sit down at the table, suited up and all on the same Earth, together.

Thus the Arrowverse version of the Justice League was born.

Hopefully their first order of business will be to talk about how they’re going to sort out what still needs to be fixes from this timeline mashing. But also the episode ends with a shot of an empty box marked Gleek (as in the Wonder Twins’ monkey) so who knows who will get to deal with that now that the hiatus is over, and the CRISIS is over, and everyone has to go back to their own shows.

Overall, the Crisis on Infinite Earths was a lot of fun. I never really cared about the Monitor/Anti-Monitor stuff, and I never really thought everyone was dead forever, but I love seeing our friends team up. I liked this final hour best because it’s how I think more of the crossovers should be: a relatively simple enemy, allowing the focus to be on how the team plays to their strengths and saves the day. But all in all it was a great time, and having a total of six LGBTQ+ women show up over the course of the crossover (and that not even being all the queer women in the Arrowverse) felt pretty good to me.

I’ll see you again next week, when Supergirl sorts out its Luthor problem and Legends of Tomorrow is FINALLY BACK FOR REAL. Hope you had a Merry Crisis!

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