DC Recap Round-Up 3, SPECIAL EDITION: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (PART 2)

17 Jan

Welcome back from the holiday break, and welcome back to the second half of our recaps of Crisis on Infinite Earths! Before we close off this big crossover event, let’s just remind ourselves what happened last time, because it’s quite a bit. The Monitor assembles a team of heroes to combat the universe(s) destroying threat of the Anti-Monitor, and it goes…not so well. Oliver Queen gets killed off early, but may serve a bigger purpose in the fight yet to come, as something else. And as worlds are destroyed, our heroes fight to save the multiverse. Unfortunately for them, the last of their Earths are wiped away, and our core group of heroes find themselves whisked away to the Vanishing Point, a space outside of the universe where they are safe. That core group being: The Flash, Supergirl, Batwoman, White Canary, scientist Ryan Choi, Martian Manhunter, and…Lex Luthor? Just how do these seven even succeed at restoring EVERYTHING they’ve lost? And what is the dead Oliver Queen’s role in all of this?

“Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Four”

Before we get to that opening involving the Monitor and how he accidentally created the Anti-Monitor, let’s start in the present, or just a few months later after our Paragons got stranded at the Vanishing Point. Kara and Sara are just bummed out, J’onn and Kate are mediating and staying in shape for whatever’s next, Ryan is working with Lex to find a way out of the Vanishing Point, and Barry…well, he’s disappeared. He ends up returning just after their recent attempt to teleport out of the Vanishing Point fails, only to learn he tried to run into the Speed Force to find nothing there. And then we see Ollie appear, in a new cloak and a deeper voice, telling us he’s become something else (A Spectre, if you will).

SpectreOllie here has a plan to restore the universe, which will involve having our heroes having to split up for two missions. The first will be to fight the Anti-Monitor at the Dawn of Time, where he’ll make his destruction of the Multiverse complete. The second involves going to the Planet Maltus, the home world of Mar Novu, where thousands of years in the past, he accidentally entered the antimatter universe, bringing forth his evil doppleganger. So Kara, Ryan, and Lex head to Maltus before Novu started his experiment to maybe undo things before it happens, while the rest get superspeeded by Flash back to the Dawn of Time. Both missions don’t start well.

Well this is not gonna make that Release The Snyder Cut crap vanish anytime soon.

First thing is Barry’s trip to the Dawn of Time gets railroaded the Anti-Monitor, trapping him and his cohorts in the Speed Force, represented as the memories of Ollie (and why? Because.). So Barry has to travel through Ollie’s memories, recovering Sara, Kate, and J’onn from these memories, and learning a few things (besides running into a strangely familiar looking other Barry Allen who is called the Flash), specifically Ollie’s deal way back in Elseworlds to save Barry and Kara’s lives in exchange for his own. On Maltus, Lex goes Luthor and ditches Kara and Ryan (while revealing he got some powers thanks to that rewrite he did in the Book of Destiny) to try to get Mar Novu to give him some of that temporal power he will eventually get (because he’s still obsessed with killing Super-people). That doesn’t go so well, but Ryan does convince Novu not to take his failed trip into the antimatter universe. So that seems like a win there as Barry collects all the Paragons and takes them to the Dawn of Time.

Too bad that back up plan to keep Novu from going on his mission didn’t apply to the entire multiverse, because they find the Anti-Monitor there, clearly created because at least one version of Novu didn’t think twice about going into the antimatter universe. So, our Paragons fight the Anti-Matter’s time demons or whatever, while SpectreOllie fights the Anti-Monitor. SpectreOllie tells his friends he can restart the universe, but he’ll eventually need their help. So, SpectreOllie is able to use all his power to destroy the Anti-Monitor, but is left dying as a result.

We see there is the formation of a universe in the sky above them, but in order to bring it to life, it needs all of them to bring it to life using that remaining piece of the Book of Destiny that Lex stole. So our heroes basically do a Care Bear stare group wish to bring back everything, Ollie dies (again), and…we cut to white.

The end. And the beginning.

–Well, we had to mention the HUGE cameo in this one, mainly the Flash from the Justice League movie, played by Ezra Miller. That was a big secret to keep, I’m sure. Also, it was kind of fun watching the dual Barrys react to each other. And the reference to “Victor”, or as we might know him, Cyborg.

–The Ollie memories our Paragons get trapped in are: Kate in a season 3 meeting with Ollie and Ray, Sara basically dead in season 3 with Diggle and Laurel, J’onn in an Invasion! one with Ollie and Kara, and Barry back to that final confrontation with Deegan as Evil Superman in Elseworlds.

–So Mar Novu had a missus who we briefly meet, but really doesn’t contribute much to the proceedings of this episode. We also see the Monitor minus what is now likely his “depression muttonchops”.

–I still don’t know how anyone survived at the Vanishing Point for that long. What, did someone find a food replicator? Why is Ryan the only one with a depression beard? They got showers during this, right? Look, there’s a lot of questions that just are not getting answered in this episode that is a bit confounding.

–I don’t actually know how Ryan can fight those time demons with NO POWERS OR FIGHTING ABILITIES AT ALL, but he survived. Good on him.

–“Don’t any of you capes watch movies?”

–“We’ve sacrificed too many good people already. Thanks for volunteering, Lex!”

–“You’ve ruined a perfectly good bad guy plan, you know that, new guy?”

–“Is this cosplay?”

–“You have failed this universe!”

“Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Five”

We come out of that white flash that ended the last episode, and Kara finds herself at home, and it seems everyone is back: Alex, Nia, everyone! But she’s confused because Alex knows nothing about what happened during this whole Crisis, and thought Kara was resting after a long day fighting crime and before she had to cover the Nobel Peace Prize being handed to…Lex Luthor? And everyone LOVES him? And LexCorp has made the DEO a subsidiary?? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE???

So, J’onn shows up to give Alex a little mind recap of this whole Crisis thing, and confirms no one except them know what happened. Then Kara has to fight the Weather Wizard, and…Barry shows up to help? Kara doesn’t know how he’s here, but he thinks he’s in his universe, and people seem to think they both are super buddies. So not only do we have an Earth unaware they were wiped out of existence, but it looks like the Earths of Barry and Kara have been merged into one! The rest of the Paragons learn this fact for themselves, and thanks to J’onn mind recapping our heroes’ immediate family and friends, learn the same. They also discover Ollie is nowhere to be found. If he’s dead or alive, he isn’t on Earth.

#BeeboLoveCrossover

After learning all of this, it seems things are relatively back to normal, dealing with a fake giant Beebo construct notwithstanding. Even Nash Wells, the jerk who let the Anti-Monitor escape and starting all this mess is back, and he gets a mind recap from J’onn to make him feel bad about all this crap. Nash is also the bearer of bad news though, because the Anti-Monitor is still alive, rebuilding his power and bringing legions of those time demons with him to kill all the Paragons. So we gotta deal with this with all our heroes, including Black Lightning (turns out his Earth is part of this one, too!), and that requires a way to deal with the Anti-Monitor for good.

The solution for this is to basically make the Anti-Monitor shrink for all eternity, which is really helpful when during the big fight, the Anti-Monitor grows super big. So that shrinking bomb is used, and the Anti-Monitor goes bye-bye into the microverse, those time demons vanish, and in case this episode hasn’t bludgeoned you in the head hard enough beforehand, it’s all for Ollie. Ollie gets a nice moment of silence from everyone, along with a thanks from the President for saving the universe, and gets a nice little memorial at our heroes’ new meeting place (that familiar one used in Invasion!). So we have Sara, Barry, Kara, Kate, J’onn, Clark Kent, and Black Lightning at that memorial, and it’s there Barry suggests they used this place as a meeting place whenever they need to deal with massive threats again. Heck, they even got a fancy table with logo-centric seats (and an empty one for Ollie, awww) for their league, their “Justice” league, if you will. So we find the multiverse is back to relative normal, save our Arrowverse Earths merged into one, and who knows what other insane changes we haven’t got to! The end!

Hopefully they won’t have to do anything horrible to any food delivery drivers dropping off eats to this secret place.

–No real cameos for this finale, except one that might be familiar to comic book fans. It’s Crisis on Infinite Earths writer Marv Wolfman, looking for an autograph from Flash and Supergirl. Plus, with the multiverse back, we see some glimpses of the worlds restored (along with Ollie narrating), basically all the DC Universe shows with worlds of their own (including the upcoming Stargirl) and all the movies.

–So let’s discuss the stuff that we learn is back and different in Earth Prime. Well, Argo City is back (no more need to mope about being one of the last Kryptonians alive, Kara!), Superman has TWO sons (!), and Diggle and Lyla have son JJ…and daughter Sara!

–Before we go too long into this, just as this was coming out, we learned we’ll be getting a Superman and Lois Lane series has been picked up for next season, so we’ll get to see whatever Lois means about issues with his sons, plural.

–You know who has the best emotional reaction to all this? Diggle. The guy wasn’t there to help Ollie when he died–both times! That’s rough.

–Not sure why you got three heroes shooting guns at the freaking Anti-Monitor like it’s gonna hurt him, but hey, whatever you need to do to work through things.

–The reference to Gleek and the reference to the Superfriends theme music. Laying it on thick, but it works.

–“That’s better. Possible trademark issues, but that’s better!”

–“That blue bastard ruined my book signing!”

–“Okay, that wasn’t a long story.”

–“I’m not letting my kid watch that show ever again.”

–“So that’s how it is?”

–“Wait, there was a crossover? Were we invited? Did we win?”

–“For Ollie!”

NEXT TIME: We’re back to business as usual (except for The Flash, which will be back in February) as Supergirl, Batwoman, and Black Lightning return to deal with the fallout of Crisis, and we get the return of the Legends of Tomorrow!