At the time of this posting, we will be pretty much one week away from the start of the Crisis of Infinite Earths crossover event on the CW network. We’ve got crossovers with the main Arrowverse shows that debuted here; we’ve got Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and the newest edition in the lineup, Batwoman. Aside from those five series, we’ve got a tie-in with characters from Black Lightning, along with cameos from other DC tv show properties like Smallville, Birds of Prey, The Flash from the 1990’s, and even big characters debuting, like Kevin Conroy as Batman from the Kingdom Come comic series, Brandon Routh as Superman from his 2006 film (which is also canonically Christopher Reeve’s Superman character and Kingdom Come Superman), with other appearances rumored for the crossover. Some of those names include Lynda Carter and Burt Ward in an undisclosed role, and others that I can’t keep up with because this event is HUGE!
I’ve got my theories and speculations about what we’ll see out of the crossover, and as much as I’d love to go on about those thoughts, that’s not what I’m going to do with this post. That being said, I did make a bingo card in preparation for Crisis with all of my major theories used as the spots. It’s posted on my Tumblr, and y’all can check it out here!
Now, without further ado, let’s get caught up on these shows and see where we’re going from here on out! SPOILERS follow!
We’re, uh, actually skipping DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. It premieres after Crisis, so…
“Better, Gayer and Edgier Than Batman”
Let’s start with Batwoman! It debuted this year, which I was mega excited for because IT WAS SO DOPE TO GET THE TEASE FROM THE ELSEWORLDS CROSSOVER OMFG! There was a lot of backlash for Ruby Rose being cast as, like, the one lesbian in Hollywood, which I would’ve been more upset about if I hadn’t seen her kick ass in John Wick. My biggest thing when it comes to action series is having the actors and actresses be bold enough to pull off the stunts on their own without stunt doubles. Not that it’s bad to use doubles, but I’m just more impressed as shows having their own actors do stunts. That being said, the stunts on this show aren’t the most exciting, but it’s a good thing the show has been making up for it with Rose just KILLING it as Kate Kane. I had skepticisms about the villain, but Alice proved to be a really good arch enemy for Batwoman, so I’m down with it. The will-they-won’t-they between Kate and her ex is okay, but like, I’m waiting to get past that and for Kate to find real potential love next season or something. The writing has been really good with Caroline Dries from The Vampire Diaries working on the series. We’ve got a good Batwoman adaptation, solid drama, and so much queer representation to make my recently out-of-the-closet queer heart melt. Love the series. Can’t wait for post-Crisis Batwoman to do some gnarly things and expand on their lineup. I’d love to see Red Hood, Orphan, or even Bluebird show up. Not much else to say, considering this series JUST debuted with its first season. The other shows have a LOT more to go through.
“PANTS!”
Let’s go to Supergirl, now! We’re five seasons in, having reached episode 5×08, right before Part 1 of the Crisis starts. At this point, we went from an entirely different network version of the show, having started on NBC, with massively different set pieces, cast and crew, and writers doing different things. The show moving to the CW left us with a loss of, who I thought was a dope villain, Maxwell Lord, along with gorgeous characters like Lucy Lane, and the enigmatic Cat Grant. In that move, we did happen to gain OTHER set pieces, new cast and crew, and, like, OTHER writers. From the purest origin story we could get for Kara, to the cutest queer coming out arc for Alex, to gaining the Legion of Super-Heroes (I would’ve loved, like, Lightnig Lad and Timberwolf and Triplet, but…we got Brainiac 5 and Saturn-Girl, so we’ll take the dub where we can). Villains like Manchester Black, Reign, and Lex Luthor came around, and then we’ve got MY personal favorites, Lena Luthor and Nia Nall.
Out of all of the arcs we’ve gotten during these seasons, I’d have to say season four was my favorite. We didn’t have Mon-El being trash (yeah, I didn’t like him at all), we got our lovely trans representation debut in Nia, who was the purest little bean of a character when she debuted, to someone who has kicked ass alongside our heroes, but for some reason has been a little absent in our most recent episode, and I really don’t remember why. The storyline between Kara and Lena really got amped up after season four, going from acquaintances to best friends to PRACTICALLY GIRLFRIENDS, to this seemingly broken relationship. This is the one thing that keeps drawing me back to the show, and I would love to keep them at the core. Manhunter stays being a cool father figure, but Martian Manhunter’s storylines are less exciting now that he’s been focused on this random brother that Monitor brought back. With that arc coming to a close, we can prepare for Supergirl’s involvement in Crisis, bringing in Superman and Lois Lane, along with their baby AND LEX LUTHOR AGAIN! Can’t wait for where the show goes post-Crisis. I don’t know if they’ll continue this Leviathan arc, which aired around the time that Event Leviathan was being released by DC. It was a conspiracy espionage with a masked villain who was taking down the government to basically build a new world order, because according to Leviathan, everyone else has been saving the world wrong. I was expecting season five’s arc to go down that route, but it’s been…NOT that. We got an Earth Bender from Avatar trying to kill Supergirl, and it’s been okay, but I’m hoping that isn’t the villain post-Crisis. Hopefully we’ll drop the queerbaiting subtext between Kara and Lena, and just LET OUR BABIES BE HAPPY. That’s all I want, is for the two of them to be happy.
“Season 6 of ‘Monster of the Week’ ft. Preparations for Crisis”
We are six seasons in for The Flash, caught up on 6×08 right before Crisis, and we’ve gone FAR! I’m talking naive little me watching Arrow’s second season and thinking, “gee, Barry Allen might be a side character on Arrow’s next season” to the first Arrowverse spin-off debuting and teasing Crisis on its premiere. From that point, we got one of the best first seasons of an Arrowverse show, with Reverse-Flash posing as one of the dopest villains on the show, with season two pushing epic boundaries with the Multiverse being introduced. Season three debuted Flashpoint, one of the things I was most hype about, but it being an episode long was the biggest buzzkill. It was a little too dark and depressing, so it’s sort of part of this repressed part of my mind. Season four was when they said, “gee, let’s get funny again,” and became borderline tacky in some instances. Ralph Dibny, the funnier guy, debuted at this point, and the tone of the series shifted dramatically. The villains, in all honesty, started absolutely sucking from this point onward.
The show kept its “Monster of the Week” formula intact, but with its villains no longer being speedsters, after everyone got annoyed with season three’s Savitar disaster. We had an uber-smart handicapped technophobe, an awfully voiced and unthreatening meta-serial killer (and his future niece or whatever, which nobody cared for), and this season’s villain. Now, what I love about the recent seasons is that they took more liberty pulling from the Rebirth canon, similarly to Supergirl pulling from Event Leviathan. We had Godspeed make an appearance (although it was definitely way more lackluster than it should’ve been), and Bloodwork show up as this season’s main villain. I’ll be honest, his gimmick makes sense, being a villain who offers immortality to Barry to help survive Crisis. It would’ve made sense for last season’s Cicada to be immortal, but what do I know? That being said, Bloodwork’s thing was basically just spreading a bad zombie infection. Like it wasn’t all that complicated, but it wasn’t interesting at all. Barry has a mind trip when he’s infected, and with Dark Flash showing up, it was just gunk in his mouth. Like, I really wanted to like this villain, and this whole season, but it was mostly just “fight a villain while we think about Crisis” but not really do anything about Crisis. I guess that’s the point though, with Barry having to accept his fate of dying in Crisis. I really hope that we don’t see Bloodwork past the first half of this season. I say “first half,” because once Crisis is done, I’m expecting a major shift in everything going on throughout a majority of the shows, especially with The Flash. It’ll be the first time we see a future past the looming headline that’s been haunting Barry since the premiere, and hopefully cool things in terms of structure will go down.
“Every Mission Has An End”
That leaves us with Arrow. The Big Papa of the Arrowverse, having just aired 8×07. Each episode this last season was meant to be an homage to the series as a whole, with each episode being reminiscent of its corresponding season. We got through seven episodes, seven seasons, of the best and worst of the Arrowverse, from seasons one and two being Arrow’s peak, with it dying down during season three and four, and the remainder of the series having both highs and lows. Season five ended the five-year story of Olive being on the island and becoming the Arrow, only for those flashbacks to become super convoluted, so, you know, whatever. After that, season six became a lot more grounded and ended with a big gamechanger: Oliver outing himself as the Green Arrow. Season seven led to a dope prison arc, with more Rebirth villains coming in, like the Ninth Circle, and the Longbow Hunters debuting Silencer.
Again, highs and lows. Ricardo Diaz was, like, cool for being the first villain to survive a season and continue being a villain, but he got old really quick. Emiko Queen was also really dope, but her whole “villain-or-hero” thing was just as annoying as it was with Laurel from Earth-2. Yeah, Earth-2 Laurel’s “villain-or-hero” thing was ALSO one of the major lows of the show. It lasted, like, three seasons? I don’t know. Hated it. Hated Lance’s off-screen death, Ragman disappearing, Felicity growing from adorable to annoying, and blue balls (or, green balls) with all of the Green Lantern references for Diggle. But we got highs, like the 150th episode of Arrow being a really dope documentary styled episode, the flash forwards giving us baby Mia and William being the best siblings ever, and more ROY HARPER, the love of my life! I’ll admit, this last episode really chopped his arm off, which hurt SO much, but like, Roy has always been written as the DC character to be hurt the most, next to Wally (who is annoyingly absent from The Flash right now. We got Roy back before Crisis, why couldn’t we get Wally? Shame the writers don’t know what to do with him). Anyway, we had a very good run anyway. Stephen Amell killed it as Oliver Queen this season, with the entirety of the season being a big buildup for Crisis, while it also sort of being Oliver’s internal battle with himself, as he was sort of in denial about dying. We got fan favorites that came back for the final season, from the Merlyns to Moira and Thea, Adrian Chase and the OG Deathstroke (no Nyssa or Ragman or Artemis, also mad about those). But in terms of the final season wrapping things up, it did so in a way that made it feel like an entirely new show, both fresh and familiar for Arrow fans. It’s been great, honestly. Loved it.
And with that, you have caught yourselves up on the Arrowverse with me, and are a week away from witnessing one of the biggest events to happen with DC. I’m talking altering the canon of not ONLY the CW shows, but shows and films and canons that have been around for decades and have just now debuted. We are IN FOR A REAL TREAT, FOLKS! Get ready.
Stay Lovely – ya boy
Stars and Monsters 