Crisis on Infinite Earths Finale Review: Big, Messy, Wonderful & Exciting

Last time we checked in on the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event, the antimatter wave had obliterated all of reality and our team of Paragons were transported to the Vanishing Point, a place beyond space and time, to regroup in the hopes of somehow defeating the Antimonitor and restarting the multiverse. The final two hours of this epic Arrowverse event took place over an episode of Arrow and an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, and they had the difficult task of somehow rectifying this multiversal apocalypse, killing the big bad, giving Stephen Amell’s Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen a proper fair well, and re-establishing a brand new status quo for how heroes, all while somehow surfacing the 7-10 principle actors that made up the core cast of the crossover. In other words, the creative team had almost as impossible a task as our team of superheroes did, and they managed to succeed to mixed results. 

The biggest issue with these two episodes, and the wider event as a whole, was its pacing. At various points the story felt like it was both stalling to kill time until the next crucial moment and also rushing through key moments the event needed to focus on more to land emotionally. As great as John Cryer has been in his pitch perfect turn as the unpredictable, narcissistic super genius Lex Luthor, Lex’s exploits during this crossover have mostly indulged only to facilitate fan service cameos (alternative universe Supermen) and kill time until we can get to the big climactic moments, which is especially felt in Episode 4 when Lex, Kara, and newby Ryan Choi go to The Monitor’s home planet just before he accidentally creates the Antimonitor. Lex tries to turn the situation to his advantage, Kara gets to be exacerbated by his scheming, and Ryan gets a nice moment to shine when he convinced The Monitor to give up his ambition in order to save the multiverse. And then Flash zooms by, picks them up to ferry them to the big battle, and they immediately learned that all that effort did not matter in any way because… multiverse?

In place of this misadventure in an alien planet, it would have been nice to see Episode 4 commit to the idea that our heroes were lost in important moments of literal or emotional connection between them and Oliver’s memories, who used his new Specter powers to help the team navigate the Speed Force before accidentally losing them inside it due to Antimonitor interference. The moments we do get are varying degrees of effective, but it felt more likely they wanted to ape the success Avengers: Endgame had in touring its past highlights for emotional payoff but lacked the budget or time to effectively pull it off. 

Missed opportunities aside, once we were amongst the rocks in the antimatter universe we had all the makings for an excellent climatic battle between the Antimonitor and the Paragons, aided by Oliver and his Specter powers. Unfortunately, what followed was a largely incomprehensible sequence of our heroes punching CG ghosts while Oliver I guess wrestled the Antimonitor until he exploded?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltslGmSkQO8

I’ve rewatched this sequence multiple times, and it’s genuinely difficult to make any sense of what exactly is happening and why, which is very disappointing if this is the climatic battle not just this crossover event was leading to but also the climatic battle the proceeding seasons of The Flash & Arrow were building to. Maybe that was too much weight to place on one CG heavy fight scene on a TV budget, but by the time Lex figured out the Paragons all needed to simple stand in a line and think about their virtuous traits AT Oliver to help him kill the Antimonitor and restart the multiverse, I had all but checked out. 

The second hour was certainly far more effective. It quickly becomes clear that all CW-related Earths have been successfully recreated on a new merged Earth with the designation Earth-Prime. Our Paragons all have their memories of the crisis and their old world’s intact, but everyone else on this new Earth is ignorant of the past the Paragons come from. Luckily, J’onn J’ones has the psychic ability to transfer his memories of the events and an individual’s pre-Crisis life to them with a tap on the shoulder, and he quickly gets all our main players who weren’t Paragons up to speed, including several Legends and Black Lightning, who gets invited back for the final episode. 

Our heroes take on a magical bank robber and the Weather Witch as they adjust to their new reality before working together to send the Antimonitor (who, for some reason, is not dead even though Oliver is extremely dead) into the Atom-verse to end the Crisis once and for all. The plot mechanics of this episode and need to bring back the Antimonitor one last time makes little sense. That final action beat seems present entirely because the creative team (or the network) likely felt they could not fill out the final our exclusively with the excitement of a rebooted universe, with all our heroes in one place, married with the somber grappling with the loss of the titular hero of this universe, Oliver Queen.

However, of these final two hours, that aforementioned union of grief over what was lost and excitement over what’s to come was easily the most compelling elements. The big fight was silly, frenetic, and nonsensical, like most fights involving The Legends, but I would have traded them out for a few more scenes as strong as the one where Barry and Sara grapple with the loss of Oliver and the end of a very foundational era of both of their lives. 

Gripes aside, the crossover event gets major points not just for it’s genre-pushing ambition and world-altering ramifications but also for the incredible moments of heart and humor sprinkled throughout. It was big. It was messy. It was exploding with comic booky imagination that stretched the TV medium (and budget) to its breaking point. But it was also filled with wonder moments of heroes coming together to do what’s right and learn from each other on how to be better heroes and better people. The quality may have been uneven, but I’m so glad they tried and can’t wait to see what they try next. 

The Crisis on Infinite Earths Finale is now streamong on the CW Network website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwkyFUwrKII