The CW President Teases “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Will Be Biggest, Most Complicated Crossover Yet

“Crisis on Infinite Earths” is coming — five years early — to The CW next fall, and network president Mark Pedowitz says that the event is going to be as big as you might expect.

The network has been pretty tight-lipped about details so far — all Pedowitz gave was a simple comment about scope, and recently when we asked Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz about Lyla Michaels’s role in the crossover, she declined to comment. But fans are already excited, and Pedowitz likely has to feel that.

According to Pedowitz, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be in a class by itself. The event “will be the biggest, most complicated one that they’ve done,” he told reporters at TCA today.

Given the source material, that should not be surprising.

Dated for Fall 2019, it is likely that “Crisis” will still air in November or early December, as the crossovers have done so far, but it seems far more likely now that DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will join the cast of Supergirl, Arrow, and The Flash in the mega-event.

Next fall is much sooner than the originally-teased date of 2024, which has been suggested for years. Going all the way back to the pilot for The Flash, the series teased Barry Allen’s apparent death in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”

A newspaper that has appeared again and again on The Flash has teased Barry’s disappearance, a storyline that was picked up in earnest when his daughter traveled back to the present day from the future to “meet” him since he has been gone her whole life.

Asked whether he knew how and when he intended to pay off the various teases, The Flash showrunner Todd Helbing smiled and told ComicBook.com, “Yeah. But that’s all I can say.”

He elaborated a tiny bit, saying, “Greg [Berlanti] really has a sort of master plan of things, and I’m really excited about how it’s going to pay off.”

“It is really fulfilling” to see some of the Crisis stuff play out, The Flash star Grant Gustin told us. “I hope we can stick around long enough to see what’s going on with that newspaper article. We’d have to make it four more seasons, five more seasons. It’s cool, though. It feels like it’s earned. Me and Stephen had that conversation a lot during the crossover, actually. There’s a lot of even just comedic moments that we have that are funny because they’re earned — because of the history of the characters and the journey they’ve been on. It is one of the best parts of doing these as a series versus a film — people have been with us. I’ve met kids who have gone through all of high school watching this show. To have that kind of stamp on people’s lives is pretty special.”

In the original Crisis comics, Barry Allen dies while sabotaging the Anti-Monitor’s antimatter cannon, accelerating in time to the point that he quickly ages and crumbles to dust while experiencing his past. After his heroic sacrifice, Wally West took on the character’s mantle for more than 20 years.

The Anti-Monitor’s less-evil opposite number, the Monitor, appeared in “Elseworlds,” the upcoming crossover story that will bring Gustin’s Barry Allen together with Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen/Green Arrow and Melissa Benoist’s Kara Zor-El/Supergirl. In that story, he was an antagonist, claiming that he was preparing the universe for a coming crisis.

Are you excited for “Crisis on Infinite Earths?” let us know what you think in the comments below, and keep checking back here at ComicBook.com for updates as they come.

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