How Legends of Tomorrow’s Season Finale Sets Up “Crisis on Infinite Earths”

Tonight’s Season 4 finale for Legends of Tomorrow marked the final Arrowverse show to end its season ahead of the upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths event and, like the other shows, the episode didn’t just close out the season but also helped set up for the multiverse shattering event. And, in classic Legends style, this Crisis tease one wild romp — even if the Arrowverse as we know it is ultimately at stake.

Spoilers for tonight’s season finale of Legends of Tomorrow, “Hey World”, below.

The plan to defeat Neron once and for all came down to a surprisingly simple plan: Nate would actually open the Heyworld amusement park, show mankind that monsters are friends and not foes, and thus the day would be saved. Cool plan, bro, but there’s a catch: Heyworld will change the future in that the horrible events leading to Zari’s dystopian origin no longer exist — therefore Zari will have never met the Legends at all. The team planned to have Zari stay on the Waverider so she’d be safe from the temporal shift, but that plan also went awry.

You see, in order to get Ray’s soul back, Neron would have to be distracted and killing Constantine would do it. But it wasn’t really Constantine. It was Nate. Upon seeing this, Zari leaves the Waverider and comes to Heyworld to try to save the man she loves, no matter the cost to her. Ultimately, they’re successful. Nate is saved and the timeline changes stick — and the episode ends with it being Zari’s brother who is a Legend, not Zari.

So. You might be asking yourself, what does this have to do with Crisis. Well, you see, during the floor show that was supposed to win the public over, The Monitor shows up in the audience. He’s not amused, shaking his head as he watches the plan unfold. Though, that’s not to say that he isn’t amused. He is seen enjoying a nice snack of what appears to be popcorn (which he happens to have balanced on top of the Book of Destiny) while he watches. But why would The Monitor be disappointed?

Because Zari may be instrumental to saving the multiverse in Crisis and now, because of their plan, she’s been taken off the board. It’s a sobering prospect, but one that makes a ton of sense considering that it looks like Legends’ Season 5 premiere will also serve as one of the final hours of Crisis. The event is set to play out over the five Arrowverse series across two quarters, which means three before the midseason break and two after — exactly when Legends returns.

“You think of the scale of it, and what this character means, and him being introduced into the DC TV world, the first person when you think when you think Monitor is you think Anti-Monitor,” LaMonica Garrett, who plays The Monitor, admitted to ComicBook.com before “Elseworlds”. “So, the scale — where’s this going? And then when you think Anti-Monitor, the next thing you think of is “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. So if you keep doing that to yourself, it makes it too much on your shoulders when you are going into it. You have to think about it later. To me, I’m a former athlete. When you think about the big games, the bowl games, you think about the Super Bowl, you think about the World Series, and you ask those players, ‘what does this mean? This is a huge game, this is the biggest game ever.’ And they downplay it. They don’t want to think of it. After the game, they’ll tell you how much pressure they were under, and how much stress. They couldn’t sleep at night. So leading up to it, it’s like they’re trying not to think about that, because if you make that moment bigger than what it is, it’s gonna get the best of you.”

“I immediately, Anti-Monitor, Psycho-Pirate, Pariah, you just start thinking of all these names…so that’s when I went and looked, and saw who is already in place, and who they would have to introduce to bring on the big picture,” Garrett added. “And that was fun part for me too, ’cause you know, as a fan, as a comic book fan, that’s where I would hope it would go to.”

Are you excited for how Legends sets up Crisis? Let us know in the comments below.