“Crisis on Infinite Earths” is something that has been teased in the Arrowverse for years, and it’s been a year since Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) made a deal with The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) to ensure the safety of Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Kara Zor-El (Melissa Benoist) in exchange for his own life. Up to this point, we did not know exactly how Oliver was fated to die — and actually, we don’t now, either, since The Monitor says the latest twist in the story is something has changed Oliver’s fate, changing the nature and timing of his death. So, what now?
The last few minutes of the episode were informative in this way, but not in quite the way a lot of fans have expected. Let’s break it down below.
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Spoilers ahead for “Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One,” tonight’s episode of Supergirl.
In the final moments of the episode, with Earth-38 under siege from an army of shadow demons controlled by the Anti-Monitor, The Monitor told Oliver that “it’s time.” Oliver asked whether the planet had been evacuated yet, and when The Monitor said not completely, Oliver said, “Then it’s not time,” and continued to battle the shadows, providing cover for more evacuating people and aliens as well as the other heroes in The Monitor’s squad. Eventually running out of arrows, Oliver literally went down swinging, swarmed by a mob of shadow demons as he tried to punch the supernatural wraiths to death.
The next time we saw him, Oliver was clinging to life, and had a few final moments with Barry, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) and Mia before passing quietly away. All of this came just hours (in-story time) since the moment when Oliver and Mia finally hugged for the first time, planned to make their way home from Lian Yu…and the skies turned red.
It’s a heartbreaking and bittersweet ending for Oliver, who had finally just come to accept first himself and later his fate…but we’ll see tomorrow whether his story really is over.
“Crisis on Infinite Earths” kicks off tonight — Sunday, December 8 — on Supergirl, runs through a Monday episode of Batwoman and that Tuesday’s episode of The Flash. That will be the midseason cliffhanger, as the shows go on hiatus for the holidays and return on January 14 to finish out the event with the midseason premiere of Arrow and a “special episode” of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which launches as a midseason series this year and so will not have an episode on the air before the Crisis.
