When Will The Flash Finally do Crisis on Infinite Earths?

Now that Supergirl is on The CW after switching over from CBS beginning with this season, it’s easier to have mega-crossovers now more than ever. Last season we get a brief crossover between Supergirl and The Flash and we’ve had many smaller crossovers between the original three CW shows — The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow.

Luckily this season, we were treated to a four-episode crossover featuring the ‘Invasion!’ three issue mini-series written by Keith Giffen and Bill Mantlo with art by Giffen, Todd McFarlane and Bart Sears in late 1988. Much like the comics, the Arrowverse version of Invasion! featured an alien race called the Dominators hell-bent on, well, world domination.

While Invasion! Was our first big crossover, we’ve also been treated to a live-action variation of the ‘Flashpoint’ storyline thanks to Barry Allen’s time-traveling antics. While Flashpoint hasn’t necessarily been a crossover in the direct way Invasion! was, it has had lasting ramifications on many characters, regardless of what show they’re on. From seeing the gender of John Diggle’s child being switched to Caitlin Snow becoming Killer Frost on Earth-1 and Cisco’s brother being killed, we’ve seen lasting changes made on this universe’s characters but the one thing we still lack is a tremendously spectacular crossover drawing straight for the decades of source material DC comics has to offer.

Enter: Crisis on Infinite Earths. Prior to Flashpoint rebooting the universe and creating the New 52 line of comic books beginning in 2011, Crisis on Infinite Earths may be the next biggest DC crossover event in the history of the comics publisher. Written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by the legendary George Perez from 1985 to 1986, Crisis on Infinite Earths featured a cosmic being named the Anti-Monitor wanting to destroy the current DC multiverse to replace it with his own. Eventually, the Anti-Monitor didn’t succeed in destroying the entire multiverse, but rather he combined all of the separate universes done into one singular universe, a move that helped improved the continuity across the line of comic books DC had published at the time.

Throughout the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, many characters met their untimely end. Although a lot of the characters who died in the crossover are characters we may never see on an Arrowverse show, there are two huge characters that stand out: Barry Allen and Kara Zor-El, The Flash and Supergirl.

In a series of panels that many fans claim as their favorites of all-time, Barry Allen used his access to the Speed Force to contain the energy of the Anti-Monitor’s anti-matter cannon. With Barry using his speed to destroy cannon, the power was too much for him to handle and he ultimately perished as a result of his actions.

While it’d be awfully difficult to have The Flash and Supergirl without Barry Allen and Kara Zor-El, respectively, the shows have made several mentions towards the event in passing. Since the beginning of The Flash, we’ve seen a newspaper from the future in the original Harrison Wells’ secret room at STAR Labs with the headline “Flash Missing, Vanishes in Crisis.” Then in the second season finale, we saw Barry create a time remnant in a race with Zoom to stop Zoom’s magnetar, which had enough energy to destroy the multiverse and as Barry’s time remnant absorbs the energy from the magnetar, the remnant dissolves in a move very similar to how Barry died in Crisis.

Additional, Kara made a passing mention to James Olsen in “Worlds Finest,” the 18th episode of the first season, that she wants to talk to him about “infinite earths,” while Superman carried an injured Supergirl in the second episode of this season in a scene that looked nearly identical to the iconic cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #1.

It’s been a recurring theme on The Flash that there is virtually an endless amount of different earths in the multiverse, even times poking fun at it with the different version of Harrison Wells introduced to the three separate seasons. While Flashpoint has changed up the future of the universe for some characters, do you think Greg Berlanti and company will cook up a huge crossover such as Crisis? What other potential crossovers can you think of that you’d like to see in the Arrowverse?

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