'The Flash' Reveals that Batwoman Will Be Part of "Crisis on Infinite Earths"

Just hours after fans got their first official look at Ruby Rose's Batwoman from this year's "Elseworlds" crossover, The Flash's season premiere revealed that the character -- along with heroes from Supergirl, Arrow, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow -- will be a part of an even bigger storyline down the road.

In the series premiere of The Flash, fans learned that Barry Allen disappeared in 2024 amid red skies. Longtime DC readers understood that this was a nod to the hero's death at the hands of the Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The 2024 newspaper is backed up by a 2049 newspaper that talks about the 25th anniversary of the Crisis.

In the 2049 newspaper, the story talks about the day skies turned red and Barry Allen disappeared forever.

"But in the years following the crisis, accounts only grew more contradictory," the story reads. "Some eyewitnesses remember dozens of other heroes present, including Green Arrow, Batwoman, and Elongated Man. Others remember heroes thought lost in time, like The Atom, or from other worlds, like Supergirl. Some even contend they saw Reverse Flash leading an army of 'shadow demons.'"

The contradictory stories make sense -- Crisis on Infinite Earths merged all of DC's realities into one shared Earth, and the resultant changes to the timeline changed decades of continuity. In order to have stories count if they wanted, and not count if they didn't, DC made the past hazy and memories unreliable.

The only character who lived through the entire thing and remembered it clearly was the Psycho-Pirate, who is also mentioned in the story.

What is arguably the most interesting point right out of the gate is that while the story refers to Supergirl as coming from another world and The Atom as being lost in time, Batwoman is just lumped in with Green Arrow and The Flash.

This seems to suggest that Batwoman will come from Earth-1 and that, if her series moves forward, she will share a homeworld with The Flash and Arrow.

There is an argument that even on Earth-38, Supergirl is known to be Kryptonian and therefore is from another world. One could extend that argument to say that a post-Crisis newspaper might have a combined multiverse to contend with and thus everyone would be living on the same timeline. The phrasing, though, feels specific. Besides, if Supergirl was a mainstay hero on the Earth where the paper was published, one would imagine that she would be lumped in with the other heroes and not singled out.

Another possible interpretation is that Batwoman could take place either on its own Earth or on Earth-38 alongside Supergirl, but by the time the Crisis happens, Earth-1's Batwoman becomes active.

With The Monitor coming to the "Elseworlds" crossover later this year, it seems likely that The Flash fans will not have to wait another 6 years to get a sense for what the Crisis might hold.

The Flash airs on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.