“Elseworlds” Confirms Earth-38 Has a Batman

While tonight’s hour of “Elseworlds” took fans of the Arrowverse crossover to Gotham City, many fans were disappointed because it was Batwoman that the heroes met and not the Dark Knight himself. However, despite the lack of Batman there was major thing to come out of the episode when it comes to the Caped Crusader: he officially exists, not just on Earth-1, but on Earth-38, too.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Arrow, “Elseworlds Part 2,” below.

Heading over to Gotham City tonight, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), and Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) meet Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) who confirms that despite Oliver’s assertion to the contrary, Batman was a real figure but he — and Bruce Wayne — have been gone for three years. Within that conversation Kara talks to Kate about how her cousin is friends (though she quickly corrects that to “frenemies”) with Batman, an official confirmation that the character exists on Earth-38.

The key word there is “official”. Batman has long been suggested to exist within the Arrowverse generally, but specifically on Earth-38. Back in Supergirl‘s second season, the show noted in “The Adventures of Supergirl” that Gotham City existed and was a pretty rough place when a family declares that they’re going back to Gotham when things get a little wild. Later, in “The Darkest Place”, James (Mehcad Brooks) makes his first forays as Guardian and the introduction of this new vigilante prompts Kara to talk about Clark’s “frenemy” — describing him as “nuts”. With most of these references being rather vague, getting official confirmation that Clark’s frenemy is Batman himself feels like a huge win.

Unfortunately, just because we know he exists on Earth-38 doesn’t mean we’ll get to see him anytime soon. While we don’t really know what’s going on with Earth-38 Batman, with Batwoman having made her Arrowverse debut it’s very unlikely that Batman will show up especially with a solo Batwoman show in development and rumored to be filming its pilot episode this spring. For now, the knowledge that the Caped Crusader exists not just on Earth-1 but on Earth-38 as well will have to suffice — and Batwoman will just have to get to work trying to save Gotham City.

The “Elseworlds” crossover will take place across three nights, kicking off on Sunday, Dec. 9th on The Flash at 8 p.m. ET. It continues on Arrow Monday, Dec. 10th at 8 p.m. and then finishes up on Supergirl Tuesday, Dec. 11th at 8 p.m. ET.