Birds of Prey Star Ashley Scott To Play Huntress in Crisis on Infinite Earths

Ashley Scott, who played Helena Kyle -- the vigilante known as The Huntress -- on The WB's 2002 series Birds of Prey will reprise the role in The CW's "Crisis on Infinite Earths," TVLine reports. The series, which also starred Rachel Skarsten, who is now playing Alice on Batwoman for The CW, ran for 13 episodes before being cancelled, but has remained present in the minds of fans, in part because it was the first live-action portrayal of The Huntress and Harley Quinn, and in part because it used the Oracle version of Barbara Gordon, who was in a wheelchair and commanded the other Birds of Prey from a home base. Skarsten was Black Canary in the film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off's Mia Sara was Harley Quinn, and Dina Meyer was Oracle.

Earth-1's version of The Huntress, whose real name was Helena Bertinelli, appeared on early episodes of Arrow, played by Jessica De Gouw (who has expressed interest in reprising it before the end of Arrow). Scott Pilgrim vs. the World's Mary Elizabeth Winstead will play The Huntress in February's Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).

For her part, this is Scott's second attempt to enter the Arrowverse. She auditioned for the role of Kate Spencer, the district attorney who in the comics would become the Huntress-like vigilante known as Manhunter, on Arrow. That character never got to suit up, though; she died while in the district attorney's office because in Star City, the mortality rate among white collar city officials is significantly higher than that of costumed folks who rove the streets fighting mass murderers.

"Crisis on Infinite Earths" has loomed over the Arrowverse for years. The series premiere of The Flash featured an allusion to the hero disappearing amid red skies in the year 2024. During the original comics event, red skies were a sign of doom to come to a world during the Crisis. At the end of last season, a couple of things happened: The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), who had appeared in "Elseworlds," reappeared and revealed that Oliver Queen was destined to die in the Crisis...and the future newspaper at STAR Labs rolled back the expected date of the Crisis from 2024 to 2019.

In the comics, Crisis on Infinite Earths centered on a battle between the combined superheroes (and even some villains) of the DC multiverse and an immortal, cosmic threat known as the Anti-Monitor. Like The Monitor, the Anti-Monitor will be played by LaMonica Garrett in the Arrowverse. As the Anti-Monitor destroys realities, he replaces their positive matter energy with antimatter, growing his own power and sphere of influence. He was eventually stopped by the sacrifices of several heroes, including The Flash and Supergirl, as well as the merging of multiple universes to save reality by becoming a single, unified timeline. Fans have long wondered whether the events of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" might bring Supergirl and even Black Lightning to Earth-1, where the rest of the series take place. The crossover will also feature guest appearances by Tom Welling as Clark Kent, Erica Durance as Lois Lane, John Wesley Shipp as the Flash of Earth-90, Johnathon Schaech as Jonah Hex, Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne, and Brandon Routh as Superman.

"Crisis on Infinite Earths" kicks off on 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.