Each new piece of news about the upcoming “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover on The CW seems to make DC fans more and more excited about the story, which will air across five episodes of five different DC Comics-set TV series in December and January. One of the biggest surprises for long-time fans was the revelation that Ashley Scott, who played The Huntress in the 2002 Birds of Prey TV series, would be reprising her role in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Any tie to such a short-lived series was a shock, but Scott was not even the first name that fans would have expected from Birds of Prey, since her co-star Rachel Skarsten currently appears on Batwoman in the role of Alice, the season’s big bad.
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It was Skarsten who shared with ComicBook.com, during an interview at New York Comic Con earlier this month, some details about the nature of Huntress’s return in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Apparently, Scott will be repurposing some original Birds of Prey wardrobe for the shoot.
“I have a little tidbit for fans!” Skarsten told ComicBook.com, explaining that Scott had called her the day before Batwoman premiered. “She kept, actually, her necklace from Birds of Prey and her Huntress belt, and she’s bringing it back and they’r going to incorporate it into the costume that she’s wearing. She actually kept the bodice as well, but she was like ‘I don’t know, I think something got into it; it’s totally shredded.’ That was like 97 years ago so I’m surprised she even still has the stuff.”
You can check out what Scott’s Huntress looked like below.
Ashley Scott, played Helena Kyle — the vigilante known as The Huntress — on The WB’s 2002 series Birds of Prey. The series 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).
“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 Ashley Scott as The Huntress.
“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.
