Legends of Tomorrow EP Answers the Crisis on Infinite Earths Timeline Question

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will begin its season in January, with its first installment being not the season premiere but a “special episode” that is part of the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event. Because the episode was filmed halfway through the season (after all, all of the other Arrowverse shows were producing for a fall schedule), fans have wondered how, exactly, the “Crisis” episode will fit into the timeline of Legends. turns out, the answer is simple: it will take place before the season begins and, according to “Crisis” showrunner Marc Guggenheim, the timeline will be very clear once fans have seen the episodes.

The answer came after a fan asked about it on Twitter, where Guggenheim has been busy, dropping promotional bits and a few answers here and there about the upcoming mega-crossover. You can check it out below.

At the end of last season, some of Hell’s worst souls had been freed to roam the Earth by Astra Logue (Olivia Swann), the girl whose soul John Constantine (Matt Ryan) accidentally damned years ago. Astra will presumably serve as the season’s big bad, but even before that, a battle with the demon Neron resulted in some of the timeline being rewritten, and Zari (Tala Ashe) will no longer be part of the team, since her brother (the previous bearer of her totem) never died. Any one of those concepts could tie into why it’s immediately obvious where in the timeline the Crisis falls.

“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.