Here is How Black Lightning “Earth Crisis” Ties to “Crisis on Infinite Earths”

In the lead up to The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” fans were delighted with a number of casting announcement and plot teases with many of them delivering things that many people have had on their wish lists for years. Among those announcements was one that Black Lightning/Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) would be joining the Arrowverse, finally having an opportunity to be part of the epic crossover event and proving a concrete link between Freeland and the worlds of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and more. As Black Lightning had previously been held apart as its own world entirely separate from the Arrowverse, the only real question was how it would come together and it’s something that tonight’s Black Lightning mid-season final answered.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Black Lightning, “The Book of Resistance: Chapter Four: Earth Crisis,” below.

Very quickly into tonight’s episode, Black Lightning made a pretty major connection to if not the Arrowverse itself, but the general idea of a Multiverse when, while Jennifer Pierce (China Anne McClain) waited for Anissa (Nafessa Williams) at her apartment the skies of Freeland turned a terrifying red. The lightning in those red skies quickly became an issue for Jennifer, rendering her unconscious. As fans of the Arrowverse know, those red skies are an indicator of the anti-matter wave that is destroying the Multiverse. It would seem that, with those red skies hitting Freeland, Black Lightning‘s Earth is in that threatened Multiverse.

One could take those red skies and consider it enough of a connection. After all, each of the Earths between the now-destroyed Earth-38 and Earth-1 are in danger with worlds dying every moment. Red skies means you’re in the Crisis, case closed. However, Black Lightning has a deeper connection and a greater tie-in, something made horrifyingly clear at the end of the episode. While most of the episode is centered around Jennifer meeting and experiencing the realities of an “Earth-1” and “Earth-2” version of herself, they are eventually wiped out before her eyes as their worlds disappear. Moments later, in the show’s reality, the white wave we’ve previously seen destroy Earth-2 spread through Freeland, taking the Pierces and Gambi with it.

Except, in the instant before the wave hit his family, a blue light enveloped Black Lightning and he disappeared. It’s the same blue light that we’ve seen when The Monitor breaches people away. It appears that in the final moments of his world, Black Lightning was saved by The Monitor and it’s something that we know from the preview for tomorrow night’s third hour of “Crisis” we will see confirmed. The hero has been drafted into the fight for the Multiverse, even though his world is now gone.

“Black Lightning gets pulled into the conflict in a very surprising way,” Williams explained in a recent interview. “He’s not prepared for it. So, he doesn’t know these people. He’s getting introduced into the world for the very first time, and so there’s some conflict early on when he’s trying to figure out, ‘Who are you people and why am I here?’ He’s kind of left off-center, which was really fun to play.”

“Crisis on Infinite Earths” will continue across The Flash on December 10th at 8/7c. Following a midseason break, the event will conclude on Tuesday, January 14th, with new episodes of Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow.