Black Lightning: How Crisis On Infinite Earths Messes With Grace Choi's Bookshelf

The world of Black Lightning is, as Gambi guessed in tonight's episode, different in key ways from [...]

By Russ Burlingame

The world of Black Lightning is, as Gambi guessed in tonight's episode, different in key ways from what it was prior to "Crisis on Infinite Earths." But unlike Supergirl and Batwoman, which had relatively predictable changes given the events of "Crisis," something really huge happened to change the nature of life in Freeland. And the most obvious way is something that Jefferson said during this week's cold open, as he tried to brief Gambi on the events of the Crisis. Among other things, he said, "Superman is real!" And it's that revelation that fundamentally changes a lot of things about the show.

Like Earth-Prime, the world that "real" people inhabited int he pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Comics, Black Lightning took place on a world where the heroes of the DC Universe were comic book characters. Now, as the group battles a dangerous regime in Markovia, they find themselves merged with a universe where Arrow already faced a Markovian earthquake machine.

"I think once the crossover happens...we don't know what that's going to look like, in terms of, now it's one world," Adams told ComicBook.com on the set of Black Lightning earlier this season. "Within a world that was kind of real before, set in a real place versus this, crossover world. How are we going to kind of marry those two things? I mean, we'll have to create a new world order."

Part of that New World Order will be a fundamental change to the worldview of Grace Choi, Anissa's girlfriend and a comic book fan in her own right.

After all, among the many comic books and graphic novels found in Grace's apartment are titles featuring Superman, The Flash, Green Arrow, and Supergirl, among others.

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(Photo: Russ Burlingame)

One volume, Convergence: Infinite Earths Book 2, centered on universes from the DC multiverse as they existed prior to the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, meaning that there was literally a comic book about the Crisis before the Crisis happened. What happens when and if she finds out from Anissa that her father took part in something exactly like that?

"I think it's a fun thing for Jefferson because in our world and our universe, a lot of these heroes are fictional. They are comic books," series star Cress Williams told ComicBook.com of his character's role in the Crisis. "hey're comic books based on comic books, they're not comic books based on real people. And so, it's fun to interact with them and meet them for the first time. But I think once the crossover kind of ends...the conflict that's going on in Freeland is all meta-based. We kind of already got exposed to the fact that this metahuman thing is, at the very least, global. And then the crossover kind of illuminates that, Oh it's more than global. It's almost like a universal."

The Crisis brought together heroes from various eras of DC's TV and film adaptations, including Brandon Routh's Superman (originally seen in Superman Returns), Burt Ward's Dick Grayson (originally seen in the 1966 Batman series), Tom Welling's Clark Kent (originally seen in Smallville), Tom Ellis's Lucifer Morningstar (currently appearing in Lucifer), and Ezra Miller's version of The Flash, who first appeared in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and has his own solo movie coming up from the director of IT.

Fans can get caught up by watching all five parts of the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover on The CW's website or app now, or buying them through video on demand platforms. The post-"Crisis" Arrowverse began this weekend with new episodes of Batwoman and Supergirl before launching into new Arrow tomorrow and Black Lightning tonight.

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