Supergirl Reveals How Crisis Impacted the Future in Back From the Future Part One

Sunday's Supergirl delighted fans with the return of Jeremy Jordan's Winn Schott when the fan-favorite character came back from the 31st century and his life with the Legion of Super-Heroes to stop a sinister, alternative reality version of himself. When the heroes weren't dealing with the Winn-as-Toyman threat, they were able to catch up with Winn offering not just an update on his own life but a look at how "Crisis on Infinite Earths" impacted the far future as well.

In "Back From the Future Part One", Winn explained the impact that the new Toyman would have on his future if not stopped. Specifically, he explained that it would endanger his future with his wife Ayla and daughter, Mary. Fans of Supergirl (as well as DC Comics more broadly) may have recognized the name Ayla as it's likely a reference to Ayla Ranzz, better known as the Legionnaire, Lightning Lass. While any mention of Legionnaires is exciting this one is of particular interest because Supergirl has mentioned the character before, just under much more bleak circumstances.

Back in Season 3 when Mon-El (Chris Wood), Imra Ardeen (Amy Jackson), and Brainiac (Jesse Rath) all came from the future, they eventually revealed the reason that they couldn't help Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) with her fight against Reign (Odette Annable). It turns out that reason was a catastrophic event in the future involving the planet Winath, the home of Ayla Ranzz. In Mon-El's explanation, a thousand years into the future the thriving Winath goes dark with Ayla heading home to find out why. She arrives to find her world decimated and dried out due to the machinations of creatures called The Blight. These creatures sound like a nightmare, described as consuming anything in their path and while Brainiac 5 did figure out how to stop them, they were unable to act. Instead, they stored the information of how to defeat The Blight in their DNA so that when time comes around again to stop them, they will be able to. The trick is that they must stay alive long enough to do so.

In Season 3, Supergirl and her allies ultimately defeated the Kryptonian Worldkiller, Pestilence who would eventually become Blight. One could argue that by stopping her in the 21st century, it erased the timeline in which Ayla would be killed by the Blight and they wouldn't really be wrong. However, with the resetting of reality in "Crisis" and the creation of Earth-Prime, it had remained a bit of a mystery how the changes impacted the future. It would have arguably been possible that the new Earth-Prime future did see Pestilence become The Blight. Winn's reveal indicates that was thankfully not the case. She's alive and well, happily married to Winn - a status that was left intact thanks to the defeat of Toyman.

What did you think about the reveal about Winn's marriage to Ayla? Let us know in the comments below.

Supergirl airs Sundays at 9/8c on The CW.