Black Lightning: Was There a JSA on Earth-Prime?

When it comes to "firsts" in The CW's Arrowverse, the post-"Crisis on Infinite Earths" comes with more questions than answers. On The Flash, Cisco Ramon's (Carlos Valdes) post-"Crisis" timeline offered up the new, merged timeline on Earth-Prime, tracking the first appearance of many of its heroes and potentially suggesting that Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and Black Lightning (Cress Williams) were the first active heroes despite the Arrow finale's suggestion that it was Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) who truly came first. It's something that didn't allow for the Justice Society of America, however, and tonight's episode of Black Lightning came with a revelation about firsts all its own that now begs the question more directly: did the JSA even exist on Earth-Prime?

Spoilers for Monday's episode of Black Lightning, "The Book of War: Chapter One: Homecoming", below.

In "The Book of War: Chapter One: Homecoming," Black Lightning reveals the origin story of Tyson Sykes/Gravedigger (Wayne Brady) and it's a brutal one. The contents of the mysterious briefcase revealed that the U.S. had created Gravedigger as part of a "super-soldier" program prior to World War II. According to Gambi (James Remar), Sykes' latent metahuman gene was activated during the experiments, giving him powers and making him the world's first metahuman, powers that the government used for secret missions and ultimately lead to the Markovian conflict that has been central to Season 3.

However, if Sykes was the first metahuman does this mean that the Justice Society of America didn't exist on Earth-Prime? On DC's Legends of Tomorrow, the JSA was established as a top secret organization of metahuman heroes that were tasked with fighting the Nazis during World War II. We know, thanks to Legends, that the organization was already an established team in 1942, when the Legends encountered them. This timeline puts them roughly on track with Sykes' history, something that can be further confirmed by the photograph of the President of the United States on the wall in the lab where Sykes is experimented on. The president pictured is Franklin D. Roosevelt who served in office from 1933 to 1945.

So, there are a few things we theorize take from this. The first is that Sykes and the JSA did, in fact, exist at the same time but that Sykes was the first "manmade" metahuman, meaning that he got his powers through experimentation rather than exhibiting them naturally as one can perhaps assume members of the JSA did. The second is that while the JSA and Sykes operated at the same time, Sykes began his work earlier, perhaps gaining his powers in the mid-1930s something that would in fact make him the "first".

The third, however, is one that might end up making a lot more sense given the Stargirl of it all and that is that the JSA no longer is part of Earth-Prime's history and, instead, exists only on the new Earth-2, unknown to Earth-Prime's heroes. This theory works particularly well when you consider that the upcoming Stargirl series was shown as being part of Earth-2 in the new Multiverse montage at the end of "Crisis". The JSA is a major component of Stargirl's story, with Courtney Whitmore taking up the Cosmic Staff that once belonged to the JSA hero, Starman.

Whatever the case of the JSA ends up being on Earth-Prime, Gravedigger has a long, terrifying history and is set to cause some real challenges for Black Lightning as the series winds down its third season and puts the hero and the big bad on a major collision course with Freeland in the balance.

Black Lightning airs Mondays at 9/8c on The CW.