Black Lightning Fans Are Confused About the Multiverse After “Earth Crisis”

Tonight was a bit night for The CW‘s DC TV shows. Not only was it the second hour of the Arrowverse’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event, but the Black Lightning mid-season finale made some major connections between that show — which had previously been considered completely its own world — and the Arrowverse’s shared Multiverse. While this was something that fans had been hoping for pretty much since Black Lightning’s series premiere nearly two years ago some of the details of that connection left fans with more questions than answers.

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

Tonight’s episode of Black Lightning saw the red skies of “Crisis” come to Freeland and, in the process, saw Jennifer encountering versions of herself from other Earths. In the episode we’re introduced to “Gen”, the Earth-1 version of Jennifer Pierce and “Jinn”, the Earth-2 version. Each of the two versions represent extremes of the “main” Jennifer with Gen wishing she didn’t have her powers and Jinn going a bit overboard with hers. As Jennifer realizes this, though, the other two versions are wiped out by a white wave — and then the “main” reality is as well.

On the surface, this was all very exciting as it established Earth-1 and Earth-2 versions of the Pierce family which would place them firmly in the Arrowverse reality. However, as fans soon realized, there were some issues with that. The first is that Earth-1’s Gen story took place around Christmas — which would put it post-Crisis, something that wouldn’t add up if Earth-1 was destroyed later in the episode. That destruction also created a sub-issue since Earth-1 is currently still in existence. The second issue is that Earth-2, where Jinn was theoretically from, had already been destroyed during the Arrow Season Eight premiere weeks ago.

As one might expect, these issues had fans on social media trying to figure out what was going on, especially with the “main” Black Lightning universe being destroyed tonight at the end of the episode with the titular hero appearing to have been saved at the last moment by The Monitor.

Read on for how fans are reacting to the mid-season finale of Black Lightning and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Holy crap

Those couldn’t be Earths 1 and 2

Isn’t it already gone?

I’m confused

Did this happen earlier in the timeline?

This makes no sense

Accurate

So flawed

Explanation please

Right?