While Black Lightning‘s midseason finale, “Earth Crisis,” is not an official chapter of the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover, the episode will set up Black Lightning (Cress Williams)’s appearance in the crossover event tomorrow night, and it is dealing with the multiverse, alternate Earths, and red skies. Along the way, audiences got to meet the Earth-1 version of Jefferson, Anissa, and Gennifer (that’s the spelling on this Earth, at least) Pierce. On this Earth, things in Freeland are still operating under ASA control, but Jefferson’s approach to dealing with it has been significantly different than on the “main” Black Lightning Earth.
On this Earth, Jeff is more pragmatic, going along with the ASA and teaching their line in schools. He has the opportunity to do it since he is now the secretary of education — something that happened in the comics back when Lex Luthor was President in the 2000s. Also, both he and Anissa have no powers at the start of the episode.
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That’s because this is a Lightning-centric episode, and on Earth-1, we find out that she tried to save the city by tampering with the water supply, making it so that anybody who drank it would be cured of the metagene — including Jefferson and Anissa. That earned her the ire of Odell, and she ended up under house arrest, with a control collar around her neck preventing her from using her own powers. It was only Jefferson’s complicity with the ASA that helped keep her out of prison. The family lived in seeming domestic bliss, with a significant dinner spread on their table as Jefferson wore a Christmas sweater and prepared for a gathering.
Still, that wasn’t enough to prevent Odell and the ASA from cracking down on the Pierce family when he learned that Jefferson was running an underground railroad for metahumans. They stormed the house, took Gen into custody, and killed Jefferson.
Whether this is the “real” Earth-1 fate of the Pierces is hard to say, since he suggestion here is that Black Lightning did exist in some capacity on Earth-1 and never came into contact with the other metas of the world. It also places the Crisis on or around Christmas — about two weeks after the Crisis happens on Earth-1 in Supergirl, Batwoman, and The Flash this week.
Black Lightning is wrapping up its 2019 this week, and will be back in January. At that point, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be over, and many fans are expecting that by that time, the Pierces and Freeland as we know them will be a part of Earth-1, folded into the “main” continuity as so many Earths were following Crisis on Infinite Earths in the comics.
