In the final moments of last night’s Supergirl season finale — yeah, we know, everyone was watching Game of Thrones — there were a few cryptic teases about what role Earth-38 will play in the upcoming “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover. As he didin the Arrow finale, The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) arrived, but this time rather than being objectively on the side of the heroes, he first freed a character from some kind of prison who will apparently turn out to be a major threat next season — and then tracked down Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer), whose death in the finale will apparently serve as a prelude to some role in “Crisis.”
What role? Well, it is impossible to know yet. The Monitor arrived and simply waved his hand in Luthor’s direction, ending the season. Lex has been dead and revived in the comics too many times to count, but given that it is The Monitor, and it is “Crisis,” there is one particular guess that makes a lot of sense: somehow, Luthor may be used as a stand-in for Alexander Luthor, Jr. In the original “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” Alexander Luthor of Earth-3 (the world where the Crime Syndicate rules the world and Luthor is the only hero standing against them) and his wife Lois Lane had a baby just as the event began. The Monitor and Harbinger promised to save their son — but did so by taking him off-world.
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During the battle with the Anti-Monitor, Alexander Luthor Jr. was aged and educated at an accelerated rate. His body, it turned out, was half-matter and half-antimatter. This should have been unstable and caused massive destruction (and Luthor’s death), but somehow he managed to control it and was ultimately key to stopping the Anti-Monitor and saving the multiverse. Earth-3 is a lot different in the Arrowverse than it is in the comics, with Earth-2 more or less standing in as the world ruled by criminals — and no mention so far of evil Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman doppelgangers. That likely means that if Alexander Luthor Jr. is going to play a role in “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” they will need to find a way to justify it…maybe by imbuing Lex Luthor’s lifeless form with some of the Monitor’s powers in order to approximate the character.
Obviously there is no guarantee this is the direction they are going, but given how popular Cryer was as Lex Luthor, and how difficult it seems to be for The CW‘s series to get DC approval for major characters to appear over longer periods of time, it may be a way to kill two birds with one stone, all while building to “Crisis.”
Supergirl will return to Sunday nights on The CW in the fall.
