Tonight’s third hour of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” hit fans with some major surprises as the heroes assembled their team of Paragons in order to attempt to save the rapidly-dwindling Multiverse. One of those surprises left fans with their jaws dropped as the episode closed on a cliffhanger — one that won’t be picked up again until January 14 with the Arrow hour of the crossover. While that’s a long time to wait, The CW has released a preview for that upcoming episode — one that will lead into the event’s finale.
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Looking at the preview — which you can check out above — it won’t just be the seven Paragons making a final stand against the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett). They’ll be joined by Oliver Queen, newly minted as The Spectre, a magical being of immense power. Of course, just because Oliver is now the Spectre and the Paragons are the key to saving the Multiverse, the Anti-Monitor is still, well, the Anti-Monitor. As Oliver explains in the preview, the eight heroes may not be enough to stop him but it’s clear that they’re going to put up a major fight. We’ll just have to wait until January 14 to see how it comes out.
The “Crisis” event brings together the heroes from multiple Earths to battle against the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), a godlike villain who threatens to destroy all reality. In the comics, the story ended with the deaths of The Flash and Supergirl, and the destruction of DC’s multiverse, leading to a single Earth with a complex history packed with hundreds of heroes.
The event is the most ambitious thing DC has ever attempted in live action, bringing together characters from all six of the current DC Comics adaptations on The CW (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Black Lightning), along with characters and actors from Titans, the 1990 version of The Flash, the short-lived Birds of Prey, Smallville, Superman Returns, Tim Burton’s Batman, and the iconic 1966 Batman series.
“Crisis on Infinite Earths” kicked off this week with Sunday night’s episode of Supergirl, ran through last night’s episode of Batwoman and tonight’s episode of The Flash. That serves as the midseason cliffhanger, as the shows go on hiatus for the holidays and return on January 14 to finish out the event with the midseason premiere of Arrow and a “special episode” of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which launches as a midseason series this year and so will not have an episode on the air before the Crisis. And while Black Lightning‘s midseason finale is not technically part of “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” there are red skies, and the episode’s title is “Earth Crisis.” So things are not too far removed.