Now that Avengers: Endgame has been seen by hundreds of people, and finds itself basking in nearly-unprecedented critical praise for a big-budget blockbuster, the minds behind Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow have to be thinking that a trip to the movie theater could help show them the good and the bad of telling a single, epic story that serves as the culmination of dozens of hours of live-action superheroes and has to provide satisfying closure to (at minimum) the story of the character who first launched the franchise to begin with (y’know — since Robert Downey, Jr.’s contract is up and Arrow is ending next season).
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The parallels are pretty easily apparent, and fans of the Arrowverse have been making Endgame comparisons ever since “Crisis” was announced back in December. Whether or not there is any truth to it, quite a few fans have long assumed that Iron Man will die in Endgame and Oliver Queen will die in “Crisis.” Even if that is not the case, those characters will almost certainly be taken off the table, and the stories themselves will be the epic culmination of stories that have been teased for years — in the case of “Crisis,” since the pilot for The Flash five years ago.
One could argue that Avengers: Endgame was first teased at the end of Marvel’s The Avengers in 2012, when Thanos showed up as the mysterious benefactor to the Chitauri army. A more compelling argument might be that the road to Endgame really began in 2014, when Guardians of the Galaxy introduced Josh Brolin’s Thanos and told the story of the Infinity Stones, setting up casual audiences who did not already know what to expect from the Mad Titan to understand the stakes of what would become basically every movie from then until this week, when the “Infinity Saga” ends with Endgame.
“Crisis on Infinite Earths” will have something else in common with Avengers: Endgame: it will have fan expectations that are virtually impossible to live up to. From everything we have heard, it seems as though Endgame has done the impossible and managed to surpass those lofty expectations, delivering a worthy and enjoyable finale to 11 years of movies. That is a tall order, although it is arguably an even taller order to bring a worthy and enjoyable finale to eight years of the Arrowverse, which weighs in at around 75 hours of TV a year…and to do so by adapting a massive, fan-favorite, and seemingly un-adaptable comic book series that is, years later, still held up as the gold standard to which other event comics aspire.
How did Avengers: Endgame do it? How did they balance the various tones demanded by each character or group of characters? How did they provide a satisfying closure to characters fans have been watching for years? And can it be done again? It’s time for fans and other artists alike to take a look, break it down, and start thinking about the next “biggest superhero event yet.”
Avengers: Endgame is in theaters now.
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