The Arrowverse’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” made the same mistakes as Avengers: Infinity War. The last two years have seen both Marvel Studios and DCTV achieve unprecedented success. In the case of the MCU, the Infinity Saga came to a dramatic close, with Thanos the Mad Titan snapping his fingers and erasing half the lives in the universe. Avengers: Infinity War grossed over $2 billion worldwide, while Avengers: Endgame made over $2.7 billion, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time.
More recently, the Arrowverse too has come to the end of a story that’s been over five years in the telling. The much-foretold Crisis on Infinite Earths has consumed the Arrowverse, viewed as a formidable success for DCTV. In its wake, it left a much-changed status quo, with the various heroes now all living on the same Earth. Heroes lives and heroes died, and the Arrowverse will never be the same again.
Avengers: Infinity War and Crisis on Infinite Earths were both hits, popular and well-received among fans and critics alike. And yet, for all that’s the case, neither actually paid off on their setup.
Avengers: Infinity War Failed To Deliver On Its Setup
Avengers: Infinity War was seen as the dramatic close of the ten-year Infinity Saga. Marvel committed to the idea of developing the Infinity Gauntlet in the aftermath of The Avengers, swiftly retconning the Tesseract and Loki’s Scepter as the Space Stone and the Mind Stone. Over the years, they introduced more of these Infinity Stones; the Reality Stone was introduced in Thor: The Dark World, the Power Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Time Stone in Doctor Strange. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, a vision saw Thor realize that someone was manipulating events on a cosmic scale, deliberately bringing the Infinity Stones into play.
Thanos himself was introduced in The Avengers’ post-credit scene, when The Other told him that humanity had proved more formidable than they had expected. “They are unruly,” the Other noted, “and therefore cannot be ruled. To challenge them is to court death.” That statement led Thanos to turn and face the screen, with a smile on his face. Writer-director Joss Whedon was clearly alluding to a comic-book-accurate Thanos, one who explicitly desired to “court Death.” The Mad Titan was developed in Guardians of the Galaxy, where he was working through intermediaries such as Ronan the Accuser. Thanos was revealed to be a genocidal madman who wiped out entire races and civilizations; indeed, he had done so to the Zehoberi, taking only one of them - Gamora - as his daughter. Thanos’ coveted Infinity Gauntlet was originally shown to be in Odin’s Vault, until Thanos himself donned it in the post-credits scene of Avengers: Age of Ultron; Marvel ultimately retconned Odin’s as a fake.
In the end, though, none of this setup paid off at all. Thanos was no cosmic manipulator, a Machiavellian madman who was orchestrating events across the galaxy; rather, he was simply an opportunist who sought the Infinity Stones out. Unlike the comics, Thanos didn’t desire to court death, but rather saw himself as a twisted servant of life; his aim was to rebalance the universe, because he believed explosive population growth across the cosmos was unsustainable. The Mad Titan hadn’t slain all the Zehoberi, but instead killed just half of them, and he believed Gamora’s home world had since become a paradise. What’s more, Thanos had the first Infinity Gauntlet fashioned for his use, raising the question of just what Odin’s was supposed to be a copy of. Even the writers of Avengers: Infinity War, Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, were unable to explain who Thanos was talking to in the post-credits scene. Viewed in the context of all this setup, Avengers: Infinity War was something of a mess - but it didn’t really seem to matter, and the film is loved by the same fans who insist continuity is important.
Crisis On Infinite Earths Also Failed To Deliver On Its Setup
The Arrowverse had been setting up Crisis on Infinite Earths for years as well. The pilot episode of The Flash revealed that Harrison Wells - aka Reverse-Flash - possessed a secret Time Vault, and he was was seen contemplating a newspaper from 2024. The main headline read, “Flash Missing, Vanishes in Crisis.” Beneath was a second: “Red Skies Vanish.” Details of this fateful newspaper story were revealed over the years, describing an apocalyptic scene in which the skies turned red and Barry Allen paid the ultimate price to save his world. Starling City’s Green Arrow, the Atom, and Hawkgirl were on hand, and later accounts included Batwoman, Supergirl, and the Elongated Man as well. They fought a legion of shadow-demons, apparently led by the Reverse-Flash. The article ended with a quote attributed to Psycho-Pirate himself, who claimed to remember the night’s events. “Worlds lived, worlds died,” he said, “Nothing will ever be the same.”
2018’s “Elseworlds” event was a direct setup for Crisis on Infinite Earths, introducing the Monitor, who was testing the heroes of countless worlds in order to find those who could save the Multiverse. It introduced the Psycho-Pirate, who was clearly aware of the coming Crisis, and even uttered that ominous prophecy. The buildup has continued since “Elseworlds,” with Nora West-Allen somehow changing the timeline and moving the Crisis earlier in time, from 2024 to 2019. Arrow season 8 revealed that the Monitor’s opposite number, the Anti-Monitor, had been building up his forces for some time, and was even responsible for founding the League of Assassins back in 1013 AD. According to The Flash season 6, the Crisis had been going on for a year now, with Jay Garrick watching worlds consumed by the antimatter waves for over a year.
As with Avengers: Infinity War, none of this setup actually paid off at all. The newspaper account bore no relation to actual events, and some of the named heroes weren’t even present for the Crisis. Reverse-Flash never appeared at all, nor did Psycho-Pirate. The Anti-Monitor was revealed to have been imprisoned since the dawn of time, until he was eventually freed by the foolish Nash Wells; it’s pretty much impossible to reconcile this with Jay Garrick’s observation that the Crisis had been happening for a year, or with the Anti-Monitor somehow founding the League of Assassins a millennia ago. There’s certainly no reason Nora’s actions moved the Crisis forward four years.
Why Is It So Hard To Deliver On Setup?
Both Avengers: Infinity War and Crisis on Infinite Earths failed to deliver on their setup. Questioned about Reverse-Flash’s absence, producer Marc Guggenheim explained that they simply wanted to take a different direction. “I guess what it really comes down to is not being beholden to a headline from six years ago that was not written by any of the showrunners involved in the crossover,” he explained. “A lot of things drive our stories, and a lot of things determine what choices we make….. To me, tracking toward a headline written six years ago is literally the definition of ’the cart driving the horse.’” It’s better for creative teams to have freedom and flexibility to tell the best story they possibly can, rather than be constrained by several years worth of setup.
The truth is that neither Marvel Studios nor DCTV were really working to a long-term plan when they first began to drop hints as to their overarching direction. What’s more, any plans existed in a context; creative teams change, and it’s not right for a new team to be bound by the decisions of their predecessors. Marvel’s case is even more extreme, because an entire corporate restructure was conducted in 2015, in large part because Kevin Feige disagreed with the rest of Marvel Entertainment on the running of the MCU; there’s no way he’d have then followed their guidelines. Both Feige and Guggenheim have been proven correct, because their respective events have been tremendous successes.
And yet, that doesn’t mean all should be forgiven and overlooked. Marvel Studios still tries to pretend they’re working to a carefully-defined plan, and market themselves on it; they’re a lot more flexible than they like to pretend, and it would be far better for them to be honest about it. Meanwhile, in the case of the Arrowverse in particular, some of the setup was established over the last year or so, when the basic elements of Crisis were surely already being worked out; it’s actually quite surprising that Nora West-Allen and Reverse-Flash were ignored by Crisis on Infinite Earths, given their prominence in The Flash season 5. “Elseworlds” is now disjointed on a rewatch, simply because Psycho-Pirate’s introduction was clearly supposed to be a big deal. Most egregious of all, both The Flash season 6 and Arrow season 8 were shot when Crisis on Infinite Earths scripts should have been finished, and they included explicit setup concerning both Jay Garrick and the League of Assassins. Those elements, at least, should never have been teased if DC didn’t intend to develop them in some way.
More: Crisis On Infinite Earths: Every Single Cameo In The Arrowverse Crossover
