DC's 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' Part 1 Recap (Spoilers Ahead)

The 5 part Crossover on the CW DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths has officially begun guys, and let me tell you all, I am on the edge of my seat. I'll be covering some of the main points of this episode and my thoughts on the ending and where its headed. For those who have not been watching the shows and episodes, and even movies leading to this crossover, fair warning SPOILERS AHEAD! So let's get right into it.

The beginning of the episode starts off with Mar Novuu, aka The Monitor, explaining the multiverse theory. In the beginning there was a single Earth with one purpose, then with the coming of free will created man's imagination thus resulting in the creation of the multiverse which then lead to the creation of the Age of Heroes. Some of these hero's have worked together before, but now the entire multiverse is at stake. The episode then transitions into the different Earths that have been affected by the wave of anti-matter by either showing the Earth vanishing or the skies being turned completely red. Of the Earths that were shown here they are listed in case some of you were curious about them: Earth-89, Gotham City (Michael Keaton as Batman's Earth), Earth-9, San Francisco (Titans Earth with Hawk and Robin aka Jason Todd seen vanishing), Earth-X (Nazi Earth from Crisis on Earth X. The Ray is shown having nowhere to go as his world vanishes), and finally Earth-66, Gotham City (a man is seen walking his German Shepard before noticing the sky turning red and shouting, "Holy crimson skies of death!" Yep that's him, that is Burt Ward or more commonly known as the Robin from the Adam West's Batman series).

From there Lyla Michaels, now fulfilling her new role as Harbinger, begins to recruit heroes that The Monitor has scouted who are destined to help him in battling against The Anti-Monitor and his army. Harbinger travels to get The Flash, Green Arrow, Mia Smoak, Batwoman, The Legends of Tomorrow, Lois Lane, and Superman from Earth-1 and Argo and teleports all of them to Earth-38 to team up with Supergirl, Brainy, Alex Danvers, and John Jones. Lyla explains that there is a wave of anti-matter that is sweeping across the universe at an alarming rate and there doesn't seem to be any way of stopping it. Lyla brought all the heroes to Earth-38 by orders of Novuu to make their stand against the Anti-Monitor. An earthquake then shakes the entire building as a giant tower appears in National City, to which Barry, Ray, and Lyla say that its a quantum tower and its the only thing that can help them save Earth-38.

The heroes are then divided into groups to fulfill their missions that they have either been assigned or set for themselves. Oliver, Barry, Kara, Mia, Batwoman, and Superman stay to protect the quantum tower from being overtaken by the Anti-Monitors army. Sara, Brainy, and Lois learn that Johnathan, the son of Clark and Lois, somehow traveled across space and time after being sent off in a pod before Argo vanished and made its way to Star City in the year 2046. The same Star City the Legends went to in season 1, only to find out that it was not just Star City 40 years in the future from that time. It was also Star City from Earth-16. John and Alex create a contingency plan in the event that the heroes would fail and enlist the help of Lena Luthor to create an space bridge to evacuate as many people as possible from the planet before it was too late.

Before going off into battle, Mia and Oliver have a little father-daughter moment. Oliver calls Mia into a room to give her a present. Inside the container he had waiting for her was a new Green Arrow suit to which Mia believed that Oliver would be wearing it before they head into battle. But he said that it would not quite fit him and that no matter what happens the world should at least have one Green Arrow. This was a defining moment for Mia as Oliver has now passed on the torch to his daughter and she will do everything that she can to live up to his expectations both as Mia Smoak and as the new Green Arrow. Barry and Oliver also have a small talk as well to discuss their fates of what is going to happen to them during Crisis. Oliver already knows his fate and that is to die during the events of Crisis so that Kara and Barry would both live because of his sacrifice. However this proves to be contradictory when Barry says that The Monitor came to him and prophesied the events of the newspaper that Team Flash have been monitoring since the beginning will now come to play during Crisis and that The Flash must die so that the multi-verse may live. Oliver rejects that statement because of the deal that he made with Novuu which was to spare Kara and Barry so long as Oliver died. But the Flash vanishing in the Crisis was another matter entirely, Novuu said to Oliver.

Sara, Brainy, and Lois track the pods signature to the Bunker in Star City which is home to the Oliver Queen of Earth-16 whom Sara had already meet once before, or had she. Just as they were looking for the baby Oliver attacked all three of them. He took out Brainy no problem, but completely froze up when he saw Sara. I don't know if this Oliver had some mental illness, memory loss, or they were in the right place, just wrong time, before the Sara from 2016 traveled to this Earth and time. Either way, Oliver had the baby in his care, but is still battling a darkness inside of him.

Meanwhile back at the quantum tower Batwoman, Supergirl, Superman, Flash, Atom, Green Arrow, and new Green Arrow were fighting off the Anti-Monitor's army trying to keep them away from reaching the roof while John, Alex, and Dreamer worked on evacuating everyone off the planet. Once they had taken over the roof, the quantum tower would come crumbling down and the very universe of Earth-38 would be eradicated before them. The heroes fought against the phantoms with everything that they had but as The Monitor had told them beforehand, they had never faced an army quite like this before. Seeing the inevitable The Monitor appeared on the roof of the quantum tower while the heroes were still trying to protect it, but ordered them that they must retreat so that they could save their resources for more battles yet to come. Novuu teleported Atom, Batwoman, Supergirl, Superman, new Green Arrow, and Flash off of the quantum tower to safety and told Oliver that it was time, they had done all that they could but there was nothing else that they could do. Oliver asked Novuu if the planet had been completely evacuated, but Novuu said that it had not at that point, to which Oliver replied that it was not time yet and continued on to fight, even preventing Novuu from teleporting him out of there with an arrow made to temporarily paralyze him. Oliver fired arrow after arrow at the phantoms as they continued to knock him down until he got back on his feet and tried to draw another from his quiver, but he was all out of arrows. The army of phantoms gathered in front of Oliver as he dropped his bow to the ground and charged straight ahead at them. The battle was lost, the quantum tower crumbled, the planet was evacuated as much as it could have been, and Earth-38 vanished from the energy of the anti-matter wave.

Back in Star City in the bunker, the heroes were waiting to regroup and figure out where they go from here. Novuu brought back a badly beaten and bloodied Oliver as the heroes gathered around him. Oliver fought to his very last breath knowing that every moment he kept on fighting was another life saved. In doing do he was able so save 1 billion lives because of his actions in addition to the 2 billion others that had been evacuated from the space bridge. With his dying words, Oliver told Barry that he is the very best of them and that he gave it all up for him and Kara. The two of them would have to be the ones to save them now. He then told Mia to find William and Felicity to let them know how much he loved them and that he loved Mia as well and to keep him in her heart. While Oliver was on his deathbed, a flash of light appeared and from it came Harrison 'Nash' Wells, who was no longer Nash Wells anymore, but now Pariah a man sentenced to bear witness to the actions of the Anti-Monitor for the cost of freeing him from his confinement. The Monitor said that it was not supposed to end like this, he foresaw his death completely different to which Pariah said that things are turning out much differently than expected.

I don't know about you guys but I certainly wasn't expecting the death of Oliver Queen this early on in the Crossover, or even like this. Many fans would probably agree, while Oliver did die like a hero in this episode there still feels like there's something more that the writers could have done to give him a death more true to his character. Yes, he did sacrifice himself to save 1 billion people, but kind of being the leader of the group you would think that he would have a more 'Iron Man' like death. Like The Monitor and Pariah said though, things are turning out much differently than expected and that this was not the death that he foresaw, so maybe the team will have a plan to bring him back? Who knows, but as for how the rest of the Crossover will play out and what other sort of interesting cameos or surprise alternate realities we may come across during this special we'll just have to wait and see. I know I'm still looking forward to some certain things that were said to happen, (*cough, Kevin Conroy as Batman and the eturn of Eobard Thawne the Reverse Flash, cough*). Part 2 of the Crossover continues with an all new Batwoman follwed by Black Lightning and you better believe that I'm gonna have all the details for you guys right here. Till then let me know in the comments what you guys are excited about during this crossover, some theories that you think may happen, and other surprise guest cameos and appearances that may happen.