written by Kate Danvers
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT
Time to stick this landing Legends-style! Oh, Arrowverse. You’re not prepared for the coming nonsense.
Kara wakes up in her apartment and nearly torches Alex with heat vision. The world is restored! Was it all a dream? Nia calls her to an awards ceremony where the Nobel Peace Prize is presented to Lex Luthor. Also he now runs the DEO and everyone thinks he’s super great. Welcome to Hell, Kara.
No one seems to remember the events of Crisis except Kara, Lex, and J’onn – the Paragons. There’s an attack downtown though so Kara flies into action against…Weather Witch? Barry arrives to make short work of the Rogue, further confusing things. They both think they’re on their own Earth and a passing fan (cameo by Crisis On Infinite Earths co-writer Marv Wolfman) confirms that Supergirl and the Flash have always been allies and are well-known to the people of this Earth.
You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!
Sara finds herself in an alley in S.T.A.R. City, so she calls Ray and meets him at a bar. Ray has no memory of the Crisis but recognizes J’onn, who’s come looking for them. J’onn telepathically restores Ray’s memories and explains that the multiversal reboot merged Earth-1 and Earth-38.
Nash Wells is found in the tunnels below Central City and brought to S.T.A.R. Labs. J’onn restores Nash’s, Caitlin’s, and presumably the rest of Team Flash’s memories. Nash is rightly berated for releasing the Anti-Monitor in the first place.
Sara goes to the Bunker looking for Oliver, but he hasn’t been seen. She thinks if everyone else came back, maybe Oliver did too. But Team Arrow already had Felicity do a global search for him and he’s nowhere to be found. Barry and Kara enter the Bunker and hear the news about Oliver. They question why Oliver didn’t also give himself a fresh start. John reckons Oliver had to sacrifice his life to make the new Earth possible.
Suddenly, an alert goes off. The city is under attack!
“I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never ever possibly destroy us.”
Everyone is freaked out except Sara, who is a veteran of weird shit. Still, she calls her team to ask which of those assholes summoned Beebo. Behrad and his totem are on the Waverider and all six totems are needed to summon Beebo, the Paragon of Cuddles.
If you’re not a Legends viewer, this will sound like complete nonsense to you. If you are a Legends viewer, this will sound like familiar nonsense.
Ray takes a selfie before he, Barry, Kara, and Mick (who was at a book signing nearby) attack Beebo. Aww, he just wants to la-la-love you! They try to trip up the blue god with a utility cable, but Beebo slips right through as if he’s not there. This Beebo isn’t real, so after some debate (and Kate’s arrival) they determine that Beebo is just a diversion and find Sargon the Sorcerer robbing a bank. Barry and Sara scold him: “Beebo? Is nothing sacred?” and “Beebo is off limits!” Once Sargon’s knocked out, Beebo vanishes.
Nash crashes the post-Beebo celebration with dire news: He’s detecting anti-matter in the area. It’s not over.
Sara is feeling down because she’s lost the last connection to her old life. Oliver was the last person close to her who knew her before the League of Assassins, the Legends, and everything. Barry gives her a pep talk about found family and she says yeah, the Legends are her family. They’re interrupted by a shadow demon. There are more out there hunting the Paragons. They save Ryan from another shadow demon and meet in the Bunker.
Ray and Ryan come up with a plan to stop the Anti-Monitor – build a gadget to continually shrink him through the Microverse where he can never escape. Nash, Ryan, and Ray go to S.T.A.R. Labs to build the device while Sara, Kara, Barry, J’onn, Kate, Nia, John, Rene, Alex, and Clark hold the line against the shadow demons. After round one, the demons coalesce into the Anti-Monitor. Sara leads the heroes in their final stand “For Oliver!” The Anti-Monitor shields himself at first, then grows to gigantic proportions.
The Geek Squad works while Mick, Frost, and Jefferson hold off the shadow demons trying to come for Ryan. Jefferson’s Earth was merged into this one as well, and J’onn has already restored his memories. Needing to finish the device fast, the geeks call Barry to the lab to assemble the device.
Impressive tech, but can it run Crisis?
Barry and Ray head to the big battle. Ray activates the device and passes it to Kara, who throws it at the Anti-Monitor. It shrinks him down to nothing and dispels the shadow demons.
Some time later, the heroes watch a televised presidential address talking about the battle with the Anti-Monitor and Oliver Queen’s sacrifice. During the montage, we see that Lyla and John have both of their kids in this new Earth – John Jr. and Sara. Speaking of kids, Clark now has two, which confuses him…but it really shouldn’t because he wasn’t a Paragon, and therefore should only have memories of this new Earth.
A montage narrated by Oliver shows that the multiverse still exists: Earth-2, home of the new Stargirl series; Earth-12, the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern universe (seriously?); Earth-19, home of the short-lived Swamp Thing series; Earth-9, Titans; Earth-21, Doom Patrol; and finally, Earth-96, where Kingdom Come/Superman Returns Clark lives on.
And then there’s the new Earth: Earth-Prime. Kara, Barry, and Sara all speak at a memorial service for Oliver at an abandoned S.T.A.R. Labs Research Facility, which we later see will become the Hall of Justice. Barry wants to use it so they can all gather if they’re ever needed again. Jefferson wonders how often the world nearly ends. Oh, Jeff, you have no idea what kind of bullshit your world just got retconned into.
Barry unveils a round table with the emblems of Superman, Supergirl, White Canary, Flash, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Martian Manhunter, and Green Arrow on the back of each chair. The seven heroes take their seats as the founding members of…huh. What are we going to call this group? A crash is heard, the heroes realize they’ve got a pest problem, and an ominous open cage labeled “Gleek” is shown as the Super Friends theme plays us out.
Even when they’re dead, the 1% still get a seat at the table.
Okay, they stuck the landing. Huge crossovers are difficult to pull off in any case – the comic book source material of these shows has a shaky history with them itself. But the CW managed to tell one of the biggest DC Comics storylines in a condensed and television-friendly way. It ended about how I expected, hitting the comic’s major beats along the way and putting the Arrowverse’s own fun spin on it.
The merger of Earth-1 and Earth-38 has been a long time coming and I like the new status quo. I also like how that status quo was presented before and during the Beebo fight, with the heroes working together like they have been doing it for years, because now they have been! Kara is no longer the really strong alien lady who visits once or twice a year; she’s their neighbor. Everyone is on a first name basis with J’onn, aliens are a common thing, and yeah, sometimes team-ups are going to happen where another hero pops in because one of their villains wandered into your turf. The Arrowverse is one big happy family now, and I love it.
We got a small taste of what’s in store for Kara now that Lex is her boss, but we didn’t see many changes that will be coming to The Flash, Legends, Black Lightning, or Batwoman. I hope The Flash mentions a little of what’s going on with the new multiverse. I don’t expect a lot of Earth-hopping going forward, but it would be nice to know what happened to Jesse, Harry, and Jay. I’m also curious about Laurel’s status now. Is she part of Earth-Prime now? I guess we’ll find out in the spinoff, but there are so many questions I want answered now!
I’m pleased with this episode and the crossover as a whole. When The Flash hinted at a Crisis in its very first episode, I never imagined a crossover on this scale. It wasn’t perfect, but it made the comic geek in me very happy.
CRISIS PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR
Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays on the CW at 9 ET/8 CT. Kate can be reached on Twitter @WearyKatie.