Crisis Of Infinite Expectations

For the past five years now, the various Arrowverse shows have had annual crossover events, in which characters from one series team up with those of another to fight a foe bigger than both of them.

We got Flash Vs. Arrow in 2014, Heroes Join Forces in 2015, Invasion! in 2016, Crisis On Earth-X in 2017 and Elseworlds in 2018.

As with most things in life, some of these crossovers were better than others. I didn't care much for Invasion!, as it was overly talky and took three episodes before the actual story finally kicked in. Crisis On Earth-X was probably the most enjoyable of the lot, although Elseworlds had its moments as well.

The main problem with these crossovers is that Ol' Devil the TV Budget. The writers cook up these epic cinematic stories, but it's simply impossible to do them justice with CW money.

Which brings us to Crisis On Infinite Earths. It's being billed as the crossover to end all crossovers, as it'll involve ALL the Arrowverse shows, and feature cameos by every character who's ever appeared in any of the series.
 

It's based of course on the DC Comics Crisis On Infinite Earths miniseries, which debuted wayyyy back in 1984. It was an attempt by DC to simplify and streamline their mulitiverse, which didn't need simplified or streamlined. It starred virtually every character DC ever published, and was truly epic in scope. As the promotional material promised, it changed the DC Universe forever, as every character was affected in one way or another, and several even died.

Predictably, the internet is going absolutely apesh*t over this crossover, which begins sometime in December. Every tiny nugget of news, every casting announcement and every leaked photo creates a massive buzz on fan forums. I cannot emphasize this enough— you have no idea how big a deal this is to fandom.

I'll admit, it does look like fun. Look at this photo, for example. Crisis is giving us not one, but TWO Supermen (Supermans?). And one is played by Brandon Routh, who starred as the Man Of Steel in 2006's Superman Returns! Except here he appears to be playing the older Superman from DC's Kingdom Come graphic novel (confused yet?). I gotta admit, that's pretty damned awesome!

And therein lies the problem. At the risk of spoiling everyone's fun, I'm kind of worried that people's expectations are wayyyy too high for this crossover event. People have worked themselves into such a frenzy of anticipation that they're literally expecting to see the equivalent of Infinity War/Endgame on their TVs. Seriously! Fans are actually commenting that Crisis will be better than both those films combined!

That's just plain not gonna happen, guys. Remember last year when everyone (including myself) was excited that the 1990 version of the Flash (played by John Wesley Shipp) was gonna appear in Elseworlds? Well, he appeared alright— for two minutes, tops! Talk about a letdown!

That's how I fear it's gonna be with this new crossover. I have a feeling it's gonna be a lot of talking and exposition, broken up by one big action scene per episode. No matter how cool the leaked photos look, anyone who thinks Crisis is gonna out-Marvel the MCU is going to be sorely disappointed.

So please, everyone, let's all just calm down and lower our expectations a notch or ninety. Look forward to it by all means, but try and temper your anticipation, lest you be let down hard. And who knows, maybe I'm full of beans and Crisis On Infinite Earths really will be comparable to Infinity War! I'd be happy to be wrong if that turned out to be the case.

All that said, that is a kickass suit Routh's wearing. Never thought I'd see the Kingdom Come Superman in live action. And he's even wearing the red trunks!