This year’s DC crossover extravaganza, Elseworlds, concludes on Supergirl and, as you’d expect, our heroes largely set thing straight in the multiverse. (Whoops, is that a spoiler? Nah, you figured that part out already, didn’t you?)
Having rewritten reality again, John Deegan (Jeremy Davies) narrates over the episode’s opening credits. In this new world of his making, he’s Superman (complete with Tyler Hoechlin’s good looks). He taunts Barry and Oliver, who are now without powers and are living in the identities of minor league criminals called the Trigger Twins, by promising lots more fun changes. Oliver outsmarts him by causing a construction crane accident that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders, forcing Deegan to choose between capturing them or playing Superman and saving the day. He chooses the latter, for reasons more narcissistic than altruistic. This gives Barry and Oliver enough time to escape.
In the first of many changes, we discover that S.T.A.R. Labs is now Superman HQ. John Diggle and Killer Frost are his brown-nosing first lieutenants. Deegan keeps Kara (Melissa Benoist) locked in the Pipeline with her powers dampened but not eliminated. The fact that she’s not from this universe fascinates him and he wants to study her. Kara’s sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) also works for Superman. She has a long ponytail, a bad attitude, and is still in the closet in this world. She’s very mean to Kara.
Barry and Oliver make a plan to go to Earth-38 to fetch the real Superman. To do that, they’ll need Cisco’s help, if they can find him. Searching his apartment, they wind up walking into a weird dimensional breach that takes them to a meeting with The Monitor. He unhelpfully tells them that they must know their true selves, and then sends them on their way.
Oliver and Barry discover that Cisco is a crime lord in this new reality. They find him in a seedy bar where Gary from the Time Bureau is the bartender, and James Olsen is his henchman. Fortunately, Cisco still has his vibe powers. (He attained his status by breaching in and out of bank vaults.) Playing into their new identities as the Trigger Twins, they make Cisco a proposal to help him get rid of that pesky do-gooder, Superman. Barry even offers to teach him how to breach to a different Earth. Cisco is intrigued by the possibilities of stealing stuff from other worlds.
It takes a lot of practice, but Cisco eventually transports them to Earth-38, where they meet Superman and Lois Lane in the Fortress of Solitude and ask Superman to come back with them.
From her prison cell, Kara gets Alex’s attention and manages to convince her that they really do have a history together. She appeals to Alex’s heart. It works and Alex lets her out of the cell, but they’re quickly caught by Deegan and Killer Frost.
Just then, a breach opens and delivers the real Superman, along with Cisco, Barry, and Oliver. Cisco realizes that he’s way out of his depth and runs away. The two Supermen fly off and fight, battling each other through the skies of Central City. The populace think that real Superman is Bizarro.
Alex brings Kara and Barry to Deegan’s Fortress of Solitude, which is in the Time Vault room. That’s where he’s been keeping the magic book. Neither Barry nor Kara are able to read it, so they bring it to Superman, who gets it open and sees all sorts of pretty lights. Almost instantly, all our heroes get their uniforms and their powers back.
Deegan grabs Barry. Oliver aims a Kryptonite arrow at him, but Barry convinces him to stand down. He believes that the Monitor’s cryptic instruction to know their true selves meant that they need to become better people. In Oliver’s case, that means being a lot less dark and broody and murder-y. Deegan grabs the book out of Superman’s hands and flies off with it.
Knowing that Deegan will undoubtedly use the book to rewrite reality into something even worse, Barry proposes that he and Supergirl can slow down time by racing around the Earth at super-speed. (Hmm, that idea sounds kind of familiar.) For some reason, they’re supposed to go in opposite directions, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but none of the science-magic gibberish in these shows ever makes sense. Superman warns them that he saw a vision of the two of them doing exactly this when he looked in the book, and the both of them died. Valiantly, they go anyway.
Oliver returns to the secret space portal to talk to the Monitor again. The alien is fairly impressed that Oliver has the balls to confront him, but says it doesn’t change anything. Oliver argues that if his test winds up killing the universe’s best hope of defeating whatever other evil is coming, then it’s a pretty stupid test. He has a point.
Clark fights Deegan again. The latter users his book to conjure the A.M.A.Z.O. robot. Before it can do anything, though, a new breach opens and delivers Lois (carrying a big-ass hammer), Brainy, and J’onn J’onzz. Brainy is excited to fight the robot. He deals with that while J’onn helps rescue civilians. Lois slams the hammer into the ground, causing a shockwave that knocks the book out of Deegan’s hands. In a petulant fit, Deegan tosses her through the air. Superman turns, trying to catch her.
At this moment, Barry and Kara successfully slow the rotation of the Earth. Time allows to a crawl. Oliver returns, moving normal speed, and shoots an arrow directly into the magic book, which explodes in another light show.
Superman saves Lois. Without his book, Deegan shrivels up like an old raisin. Barry and Kara survive. (Apparently, Oliver convinced the Monitor to change their destinies.) Brainy kills the robot. The universe is saved, hurrah!
What Will We Do Next Year?
Their mission accomplished, Supergirl, Superman and friends say their goodbyes and return home to Earth-38. Back at the Kent farm, Clark reveals to Kara that Lois is pregnant, and tells her that they’re moving to Argo City to raise the child. He feels confident that he’s leaving the planet in capable hands. “The world doesn’t need Superman if it has Supergirl,” he says. Before leaving, Clark brings Lois to the Fortress of Solitude and proposes to her.
On Earth-1, Barry and Oliver have drinks at a bar, glad to be back in their own lives. Oliver gets a call from Batwoman, warning him that Deegan has made a dangerous friend in Arkham Asylum. Cut to the loony bin, where we are him talking to the masked guy who hit Cisco with a van in Part 2. I take it he’ll be a character of note in the upcoming Batwoman spinoff.
The end credits then come up, already promoting the next crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, coming fall of 2019.
Episode Verdict
Goofy or nonsensical plotting is pretty much par for the course with any of these shows, so I’ll try not to dwell too much on questions like, for example, what the point was of the Monitor telling Barry and Oliver to know their true selves. That really didn’t amount to anything. What exactly the Monitor did in the end, or how Oliver convinced him to do it, will probably never make sense to me.
More to the point, the crossover was fun, and it ends well. On the scale of these things, I don’t think Elseworlds was quite as good as last year’s Crisis on Earth-X, but it’s still a fair bit better than the prior Heroes vs. Aliens.
Now we return to our regularly scheduled shenanigans, which means I can ignore Arrow for another year.
Back to:
Elseworlds, Part 1
Elseworlds, Part 2
