Characters In Crisis On Infinite Earths With More Meaning Than You Realized

Ever since 2018's Elseworlds crossover threw together characters from The Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl, fans of the CW's DC superhero shows have been waiting for its sequel, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Not only was the presence of the Monitor — a pivotal figure in the game-changing 1985-86 comic mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths — a clear sign that Crisis was coming, but the name of the crossover was teased at the end of Elseworlds. Now, the event has finally come and gone and oh, did the cameos flow freely.

DC Comics used the original event series to, among other things, streamline their sprawling narrative by eliminating certain timelines and folding others into more popular ones. As a result, the original Crisis visited just about every corner of DC's comic book universe, and the TV crossover worked hard to do something similar.

Rather than visiting different comic book corners of the DC Universe, the CW's ambitious crossover reached out to the live-action TV and film adaptations of the past and present to weave as many as possible into Crisis' rich tapestry. At the same time, pre-existing Arrowverse characters were reshaped into reflections of the source material's pantheon. Here are the characters in Crisis on Infinite Earths with more meaning than you realized.

By the way, from here on in, be prepared for many SPOILERS.

Among the myriad of different worlds we're shown succumbing to the antimatter wave in the opening minutes of Crisis on Infinite Earths is Earth-9. We see only two young heroes' faces before the end comes, and if you're not familiar with the DC Universe streaming service's original programming, you might not have any idea who they are. 

Both heroes hail from DC Universe's very first original series, Titans. The hero in the red-and-white suit is Hawk — one half of the heroic duo Hawk & Dove — and the younger hero in the domino mask is Robin. Specifically, this Robin is Jason Todd who, in the comics, is the second boy to take on the name Robin, eventually dying violently at the hands of the Joker. 

Before Part 5 of Crisis, this cameo was the only one referencing a show existing at the same time as the CW's Arrowverse series. That changes at the end of Crisis' final installment, when quick snapshots of alternate Earths in the restored multiverse reveal stars of other DC Universe series like Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing. The sequence includes shots from the Titans series, letting us know those heroes survived and that Crisis didn't ruin their plans for their third season.

There's one cameo in Crisis that has nothing to do with an old DC Comics adaptation. Early in Crisis Part One, a bearded man is doing his best to panic his fellow National City citizens on Earth-38, holding up a sign proclaiming "Prepare to meet thy doom, the end of the world is nigh" and shouting about how even Supergirl won't be able to save any of them. Moments later, the self-styled prophet of doom is shut up by a dragon-like creature's random attack. Predictably, the dunce is saved by the quick action of Supergirl.

This isn't an anonymous maniac, but nerd icon Wil Wheaton. Along with appearing in more contemporary fare like Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, Wheaton became famous as River Phoenix's best friend in the 1986 drama Stand By Me and later as the child genius Wesley who was barely out of puberty by the time he was piloting the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  

The Monitor, played by LaMonica Garrett, is a character lifted directly from the original DC Comics event Crisis on Infinite Earths.

When the multiverse was created, most universes were comprised of positive matter, but there was one made of anti-matter. On the Moon of Oa — the planet from which the Guardians of the Universe protect creation with the Green Lantern Corp — the Monitor was born. The Monitor is a living, breathing avatar for the positive matter in the universe. In the anti-matter universe his opposite, the Anti-Monitor, is born on the moon of the planet Qward. Each is instantly aware of the other, and they battle for millennia.

In the later event Final Crisis, this is retconned with the explanation that a being known as the Overmonitor created a probe to explore the multiverse, and this probe separated into two beings — the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor. It's unclear which of these origins Arrowverse will adhere to.  

Just as the Arrowverse introduced the Monitor a year before Crisis, the Monitor appeared in DC's comics about three years before the original Crisis, with the enigmatic figure almost always appearing in shadow with his face hidden. Just as it happens in the TV event, the comics crossover sees the Monitor recruit superheroes to help, and just like the end of Part Three of CW's Crisis, in the comic it's a corrupted version of Harbinger that kills the godlike being.

After Lex Luthor gets his hands on the Book of Destiny in Crisis Part Two, he decides to wipe out every Superman in every reality. The vengeful (and ultimately futile) quest brings him to man chopping wood at a farm who has no S on his chest and little patience for Lex. The man is Clark Kent, played by Tom Welling, from the hit series Smallville. Lasting ten seasons, Smallville begins as a prequel series showing us characters from the Superman mythos starting out in the series' namesake small Kansas town, and eventually ends with the Kryptonian embracing his destiny as Superman. 

But in Crisis, Part Two, we learn that since the conclusion of Smallville Clark has given up his powers and settled in to a simpler life. When Jon Cryer's Lex Luthor travels to Earth-167 to deal with Kent, the revelation that this Superman gave up his powers makes him furious with confusion and disbelief. He leaves, telling Kent he's "taken all the fun" out of the prospect of killing him. Shortly afterward Clark's wife Lois — played again by Smallville's Erica Durance — shows up to find out what's going on. Of course, when Clark tells her, she thinks he's joking. 

In Part 2 of CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, Batwoman and Supergirl travel to Earth-99 to recruit who they believe is the multiverse's Paragon of Courage: that Earth's version of Batman. Instead of a Paragon, the pair find a bitter, angry Bruce Wayne who is a dark fusion of different versions of the Dark Knight. 

Kevin Conroy, best known as the Batman of The Animated Series, has given his voice to Gotham's protector in numerous animated TV, film, and video game projects for the past 27 years. In Crisis Part Two, he physically portrays the Dark Knight for the first time. While Conroy's already played an older Bruce Wayne in the cartoon Batman Beyond, we learn here that Earth-99's Wayne is much different from the Wayne who mentors a new, younger hero. Nodding to the version of the character in the dystopian 1996 comic Kingdom Come, Conroy's Batman is confined to an advanced exoskeleton he needs to move. 

We learn that this version of Wayne would eventually resort to murder to achieve his goals, including killing his world's Superman. Moments before his death, Wayne tells Supergirl, "My parents taught me a very different lesson — that life only makes sense if you force it to." The line comes from the 1986 comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, from Batman's narration as he fights Superman, though even that darker realization of Bruce Wayne doesn't seek to kill Clark. 

Ever since Tom Cavanagh's original Flash character Harrison Wells bit the dust, it seems we've gotten new alternate Earth versions of Wells every season. Sometimes they're scientifically illiterate fakes, and sometimes they're French-born detectives with a penchant for not paying their bills. This season of Flash begins with a version of the character named Nash Wells, who has a bit of an Indiana Jones flare, but that changes when he unintentionally frees the Anti-Monitor and causes the Crisis. As punishment, Wells is made into Pariah and is forced to witness tragedy as it unfolds. 

Things work a bit differently in the comics. In the Crisis comics Pariah's real name is the kind of Star Wars-y sounding Kells Mossa. Kells conducts experiments allowing him to see the birth of the universe, but in doing so attracts the attention of the Anti-Monitor, who destroys Mossa's Earth. The Monitor saves Pariah's life and gives him the unenviable ability to travel from Earth to Earth, witnessing as each is destroyed. 

In Crisis Part Three, Team Flash's Cisco Ramon joins the efforts to find the multiverse's Paragons, and among other his efforts lead them to a scientist named Ryan Choi, the Paragon of Humanity. He's unique among the Paragons in that he isn't a superhero or supervillain, though if the source material is any gauge, that won't stay true for too long. 

In DC Comics, Ryan Choi first fills Ray Palmer's place by taking his job at Ivy University and later by taking on his abilities as the new version of the shrinking hero Atom. Choi's solo series All-New Atom folded after 25 issues, though he remains Atom in the comics. He's eventually murdered by Deathstroke, but after DC's line-wide New 52 reboot and the subsequent event Convergence, Choi returns to the narrative. He appeared in the most recent Justice League of America series as the Atom, alongside an eccentric line-up that included Batman, Lobo, and Killer Frost. 

Crisis ends without Ryan Choi joining the superhero club, as the Atom or anyone else. However, it is Choi's idea to neutralize the Anti-Monitor by creating a device that causes him to shrink infinitely, so it could be a more super future is in store for the Paragon of Humanity.

Crisis Part Three sees the return (and sacrifice) of the Flash of Earth-90. Last year's CW crossover, Elseworlds, opened with this version of the Flash being the sole surviving hero on Earth-90. He soon joined the Arrowverse heroes to face the Monitor, but disappeared early in the crossover without a trace. We now know where he was — as a prisoner of the Anti-Monitor, Earth-90 Flash was forced was to run a treadmill that powered the antimatter wave. Toward the end of Crisis Part Three, he sacrifices himself to stop the wave and save Earth-1. 

This isn't just another alternate universe Flash. Played by John Wesley Shipp, this Flash is the same hero who was the lead for the short-lived The Flash series from 1990 to '91. CW's The Flash has never been lazy about paying tribute to its predecessor. Shipp has played multiple roles on The Flash, including versions of the hero from other worlds, as well as playing Barry Allen's father, Henry Allen. Other actors from the earlier series have shown up, including Mark Hamill (who played the Trickster in the '90s series) and Amanda Pays (who plays a different version of Tina McGee).

In the second and third installments of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the heroes search for a way to bring Oliver Queen back to life. In Part Two they bring his body to a Lazarus Pit on an alternate Earth, where they manage to revive Green Arrow's body, but not his soul. The heroes recruit John Constantine to help get Queen's soul, and in Part Three they travel to Purgatory to retrieve it. After a tearful reunion it seems that Oliver will return to the land of the living... until a mysterious man named Jim Corrigan appears. 

If you're a DC Comics fan, then that name means a lot. Jim Corrigan is a former police detective who takes on the role of the Spectre, a powerful entity who in some incarnations is meant to be the literal Wrath of God. In the comics, Corrigan was eventually replaced as the host for the Spectre by the Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who had died in the 1996 event Final Night. The fact that Corrigan appears when he does and stops Oliver Queen from crossing over back to the land of the living suggests that it may now be Oliver Queen who is called upon to be the host of the Spectre. 

This isn't the first time Jim Corrigan has appeared in a live-action series. Emmett Scanlan played Corrigan in the short-lived Constantine series. A few years earlier Fox announced development of a Spectre live-action solo series, though it never saw the light of day.

Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 5 gives us a cameo that probably went over more heads than, say, the Ezra Miller Flash or the appearance of Smallville cast members. But plenty of DC Comics readers knew exactly what was going on. Shortly after the multiverse is restored, Flash and Supergirl find themselves in a brief team-up in National City against Weather Witch. After they take her down, the heroes seem confused, each one thinking the other has somehow traveled to their Earth. A man calling himself only "Marv" approaches them to ask for autographs and his dialogue is what lets the two heroes know that their formerly disparate Earths have been fused into the tapestry of one — Earth Prime. 

Fittingly, Marv is not a random civilian. His name is Marv Wolfman and he is, in fact, the guy who wrote the original Crisis on Infinite Earths comic book mini-series. Wolfman's worked in comics for decades, with both his work on Crisis and the series New Teen Titans — both of which he wrote alongside legendary artist George Perez — proving to be two of the biggest landmarks of his career. He also spent some time in the Marvel bullpen, and among other things he co-created the half-vampire warrior Blade made famous by Wesley Snipes.

In the last installment of his aftershow, Crisis on Infinite Earths Aftermath, following Part 3 of the CW crossover, Kevin Smith aired a preview of the upcoming series Stargirl, set to both stream on DC Universe and to air on the CW. But the end of Crisis Part 5 gives us a look at not only Stargirl, but her super-powered allies during the series of glimpses we get of the different alternate Earths in the restored multiverse. 

The first alternate Earth we see is Earth-2, which will apparently be the home of the new Stargirl show. The shot is introduced with two heavy robotic feet slamming into the ground, which belong to the massive robot Stripe. Courtney Whitmore is there as the titular hero, and along with Stripe, she's joined by Doctor Mid-Nite, Hourman, and Wildcat. Together, they will presumably be Stargirl's answer to the classic supehero team, the Justice Society of America.

In the series of visions from different parts of the multiverse at the end of Crisis Part 5, we get visits from current series like Titans and Doom Patrol as well as the upcoming series Stargirl. But Crisis doesn't forget one of the sadly canceled DC live-action adaptations. On Earth-19 we get a brief shot of Andy Bean relaxing in the Louisiana swamp as the plant-based creature known as Swamp Thing. 

Swamp Thing was a short-lived DC Universe horror series whose cancellation was announced before the second episode even aired despite largely favorable reviews. We've never heard any official word on exactly why Swamp Thing got the axe. A widespread story claimed the cut came because of budgetary concerns caused by an accounting error on the part of the North Carolina state government, but that has since been debunked.  

Regardless of why Swamp Thing didn't seem to get a fair chance at life, it was good to see CW's Crisis pay tribute to the series. 

Crisis saves perhaps the least expected cameo for last, though it's debatable whether or not you could even call it a cameo. After the members of the new Justice League try out their conference table chairs, they hear some kind of squeaking animal noises. At first, you might be thinking the giant blue puffball Beebo has returned for a second round, but no — it's a different blue animal being referenced. The camera goes to a back room in this new Hall of Justice, where we see a cage that seems to have been recently opened. We don't see the creature that's escaped, but the name "GLEEK" is printed on the bottom of the cage. 

Gleek can only be one beast: the alien monkey companion to the Wonder Twins on the classic '80s Superfriends cartoon. Was this just a nod to tales of old, or could it be that we'll see Gleek and maybe even the Wonder Twins in the Arrowverse in the not too distant future? Well, if there's anything Crisis has taught us, it's that when it comes to how far its creators are willing to reach back into the DC Comics mythos and that of its related media, nothing is out of bounds.