The Next Arrowverse Crossover Will Be Smaller Than Crisis - and That's Good
After “Crisis on Infinite Earths”
changed almost everything about the Arrowverse, there's a lot of directions the universe can go. However, when it comes to the next crossover, things are going to scale down, at least if it's up to
Marc Guggenheim.
“Crisis” destroyed the multiverse as fans knew it. Everything in the DC Universe (well, the TV and movie ones at least) was erased, with Purgatory, the Vanishing Point and the Speed Force being all that was left for a short time. It seems rather difficult to go bigger than that -- the “Infinite” in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” is there for a reason. Maybe it could be done, but trying to top yourself every time paints you into a corner and could cause people to get sick of stories that are big just for the sake of being big.
Constantly having big events getting bigger can get tiring, distracting from the individual stories and making it a lot harder to follow if you’re not watching everything. This hasn’t been much of a problem with the Arrowverse so far, but taking a step back and letting the next crossover be a smaller event will go a long way to avoid fatigue.
This is especially relevant to “Crisis on Infinite Earths” because it has serious after effects. The crossover is finished, but it’ll take a while to get used to the new status quo. Following the universe being restored and the year-long buildup between “
Elseworlds” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, fans of the Arrowverse have been in “event mode” for a while now, and going bigger would just make it more exhausting.
The first Arrowverse crossover, “Flash vs. Arrow”, was a really simple affair; the main casts of
The Flash and
Arrow visited each other’s cities and had some fun teaming up and fighting. The next crossover, “Heroes Join Forces," set up
Legends of Tomorrow, introducing the reincarnating Hawk people and the immortal tyrant Vandal Savage. “Invasion!” was about an alien attack, but
Supergirl had already introduced that idea, so it wasn’t nearly as out there as “Heroes Join Forces” was compared to what had come before it.
“Crisis on Earth-X” was the first crossover to include every show and featured alternate versions of most the heroes, feeling like almost a first draft of “Crisis on Infinite Earths." Its flurry of cameos and big set pieces made it the biggest crossover yet. “Elseworlds” pulled back a bit, featuring fewer shows and setting up an epic story more than telling one of its own. “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, the most recent crossover, takes the cake as the largest-scale event, however, featuring a plethora of cameos, massive battles and an entire universe being built.
The pattern so far has been to roughly alternate big crossovers and smaller ones. Since “Crisis on Infinite Earths” was the largest yet, it makes sense that the next one will tone things down a bit. It fits into The CW's design, and with how well it’s worked, there doesn’t seem to be a need to alter it at all.
What fans really want to see rather than massive battles, is there favorite character interacting, that's what the crossovers started out as. Yes, we’ve spent a lot of time with these heroes -- Barry Allen and Sara Lance have been part of the Arrowverse since 2013, and even Kate Kane and Clark Kent are pretty well developed for only having been in about a dozen episodes each so far, but that's not what it's about. People spend months watching these individual series and they feel rewarded when all the characters get together.
What could be the focus of the next event is how the newly formed Justice League operates. How do all of them work once they’re a permanent team, not just individual heroes working together? What about newcomer Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning, who’s just now started interacting with the rest of the Arrowverse? The next crossover is probably going to have a big threat for them to fight against, but that’s not the secret to these characters. From the first crossover pushing Barry Allen and Oliver Queen to fight each other and work together, the crossovers have succeeded based on how well these characters bounce off of each other. A story more focused on the heroes would do a lot to establish the Justice League and give a bit of a breather from the big events.
"Crisis on Infinite Earths," the latest five-show crossover between all the Arrowverse series, is now available on The CW's streaming service in its entirety.
Batwoman is really dope with everyone and I can't say I haven't liked her.
