What a great crisis on the infinite earth means death for the arrowhead

After a year of teasing and building, the annual crossover of the CW returned again, this time with a focus on adapting the legendary Maxiserie Crisis on Infinite Earths. The debut hour of last night is really in full swing, going through a threatening prophecy that’s been hinted at for months!

[Ed. Note: This post contains important spoilers for the first episode of Crisis on Infinite Earths.]

Like his comic-namesake, Crisis first destroyed some universes – including the Universes of the Titans of the DC Universe and the Batman Movie of 1989 – but ends with the death of Oliver Arrowverse’s first leading superhero, the Green Arrow.

Yes, really, he dies; along with his delayed daughter Mia, Oliver, and various Earth-1 heroes in Supergirl’s Earth-38 world to fend off a horde of Shadow Demons while Supergirl’s team is working to evacuate all humans on the planet before a wave of antimatter hits and effects erases all.

Just as the monitor declares everything for a wash and continues teleporting the heroes, Oliver decides to stay and fight the demons himself – with his bare fists as soon as the arrows go out. Later, Oliver dies surrounded by his various friends and daughter in the hideout of his team after saving a billion lives with his one-man fight against the monsters.

“This is not the death I predicted,” says the monitor shortly after the Emerald Archer has expired.

Oliver died several times on the other side of the arrow, but it is more likely to stay here. Arrow’s final season is about Green Arrow helping the monitor because he knows he’ll die on the infinite earth in the crisis. That Oliver’s death happened in the very first episode of the crossover – and in an episode of Supergirl no less – was an important point, according to executive producer Marc Guggenheim.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Guggenheim admitted that with the seventh season finale of Arrow, “they’ve spoiled their own story” when the monitor came to recruiting Oliver in the Cosmic War, and told the hero he was going to die. Killing him in the first hour was one way to determine the stakes. “If Oliver Queen can die in the next four hours, no one is safe.”

During the eighth season of Arrow, Oliver has been given the chance to say goodbye to his loved ones, from his mother Moira and his sister Mia to Quentin Lance, an ally of the enemy. He made peace with his death and got the chance to see that his children will have a future as heroes. Before battling the Shadow Demons, he baptizes Mia as the new Green Arrow, complete with her own costume. It is implied that this death affects everyone in different ways for the remainder of the transition, with some trying to reverse it, and others fully accepting the end of their friend. It would not be the first time anyone in this universe has attempted to reverse a person’s death.

The Oliver we know may be gone, but all this has an extra crease. Stephen Amell casually announced in July that he would play several versions of Oliver for Crisis. In this first lesson, we encounter one of these alternate versions: a greyish Green Arrow from Earth-16 in 2046. For the rest of the crossover, certain Olivers will certainly emerge and emotionally engage with the surviving characters when they are all together paths cross. So Amell will be listed as a guest star by The Flash tomorrow night, but we do not really know who he plays.

Nor is it clear what Oliver’s death means for the contribution of his own show to the crossover aired in January. All that’s known at the moment is that it will serve as a source story for both the monitor and its brother, the Anti-Monitor, recently raised in Arrow. There will be no doubt that an Oliver will show up, but it will probably not be our Oliver, unless something even stranger happens.

The crisis on infinite Earth continues tonight with the episode of Batwoman.

Justin is a freelance writer from Kansas City, Missouri. He is also an avid lover of McDonald’s M & M McFlurries and accepts that he is addicted to it.