This one wrap ups in a one-night two-parter, bridging the ante-penultimate episode of Arrow and the beginning of the new season of Legends of Tomorrow. The frenzied fun of the first half in December (where a lightning tour through the multiverse as we watched many alternate Earths die afforded us several knowing cameos and winks from the history of the DCU on TV) gives way to epic tragedy, as we truly are dealing with the beginning of time, the end of everything. Not to mention the second and presumably final death of Oliver Queen.
The Arrow half finds the remaining paragons trapped in time, somehow surviving on a decaying shoal in the midst of infinite nothingness. It’s a bit cliched for time travel stories and gets better once the heroes get some actions to perform. Their coping mechanisms with frustration are repetitive. Their release comes thanks to Oliver’s new afterlife as the Specter, and his ability to take the heroes through his shattered memories in the Speed Force on the way to the Monitor’s first tragic mistaken experiment. It’s convincing not so much due to science or even believable emotional arcs (the stakes are insane), but due to the ongoing connection one has to these Paragons, who are a well-chosen bunch including Batwoman, Supergirl, White Canary, Martian Manhunter, Flash and unfortunately of course, Lex Luthor. Lex has given himself superpowers at last (such a comic book trick on his part) and tries to convince the nascent Monitor to remake the world his way until Kara shows up and tells him the truth.
The end comes when the heroes confront the Anti-Monitor (still pretty much a monster movie reject) and his shadow-demons (CGI visibly improving as the story progresses) on his turf, where Oliver must make another final sacrifice to give the multiverse a chance. Marv Wolfman co-wrote the episode (and appears as a superfan in the next one) which may explain the Teen Titans and Doom Patrol glimpses and the ideas of a multiverse persisting in time.
Not exactly like the previous ones, however, as our heroes find when they wake up on what turns out to be the new Earth-Prime, which now features Barry, Kara, Batwoman, Black Lightning (and presumably his supporting cast), and the Legends all living in the same universe. As Kara exults, even Argo City is back in space where it belongs (and thus Clark and Lois and their baby). But there are a couple of problems with this reality. The only ones who remember the previous one are the Paragons themselves, and Lex has convinced everyone he’s actually a pretty super-guy himself who magnanimously runs everything like clockwork (with the willing aid of Lena). And, even worse, the Anti-Monitor is coming back.
This leads to two ludicrous but entertaining scenes that make me think I should really start watching Legends again. One involves a giant giggling furry blue guy called Beebo (think Stay Puft from Ghostbusters) who seems to be familiar to the Waverider crew, and the other involves a giant Anti-Monitor being attacked by our reunited paragons, which is somewhere between the airplane hanger scene from Avengers Civil War (featuring Spider-man and Giant Ant-Man) and the old trick the Living Monolith used to pull against the X-men whenever he got a power-up. We know how the CW-Verse would do Galactus if they had a chance, all I’m saying.
It’s giddy and over the top and very very earnest (so very DC), and the means the team uses of finally dismissing the threat of Mobius is basically technobabble (though excusable when voiced by the once and future Atoms now in this universe) but does at last set the remaining shows up to continue their stories in a much more easily-shared universe. Not to mention Barry has repurposed an old Star Labs warehouse as a meeting place for some sort of continuing League of Heroes (or whatever snappy name they might eventually come up with…), complete with a dedicated round table with place markers. Oliver gets the honorary empty chair.
And when they need another Crisis, there’s still Earths 2, 9, 19 and 21 to go visit (we get glimpses of Stargirl, Wildcat, and Swamp Thing among others).