The CW’s five-part “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event, which concluded Jan. 14, left us with lots of questions — here, from Arrowverse overlord Marc Guggenheim, are several answers, about no-show Reverse-Flash, Laurel, Baby Sara, MIA Iris, that big-screen cameo and other topics.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW WHY DIDN’T THE FLASH FACE OFF AGAINST REVERSE-FLASH, AS IRIS’ NEWS STORY HAS LONG FORETOLD?
“I guess what it really comes down to is not being beholden to a headline from six years ago that was not written by any of the showrunners involved in the crossover,” says Arrowverse EP Marc Guggenheim. “A lot of things drive our stories, and a lot of things determine what choices we make….. To me, tracking toward a headline written six years ago is literally the definition of ‘the cart driving the horse.’
“We’ve had Reverse-Flash so prominent in the Arrowverse over the years, including in last year’s crossover and the crossover before that…. I love the character and I love Tom [Cavanagh] as a person, and I certainly love Matt Letscher’s version, but you have to make choices.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW WAS THERE ANY ELEMENT FROM THE COMIC BOOKS THEY REALLY TRIED TO INCORPORATE , BUT SIMPLY COULDN’T?
“Good question. I’ll leave the answer to that to the folks on my Twitter feed,” Guggenheim jokes.
“Obviously, there are always financial limitations we run up against. We made the decision very early on that we were going to spend our money on bringing over as many characters from other universes and other properties as possible, and we did that knowing that it would probably limit the scale and grandeur of some of the fight sequences. But you make your bed and you lie in it.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW DOES THE NEW MULTIVERSE OLIVER CREATED HAVE DOPPELGANGERS? LIKE, IS THERE A STARGIRL ON MULTIPLE EARTHS OR JUST THE NEW EARTH-2?
“The thing that excited all of us is that we’ve created this new status quo,” says Guggenheim. “You got a taste of it in [‘Crisis’] Hour 5, but the fun for all the shows now, going forward, is you get to peel back the layers of the onion on that. So, I don’t actually want to answer; I would much rather see those answers come in the form of the actual episodes.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW LEX LUTHOR REGARDED AS NOT JUST A GOOD GUY BUT ‘THE BEST GUY’ IS A FUN THING FOR SUPERGIRL TO PLAY WITH. WILL WE SEE OTHER RIPPLE EFFECTS? IS CONNOR STILL ADOPTED BY JOHN AND LYLA, WILL WE SEE BABY SARA IN 2020…?
“You won’t see Baby Sara in [Arrow] Episode 809 [airing Jan. 21], but we have absolutely talked about how if that [Green Arrow and the Canaries] backdoor pilot goes to series, what does Adult Baby Sara look like — including what we are going to refer to her as. [Laughs]
“But the thing that has us really excited is we have now put into our universe a new mystery which is: What does this post-Crisis universe look like? Each of the shows gets the chance to tell a piece of that story, and that’s really cool. I know, for example, what they’re doing on Batwoman and it’s friggin’ awesome, with some unbelievable, ‘What-the-f–k?!’ kind of moments. In addition to the heart and emotion, the ‘what-the-f–k?!’ is in my mind what the Arrowverse is all about.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW IS THE LAUREL IN ARROW‘S BACKDOOR PILOT, LIKE, A ‘MERGED COMPOSITE’ OF THE ORIGINAL AND HER EARTH-2 DOPPELGANGER?
“[Episodes] 809 and 810 [aka the series finale airing Jan. 28] will answer that question very definitively. You’ll learn which version of Laurel we have been left with in 809, and you will learn why that is the case in 810.”
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The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Pt. 2
Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW SPEAKING OF LAUREL…. WHERE WERE SHE, AND IRIS, AND CISCO, AND MIA? ESPECIALLY IN ‘CRISIS’ PART 5?
“Maybe one day we will tell that story,” Guggenheim hedges, “but again, all of those actors need to be paid, and they need to be paid a crossover rate that is above and beyond their episodic rate. That forces us to make hard financial choices that unfortunately occasionally drive the creative choices.”
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Crisis on Infinite Earths Recap
Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW WERE SMALLVILLE‘S VERSION OF CLARK AND LOIS ‘RETURNED’ AFTER CRISIS?
“I absolutely can confirm that they’re still alive, they’re still living their happy ending,” Guggenheim reports. Previously established to have given up his Kryptonian powers to lead a normal life as a family man, “Clark is getting the hero’s ending he deserves.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW SPEAKING OF SMALLVILLE, WHAT WAS THE PLAN FOR THAT LEX LUTHOR IF MICHAEL ROSENBAUM SAID ‘YES’ TO THE CROSSOVER?
“We had a version where he would have been in the scene [on the Kent farm] with Tom [Welling], and then the clock ran out on that [due to Welling’s availability],” says Guggenheim. “I then had the idea of having [Rosenbaum] and [Supergirl‘]s Jon Cryer have a scene together, which would have been really, really cool.
“It’s a bummer,” Guggenheim concedes. “Michael is definitely the one that got away.”
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Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Four
Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW WHY WAS IT A PRIORITY TO HAVE THE DC MOVIES’ FLASH, EZRA MILLER, MAKE A CAMEO?
“It’s not that it wasn’t a priority, but it was something that only became a possibility for us after we wrapped the crossover,” Guggenheim shares. “The crossover was done, we had finished. And then I got a phone call from [Warner Bros. TV chief] Peter Roth saying, ‘Would it be possible…? Could we logistically and creatively make it happen?’ I said, ‘Absolutely!’ But that was something that was presented to us by the Warner Bros./DC organization. Peter said to me, ‘How are you going to do this?’ and I said, ‘I have no earthly idea. You’ve just thrown me this amazing ball!’
“Why move heaven and earth to make this happen after you’ve already wrapped production on the crossover? The answer is ‘because it’s really friggin’ cool!'”
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Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Four
Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW DID EZRA MILLER NEED TO BE SNEAKED ONTO SET, AWAY FROM THE PAPARAZZI’S PRYING LONG LENSES?
“The funny thing is you would think that we had to employ all these ‘CIA techniques,’ but he flew into Vancouver, paparazzi didn’t notice, he drove onto the Vancouver Film Studios [lot]….
“I want to say a sincere thanks to the cast and the crew — particularly the crew of The Flash. Any one of them could have ratted us out, and you’re talking about a couple hundred people, but everyone worked together to keep this secret. We thought about announcing it, but decided it’d be so much more fun to surprise everybody.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW IS THERE EVEN A HALF OF A HALF OF AN IDEA FOR THE ARROWVERSE’S NEXT CROSSOVER EVENT?
“I would say I have ‘ideas for ideas,’ and I’ve sort of pitched to [The CW CEO] Mark Pedowitz and [executive producer] Greg Berlanti what, if left to my own devices, I would like to see us do. There is a rubric that is semi in place… and both Mark and Greg have signed off on that, and as we go onward, things will get more and more specific. I was emailing Mark just the other day, that we have to all get in a room together to talk about this. We typically do a post mortem about what went right, what went wrong, what did we learn…. We always learn something.”
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Image Credit: Courtesy of The CW IS ANOTHER MASSIVE TEAM-UP EVENT OFF THE TABLE?
“Look, I hate comparisons to [Avengers:] Endgame, beause it’s just not fair — we’re working with Endgame‘s catering budget — but Marvel didn’t follow up Endgame with Endgame 2. I think you’ve got to build to an event of this kind. The one thing we’re all in agreement on — cast, crew executives, you name it — is that we’re not going to go as big next year. In fact, Mark [Pedowitz] and I were talking about ‘returning to the roots’ of our crossovers, and I’ll leave it to people to interpret what that means.”
