Warning: SPOILERS for Batwoman’s “Take Your Choice”, Supergirl’s “Back From The Future - Part 2”, and The Flash’s “Love Is A Battlefield”.
It has been roughly one month since the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the various series making up the Arrowverse have already begun to break the rules of the new Post-Crisis Earth-Prime. At the very least, there are several inconsistencies between how the shows are handling the same issues brought up by the Crisis.
The creation of the Arrowverse was a towering achievement for The CW network, tying most of their superhero shows into a single shared reality. The Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event built upon that achievement, establishing that every superhero show or movie ever based on a DC Comics property was part of the same vast multiverse. The Crisis ended with all of the CW superhero shows condensed into a single reality, Earth-Prime, and a new multiverse made up of every DC Comics’ series currently in production.
One of the great strengths of the Arrowverse concept was that it allowed for a wide variety of stories to be told across the different series. Unfortunately, this proved to be just as much of a weakness as it was a strength, when it came to the series matching each other’s tones when the characters crossed-over. With each show’s team of writers now moving in different directions in the Post-Crisis era, it’s become apparent that there was little discussion, if any, between the producers as to certain rules remaining constant in the new Arrowverse.
Arrowverse’s Problems With Doppelgangers
The idea of doppelgangers - alternate versions of the same person from different universes - has been a key part of the Arrowverse mythology since The Flash season 2. With the multiverse seemingly destroyed after Crisis, one would think that would mean the end of doppelgangers. Yet there seem to be more doppelgangers than ever on Earth-Prime. The first episode of Supergirl following the Crisis, “The Bottle Episode,” revealed that the alien-friendly bar that Kara Zor-El and her friends frequented in National City had become overrun with refugees from other realities. Thankfully, this included a doppelganger of the bar’s owner and head bartender Al, who was overjoyed that business was so good after closing down his version of Al’s Dive bar during the Disco Era on his Earth. The doppelgangers also included another version of Winn Schott, who had adopted his terrorist father’s tactics and philosophy to become the second Toyman.
A doppelganger also played a major role in the storyline of Batwoman. At the end of Batwoman, season 1, episode 10, “How Queer Everything Is Today,” Kate Kane returned to her office to find her sister Beth waiting for her. This Beth Kane turned out to be a doppelganger from an Earth where she had never been abducted and suffered the years of abuse that transformed her into the crazed killer Alice. This was all well and good until Batwoman introduced a new wrinkle, with both versions of Beth Kane starting to suffer intense migraines and nose-bleeds at the end of Batwoman, season 1, episode 11, “An Un-Birthday Present.” It was determined in the next episode, “Take Your Choice,” that the original universes had been separated for a reason and that doppelgangers could not occupy the same Earth for long, as the universe wasn’t big enough for both of them. This meant that both Beth Kanes would physically degenerate and die within a couple of hours, unless one of them died first.
While this was a fascinating idea and it left Kate Kane with a quandary as she pondered which version of her sister to try and save when a cure was discovered, it flew in the face of what all the other Arrowverse shows were doing with their doppelgangers. Neither the original Winn Schott nor the evil Toyman showed any signs of discomfort when they fought in “Back From The Future - Part 1” despite being on Earth-Prime in the modern day for a comparable period of time. There also hasn’t been any word about the two Al’s at Al’s Dive Bar or any of the other alien doppelgangers suddenly dying because their bodies couldn’t handle existing on the same Earth.
Pre-Crisis And Post-Crisis Memories
Immediately after Oliver Queen rebuilt the new Arrowverse, the seven heroes who assisted him (aka The Paragons) awoke to find themselves in a brand new world; Earth-Prime. It quickly became apparent that things had changed wildly, with the Pargaons being the only people who remembered the Crisis happening or that there had ever been multiple universes. This left Kara Zor-El in a particularly frightful state, as she found that Lex Luthor now owned the DEO and all of her friends and family thought he was the greatest man in the world.
Thankfully, Martian Manhunter was able to restore some semblance of sanity to Earth’s heroes, using his telepathy to restore the Pre-Crisis memories of everyone on Team Flash, Team Arrow, the Super Friends, and the Legends who were present for the final battle with the Anti-Monitor. There were others who also remembered the Pre-Crisis Earth, but for different reasons. Lena Luthor retained her memories of both realities, thanks to the bargain Lex Luthor had made with the Monitor. Jennifer Pierce, the youngest daughter of Black Lightning, also remembered the old reality, thanks to her energy powers transforming her into anti-matter and allowing her to psychically interact with two of her doppelgangers during Crisis.
Unfortunately, there’s been some inconsistency regarding the idea that most of Earth-Prime’s superheroes should have two sets of memories; Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis. More often than not, various characters have acted like they remember their original lives before Crisis, but don’t know how things happened in the altered Post-Crisis timeline. This seemed to be the case with the Paragons, with Supergirl not remembering having shot commercials with Lex Luthor announcing the existence of the DEO to the world. Another oddity is Sara Lance mourning the loss of Oliver Queen as the last person who knew her before she became the Canary, despite most of her family and friends having never died in the world of Earth-Prime thanks to Oliver Queen’s intervention.
The biggest example of this selective memory came in Supergirl, episode 12, “Back From the Future - Part 2,” after an artificial intelligence based on the evil Toyman took over the computers in the DEO. While the group’s technicians were quickly able to seal their intranet to prevent Toyman from escaping into the World Wide Web, that still left him able to access every piece of smart-tech within the building. Director Alex Danvers planned to deal with this by having Supergirl fly around the DEO at super-speed and dismantle anything that could be a danger.
Lex Luthor, who made contact with Director Danvers through an old-fashioned rotary phone in the command center, immediately shot down this plan and insisted that this job had to be carried out by regular DEO personnel moving at normal speed. This was due to Kryptonite-based safeguards having been installed throughout the DEO base following two separate invasions of Earth by hostile Kryptonians. Naturally, because Luthor had designed these safeguards himself, they could not be deactivated or overridden.
When Alex asked why they couldn’t just give Supergirl one of the Kryptonite shielding devices that had used to protect her in the past, Luthor offered another glib explanation. “I think you’re remembering that from another time,” Luthor queried sarcastically. “Another Earth, perhaps?” While it is to be expected that Luthor would have taken advantage of the new timeline to reinstall Kryptonite weapons and eliminate Kryptonite shielding technology in the DEO on the off-chance it would let him kill Supergirl someday - all of the DEO’s Kryptonite was originally destroyed in the Supergirl season 2 premiere - there is no reason why Alex, as the DEO Director, shouldn’t have remembered that there were Kryptonite-based safeguards inside her headquarters and Kryponite-powered Lexo-Suits in her armory.
The Strange Case of Cisco Ramon
One of the odd outliers in all of this is Team Flash’s resident engineer Cisco Ramon. As the hero Vibe, Cisco had a unique relationship with the Pre-Crisis multiverse, having the ability to teleport between universes and a clairvoyance power that allowed him to pick up on the connections between people and objects. While Cisco developed a formula to permanently remove his powers during The Flash season 5, he was re-empowered by the Monitor during Crisis on Infinite Earths and played a key role in destroying the anti-matter cannon developed by the Anti-Monitor.
When he was reborn in the Post-Crisis Earth-Prime, Cisco was apparently powerless again, though he had been Vibe at one time. Cisco was also the most visibly distraught out of all of Earth’s heroes over the consequences of the Crisis, perhaps being more aware than anyone else of the scope of just how much had been lost. This led Cisco to begin charting which villains from which older Earths had been reborn on Earth-Prime and taking on a new mission to investigate just how much things had changed as Earth-1 was transformed into Earth-Prime.
Ignoring Cisco’s claims that he couldn’t remember having ever bought a Superman logo shirt, another oddity came up in Cisco’s story in The Flash, season 6, episode 10, “Marathon.” One of Cisco’s chief motivators in trying to map the new universe was a recording of his friend Harry Wells; a doppelganger of his mentor, Harrison Wells, from Earth-2. Cisco said that he felt he owed it to Harry to chart the new reality; a noble sentiment, but it does nothing to explain how Cisco has a recording of a man who never existed in the Earth-Prime Arrowverse.
More: Arrowverse’s Earth-Prime Map Revealed: Where Every City Is Located
