After what feels like an eternity of build up, “Crisis On Infinite Earths” is here, and right from the start it wasn’t pulling any punches. An opening montage showed several Earths become bathed in the apocalyptic red sky before total annihilation by the wave of antimatter, including Earth-9, the world of Titans.
The Titans were not among the plethora of featured characters announced in the run up to the crossover’s commencement, but we were promised a number of familiar faces other than those already confirmed, which the quick-fire assortment of cameos featured at the start of the crossover’s first part certainly delivered. Among them were Hank Hall and Jason Todd from DC Universe’s take on the young superteam, each only on screen for a couple of seconds before becoming immersed in a blinding white light that we can only assume indicated their world coming to an abrupt end.
Also featured were Earth-X, the Nazi dystopia featured in 2017’s crossover, Earth-89 (seen in Tim Burton’s Batman movies) and Earth-66 (home of the camp ‘60s Batman TV show), the latter two cementing a tradition of numbering the Earths of previous character iterations after the year in which they debuted, begun last year with the original Flash TV series’ Earth-90.
It’s one thing to obliterate the Earths of continuities that will never otherwise be revisited, since their removal from the multiverse won’t affect events going forwards. However, despite fluctuating quality and a decidedly mixed reception, Titans has been renewed for a third season set to start next year, leading to a quandary of exactly how this can come about in light of recent events.
There are a few possibilities here though, none of which are particularly appealing. The first is that Earth-9 is not where Titans takes place, and the two heroes featured just happened to look exactly like their counterparts on another Earth, meaning whatever viewers felt watching them about to die means nothing.
Another is that “Crisis On Infinite Earths” will end with all the death and destruction caused by the Anti-Monitor being undone, which would seem like an anticlimactic cheat that undermines all the loss and sacrifice we have seen so far and will doubtless experience more of before it’s all over.
The third, meanwhile, is that the events of Titans take place some time in the past, meaning that in the long run nothing that happens in the show matters since they’re all doomed to inescapable destruction in the near future.
Regardless of how this plays out, it was a dramatic moment watching the imminent deaths of characters with whom we’re familiar, but at the same time, it’s impossible to wonder if in the grand scheme of things their inclusion might’ve been a small mistake.
