The main story remains focused on the standard Arrowverse characters, particularly Felicity, who hilariously spends most of the story in a journey to Earth 12 and the Ryan Reynoldsverse Oa, with appearances by the Guardians, Mark Strong's Sinestro, and Killowog. However, we do get a glimpse of an assemblage of heroes fighting the Anti-Monitor at the dawn of time of Earth-85, an Earth that's an homage to the comics Crisis with a battalion including the original versions of Harbinger, Pariah, and Alex Luthor, as well as for our purposes here two Supermen, Power Girl, and Superboy. Felicity was the one who learned about Routh being one of the Paragons and told the Monitor (apparently this actually took place between parts 1 and 2 of the crossover proper, with the Luthor story during part 2), and in the end a group shot of the heroes of the Arrowverse has Hoechlin's Superman at the very front along with Barry.
The Superman-centric backup has the assemblage of Supermen (this time including Electric Blue, Calvin Ellis, Lord Superman, and Lion Head Superman) - identified as the Council of Supermen - meet with Superman-38 while Lex-38 is put on trial by the Council of Luthors for telling his Superman about their existence and prompting their gathering (Lex, noting that it would be the Crisis that brought them together rather than the Luthors, hilariously retaliates "I know how crazy this sounds given who I'm talking to, but...don't be so narcissistic."); in a rough continuity patch as Guggenheim and Wolfman clearly remembered after the fact that Earth-38 had already been destroyed and so Superman couldn't have been in his own Fortress in part one, it's revealed that the dimensional collapse is affecting perceptions, and Clark actually went to the Fortress of Earth-86. Anyway, the Luthors are constructing an army of classic battle suits to allow them to kill the Supermen, but the Supermen have learned their location and attack their headquarters before they're fully ready, and amidst the fighting 'our' Superman and Lex arrange the self-destruction of the Luthors' base, disabling their Kryptonite weaponry and scattering them to the dimensional winds as Superman returns Lex to captivity aboard the Waverider. Lex mulls that while he couldn't let these 'knockoffs' kill Superman, he realizes they had the right idea, sparking his multiversal rampage with the Book of Destiny. Straightforward, but a gaggle of good character bits, such as this exchange:
"Could you please..." "Get you somewhere a touch safer?" "It's like you can read my mind." "You're hardly complicated, Luthor. Just selfish." "Sweet-talk me all you want. I'm never going to stop trying to kill you."
And upon Lex's success:
"Well done. Thank--" "Don't thank me. I'm really quite conflicted about you not dying."
Also Cryer's Lex, while not wanting the others to get the honor of killing Superman, does pause for a moment for a moment before disabling their weapons to watch the Luthors blast Hoechlin with Kryptonite and think to himself "I mean, look at that. Beautiful.", which is pretty great. |