Here’s the Ever-Growing Character Roster for The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths

The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event inches closer to us with each passing day. With this being the Arrowverse’s “Endgame” event, the character roster for this crossover is quickly filling up with familiar faces from DC’s extensive legacy.

SPOILER WARNING: While the crossover hasn’t yet aired, this article does reveal what has already been released about the upcoming crossover special, including vague story-line details and character announcements.

The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths story-line has been hinted at since The Flash premiered its pilot episode in 2014. That episode ended with Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin catching a glimpse of the future via a newspaper clipping from the year 2024, which reveals that Barry is due to vanish in a “Crisis”. Now, that newspaper headline was originally dated from the year 2024, but the fifth and latest season of The Flash fluctuated the timeline and pushed the headline to the year 2019…and just in time for this year’s crossover event!

In the comics, the Crisis on Infinite Earths story was DC’s way of taking the pre-established DC Multiverse—which housed multiple realities, with different incarnations of the famous superheroes and villains—and compressing it into one singular realm of reality. Most likely, the CW’s version of the same story-line will try to do something similar on the scale that it can manage.

The CW’s Arrowverse is no stranger to giving the audience glimpses into the multiverse. In Arrowverse canon, there are 52 different versions of Earth and we’ve seen characters from those numerous Earths interact with one another. We’ve seen characters from Earths 1, 2, and 3. As well as characters from Earth-38, Earth-90, and Earth-X. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to find out that this Crisis will give us even more glimpses into the other pieces of the multiverse.

But what is surprising is the fact The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths seeks to bring together characters not just from the original line-up of Arrowverse shows. Announcements have popped up throughout the internet for the past few months, revealing that actors from past DC Comics movies and TV shows are going to appear during the 2019 Arrowverse crossover episode in various capacities, whether they are going to have full-fledged roles or just brief cameo shots, we’ll have to wait and see when the crossover airs.

Here’s a list of the actors/characters that have been announced for Crisis on Infinite Earths…..thus far!

Tom Welling and Erica Durance as Clark Kent and Lois Lane

This is the most recent casting news to hit the internet in regards to the upcoming Crisis. Just yesterday it was announced that Tom Welling would be joining the Arrowverse’s crossover as his original Smallville character, Clark Kent/Superman. And earlier today, it was announced that Erica Durance would also be joining the fun to reprise her role as Lois Lane.

Black Lightning

Now, Black Lightning has aired on The CW since it first premiered in January 2018. However, what sets the show apart from the other CW superhero shows is that Black Lightning has remained completely unaffiliated with the Arrowverse, until now. In August it was revealed that the characters from Black Lightning will be joining up for the big crossover event, which makes sense considering the fact that this is the big “world-mashing” story. So, it seems like we’ll see Jefferson Pierce. Hopefully, we’ll get to see Anissa and Jennifer as Thunder and Lightning, too!

Tom Cavanagh as Pariah….and other characters (probably)

Tom Cavanagh has been a permanent fixture in the Arrowverse since the first season of The Flash, where he first started off playing the character of Harrison Wells, who was actually Eobard Thawne in disguise. Since then, he has just about played a new alternate-Earth version of Harrison Wells every season of The Flash, as well as reprised his villainous role as Eobard.

Back in July, it was revealed by showrunner Eric Wallace that Cavanagh will be playing the character of Pariah in the CW’s Crisis of Infinite Earths crossover, who will be tasked with helping the Anti-Monitor essentially bring about the apocalypse. However, I seriously doubt that Pariah is the only character that we’ll get to see Cavanagh play. Just last season in The Flash, we saw Cavanagh’s Reverse Flash tell Barry, “See you in our next crisis”, which more than likely confirmed that we’ll see Eobard back for this crossover.

Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as Earth-38 Superman and Lois Lane

Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman first made his appearance by his lonesome in Supergirl’s second season. However, it wasn’t until the 2018 Elseworlds crossover event that we finally got to see Lois Lane. Following the Elseworlds story, Clark proposed, Lois revealed that she was pregnant, and the two moved to Argo City to settle down for a while.

Unfortunately, it seems as though that relaxation is about to be disrupted, because it was confirmed back in July that Hoechlin’s Superman would be returning for the upcoming crossover event, with Tulloch’s Lois Lane reprisal confirmation dropping shortly after that. This means that we’ll see the Arrowverse’s Lois and Clark meet up with Smallville’s version of Lois and Clark!

Brandon Routh as Superman Returns’ Superman

Yes, at the present moment, there are going to be three different Superman portrayals in the upcoming Crisis crossover. Brandon Routh, who currently plays The Atom (Ray Palmer) in the Arrowverse’s Legends of Tomorrow, has been confirmed to reprise an older version of his Superman role from the 2006 Superman Returns movie. This should be interesting, especially considering the fact that the Legends will take part in this crossover.

Will we get to see The Atom and this version of Superman share some conversation with one another? It might be funny!

Jonah Hex

Speaking of Legends of Tomorrow, it has been revealed that Jonah Hex will be making an appearance during the Crisis. Hex first made his Arrowverse appearance back in 2016 during the first season of Legends. He’s a no-nonsense outlaw bounty hunter from the 1870s and friend to Rip Hunter, the original captain of the Legends team. It’ll be interesting to see what this character will offer to the crossover, considering how obscure he seems in the bigger picture.

Burt Ward

Holy Crossover, Batman!

It was announced back in July that Burt Ward would be joining the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. For those of you who don’t know, Ward played Robin alongside Adam West’s Batman in the 1966 live-action Batman television show. At the present moment, we don’t know what character Ward will play during the crossover. It’s possible that he’ll play an older version of his Robin character from whatever Earth houses the 1966 Batman universe, but it’s too early to know.

John Wesley Shipp

It’s not surprising that Shipp is returning to the Arrowverse for this crossover event, considering the fact that he has played three different characters in The Flash since the show started airing. Shipp was originally on the show as Barry Allen’s father, Henry Allen. However, following that character’s death, we’ve seen Shipp take on the role of Jay Garrick from Earth-3 as well as an Arrowverse reprisal of his Earth-90 Flash character from the 1990s Flash series.

So, it’s not easy to pinpoint exactly what character he’ll play in the upcoming crossover. We know from the Elseworlds crossover that Earth-90 is all but destroyed, thanks to the Monitor’s test. Earth-90 Flash was also made to disappear before our very eyes, so we don’t yet know whether or not this character is gone for good. We’ll just have to see.

Kevin Conroy

In early August it was announced that Kevin Conroy will play an old version of Bruce Wayne during the crossover. What makes this news so much fun is the fact that Conroy voiced Batman in 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series, and has gone on to voice the character numerous more times throughout the years. However, this time around, he will be playing a live-action version of Batman, albeit older.

It is currently unknown which version of Bruce Wayne he will be playing. In Elseworlds, it was revealed via Batwoman that Earth-1’s Bruce Wayne/Batman has been gone for a large portion of time. We know that Batman also exists on Supergirl’s Earth-38. However, my guess is that Conroy won’t be playing either of these versions of the caped crusader. My hopes is that he’ll play the older Bruce from the Batman Beyond series, giving the Arrowverse a window into that alternate universe!

At the current moment, these are the big-name announcements for the upcoming crossover event. Of course, you can expect to see the majority of Team Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, and the Legends of Tomorrow during this crisis. I’m also sure that we’ll see more announcements made in the future, especially once the new seasons of the Arrowverse shows start airing for the Fall season.

Personally, I’m excited to see if the Crisis event will bring back even more of the characters from Arrowverse’s past. Just going off the top of my head, I’d like to see Kid Flash, Captain Cold, Vixen, Nyssa Al Ghul, Roy Harper, and Firestorm return in some way. I think it could even be fun to see characters like Mark Hamill’s version of The Trickster or even…the Joker…make an appearance alongside Conroy’s older Bruce portrayal.

What do you guys think? Are you excited about these casting announcements? Are you ready for The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths?

Let us know in the comments below!

Author: Rodney

Rodney has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Aspiring to one day write television shows and novels, he’s an avid slash-shipper and enthusiast for all things gay. Rodney’s especially a lover of magic, mystery, and superheroes—holding Harry Potter, the X-Men, and Scooby-Doo close as his own personal favorites. But when he’s not fantasizing about how cool it would be to have magic, he’s busy writing fanfiction and re-watching old TV shows.

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