The final entry of this season’s Arrowverse crossover, “Elseworlds,” ends as it began: With moments big and small that reward viewers who’ve come to love these characters as they fight and joke and go about the business of saving the world yet again.
So. Episode 2 ended with the Monitor urging Dr. Deegan to think big, and he did, all right. He thought super big. That’s right, your friendly neighborhood Arkham Asylum doctor has turned himself into a black-clad Superman, whose lair is Star Labs, now bearing his logo.
The imposter swoops down to deliver justice to the Trigger Twins, a.k.a. the powerless, ability-less Oliver and Barry. Super-dick argues that destiny brought him the book, causing Barry to argue that you don’t become a hero because of circumstances, but in spite of them.
Then Oliver brandishes a gun, not to take a shot at their bulletproof adversary, but to fire it at a teetering crane nearby, knocking it toward a group of children on the ground and forcing the imposter to swoop down and save them.
As the Trigger Twins flee, Barry battles nausea because “Being bad makes me feel bad, man!” Oliver takes control and suggests they find Cisco so he can breach them to Earth-38 to collect the real Superman.
Super-dick has his hands full throwing a tantrum in front of his henchpeople, including Diggle and Killer Frost, in his lair. (If we were in a different universe, I’d say “Deegan smash.”) Then he storms off to taunt his new prisoner: Kara, who’s in a power-dampening cell in the pipeline.
He was impressed with what he saw in the book about her and Clark’s powers, but she’s unimpressed that he adopted every aspect of her abilities except for one thing: “Too afraid to be a woman?” Look, if you had the chance to make yourself look like Tyler Hoechlin, you’d totally do it, and don’t try to convince me otherwise.
When Kara tries to punch through the cell, alt-Alex arrives with long, braided hair and a zapper that causes Kara pain. Realizing that Kara knows Alex, even if she’s different in this timeline, Super-dick threatens to kill Alex if Kara doesn’t behave.
Meanwhile, Oliver and Barry’s search for Cisco takes them to a door that opens into the cosmos, where the Monitor congratulates them on outwitting a superman. “It’s just one word, ‘Superman,’” Barry hero-splains.
The Monitor is intrigued that Oliver looks at his hubris and anger and calls them strength, to say nothing of his willingness to die, which is not the pep talk Barry was looking for. Then they’re shunted back to Earth, where they stroll into a hive of scum and villainy looking for Cisco. Gary the bartender (Gary! Hi!!) is geeked to meet his heroes in crime and then corrects himself: “Well, not heroes. Legends.” Yes! Thank you for this, the smallest of crossovers with my favorite Arrowverse show!
They find crime boss Cisco counting money in a throne-chair, and he orders his enforcer Jimmy Olsen to take care of this problem. “They don’t call me Superman’s worst pal for nothing,” Jimmy says before beating down the Trigger Twins. Barry halts their execution when he tells Cisco that he knew his brother Dante, so Cisco’s willing to listen to their plan to get rid of Super-dick, which involves teaching him to vibe to other Earths and not just into bank vaults.
It takes 17 tries, but they eventually make it to Lois and Clark’s Earth-38 Arctic hideaway, where Clark’s pleased to learn that Barry and Oliver are Barry and Oliver again, although he incorrectly guesses that Cisco is now Kara. Ha! They explain the plan to steal the book and rewrite reality again through sheer force of will, and Lois and Clark immediately agree that Superman needs to join the fight.
Kara’s trying to get back in the game, too. She fails at convincing Alex that they’re sisters on another Earth and then eavesdrops as Killer Frost asks about Alex’s boyfriend troubles and urges Alex to take some time off for a change.
When Alex catches Kara trying to freeze-breath her way out of the cell, she brings the pain again, and Kara gasps out a phrase in Japanese. On her Earth, Alex spent a summer in Japan when she was 6 and learned how to say “pinky swear” from a girl in the village. This Alex says she was 7, but the experience was otherwise the same.
Kara says her Alex is in charge of a facility like this, but she’s the leader and she doesn’t follow orders she knows are wrong. She also doesn’t hide who she is: “She wants a wife. And kids. She’s optimistic that she can have it all.”
Kara says that the Alex she sees in front of her is the same brand of hero and pinky swears that she’ll stop the imposter if Alex lets her out. Their whole dynamic is best summed up when Alex says, “Your sister is a very lucky woman,” and Kara replies, “I’m a lucky sister.”
Alas, Super-dick catches the pair mid-escape and is about to eye-laser them both when Cisco opens a breach between them.
“Nice suit,” the real Superman says, then flies at his doppelgänger for a mid-air fight that finds them crashing into a building, leveling a row of filing cabinets and prompting an onlooker to gasp, “Bizarro!”
At Super-dick’s lair, Oliver and Diggle fight, while Barry, Alex, and Kara locate the book in the Time Vault. When Kara tries to open it, she finds that she’s too weak from the pipeline to manage it, so she flies it to Superman. (Next page: A Super romantic ending)
