Supergirl post-credit scene teases the Monitor's plan in 'Elseworlds' crossover
Warning, this article contains spoilers from Sunday’s Supergirl. Read at your own risk!
Supergirl took a page out of The Flash‘s book on Sunday! The CW drama’s midseason finale ended with an Easter-egg filled post-credit tag that sets up this year’s Arrowverse crossover “Elseworlds,” features John Wesley Shipp (the Flash of the ’90s) and introduces LaMonica Garrett as Mar-Novu, a.k.a. the Monitor.
In the epic episode-ending stinger, viewers are taken to a ravaged Earth-90, where the ground is scorched and littered with the bodies of Green Arrow, Vibe, Stargirl, and many more. There’s only one person who survived the destruction: the Flash, played by Shipp (Earth-90 – 90’s Flash, get it?). The Flash crawls toward the mysterious book we’ve seen the Monitor holding in various still; however, the Monitor picks it up and pronounces, “You failed.”
“Why are you doing this?” asks the Flash.
“You did this to yourself, and now all of you will perish,” replies the Monitor as he opens the book once again and the Flash speeds away.
The scene in question sets up what we can expect from the Monitor’s role in “Elseworlds.”
“The whole essence of the crossover is that there is a giant threat coming,” Arrow star Stephen Amell told EW when we visited set in October. “What you have is a character called the Monitor, who is basically testing universes to see which universe is going to best be able to withstand the incoming threat.”
Clearly, Earth-90’s superheroes have failed not only this city, but their universe. Hopefully, Earth-1’s protectors will have better luck with some help from super-help from Earth-38.
The Arrowverse showrunners say that fans can expect to see this post-credit tag at the end of this week’s episodes of Arrow and The Flash, too.
“It’s cool because we’ve never done that before,” says Arrow consulting producer Marc Guggenheim. “We’ve done a tag that has been on all the shows, and we’ve certainly never setup the crossover in the previous episodes before.”
The tag is a solution to a problem the producers encountered in the crossover writers’ room (or as Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz refers to it, the Super Writers’ Room).
“In the writers’ room, we were talking about various cold opens, and we came up with two cold opens that we liked and we couldn’t choose between the two of them,” says Guggenheim, who wrote the teleplay for the Arrow hour (story by Batwoman writer Caroline Dries). “Someone, I forget who, had the idea of, well, let’s not choose; Let’s take one cold open, move that and make that the post-credit tag, like the way The Flash typically does, at the end of all three shows, and then have the other cold open at the beginning of hour one. We get to have our cake and eat it, too, and who doesn’t like that.”
Originally, the scene was only going to air at the end of The Flash, but then they decided to include it on all of them to make things easier for viewers. “It’s also because the audiences are coming to it from our separate shows and we wanted something that [connects them together],” says Supergirl co-showrunner Robert Rovner.
In “Elseworlds,” Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) and Oliver Queen/Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) wake up and discover that reality has been rewritten and they’ve switched lives. As they pursue Arkham Asylum doc John Deegan, who’s responsible for reality being altered, they team up with Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) and Superman (Tyler Hoechlin), and cross paths with Gotham City’s Batwoman (Ruby Rose). The crossover will also feature Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane, Cassandra Jean Amell as Nora Fries, Bob Frazer as Psycho-Pirate, and the apparent return of John Barrowman, too.
It all begins Sunday, Dec. 9, with The Flash at 8 p.m.; continues Monday, Dec. 10, at 8 p.m. with Arrow; and concludes the following night at 8 p.m. with Supergirl.