Headscratchers / Crisis on Earth-X

How is Thawne able to match Barry?

• No matter from which Time Period this Wells is, Barry by this point has defeated several evil speedsters MUCH faster than Thawne at his prime. How is he possibly a serious fight for the guy?
  • If you want an explanation that works for the series, all I can possibly come up with is that he "got better," much like his handwaved recovery from death/nonexistence. However in the comic book source material there are more reasons that Eobard Thawne is called the "Reverse Flash" than simply being Barry's nemesis. His negative Speed Force corrupts and siphons from the regular Speed Force that Barry draws power from, meaning that with every step Thawne runs, he not only gets a little bit faster, but Barry gets a little bit slower. If the show decides to incorporate this aspect of their abilities, then the two can be any level of power compared to one another at any point in time and it makes sense. If they don't include that explanation, well, then it's best to just not think about it, or write it off as Nazi super science boosting him.
  • Barry has defeated several evil speedsters, but usually not from simply straight-up outpowering them in a one on one display of speed. In Season One, Thawne was defeated by Eddie's Heroic Sacrifice. In Season Two, Trajectory died as a result of using Velocity and running herself to death, not because Barry beat her. Zoom was defeated by Barry's Time Remnant doing the Heroic Sacrifice and attracting Time Wraiths who did Zoom in. In Season Three, he did beat Thawne in Flashpoint, but it was mostly a fair fight. The Rival was hardly at Barry's level in the first place. Savitar was defeated by a combination of Cisco, Wally, Killer Frost, Jay Garrick, and Barry, with Iris finally putting in the literal killing blow. In the fighting between the Earth-X crew and the good guys, Thawne was mostly just keeping Barry busy and out of the fight with the others. Note that at the wedding, when Thawne wasn't present to keep Barry distracted, by and large the Heroes and Legends cleaned the floor with their opponents and forced them to run away. Thawne has an ego but he's not stupid; his main goal wouldn't necessarily be to beat Barry one-on-one but to keep him busy until his allies defeated the others, and Barry would be both outnumbered and worried about his friends, providing an opening. In a way, you can think about it as similar to the very beginning of the series, when an older and experienced Barry wasn't able to defeat Thawne either; Barry was distracted by saving his younger self, allowing Thawne to murder Nora and then get away.
    • But the Time Wraiths only got to Zoom after Barry has already gave him a beatdown, proving that he's now faster and better than Zoom, who was not only on the speedster equivalent of steroids but also having recently absorbed Barry's speed.
    • Also, what about Barry being faster than ever before after returning from the Speed Force?
• Possible explanation part 1: Thawne has always been faster than Barry, when he had his speed; he's the second fastest man alive. By any number of explanations, Barry could've bee running at a lower speed. Maybe he was hungry. Maybe he was distracted by the fact that Thawne was back from the dead again.
  Possible explanation part 2: Thawne might not be faster than Barry, but he does seem to be more skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Barry is always getting better, but he isn't good enough to defeat Thawne without a fight.
• Experienced Thawne was always better than Barry. In season 1 he always stomped him one on one, with Barry's only win being when he, Ronnie and Oliver triple teamed him, and the very next episode when he fought him alone he once again was losing until Eddie stopped him. Season 2's Thawne was from an earlier point in time when he was relatively new to his powers so Barry could take him there, but this isn't that Thawne. If anything Barry is better since he can now match him rather than get crushed by him.
  • Yes, in Season ONE. But barry has come a long way since then, defeating Zoom and Savitar.
  • Which is why he's improved to the point where he can beat Thawne, but not to the point where Thawne wouldn't be able to put up a bit of a fight first.

Why did Tommy-X self terminate?

• He was clearly loved, like a brother, by Oliver-X. All the spiel about being weak? Surviving would have made him look not-so-weak.
  • He clearly didn't want to put Oliver-X in a position of weakness by giving the heroes a hostage. Oliver-X himself states that Tommy-X should've killed himself at the church the moment he was captured.

How did the Nazis get their own Waverider?

• Would Nazi Time Masters seriously ignore the ramifications of time travel to ensure a win for the Reich, or is this the last remnant of Rip Hunter-X, who screwed everything to hell and was killed before he could fix things, cementing Earth-X to what it is now?
  • Think about it. Why did the Time Masters help Vandal Savage? Because they needed a unified Earth to fight off a future Thanagarian invasion. It might be the same thing here. They may genuinely believe that Earth controlled by Nazis is better than Earth destroyed by aliens.
• Alternatively, the Fridge Horror section points out the similarities between the Earth-X history and the situation presented in the beginning of last season of Legends of Tomorrow. It's possible this is a timeline where the Legends stopped the Legion of Doom, but failed to stop the Germans from getting the Atom Bomb.
  • It was established by Harry in Magenta that every Earth has the own respectively timeline and the changes to one doesn't affect the others. Ergo why he notices changes to the Earth-1 timeline post-Flashpoint.
  • Plus the episode of Legends of Tomorrow in question makes it clear that even with the bombing of New York, the Nazis still would've lost the war, it would just take longer, so Earth-X's history has to have more than that.
• There is also the fact that they are working with Earth-1 Eobard Thawne, whose from the same century as Rip Hunter and could have provided the specs for a timeship. After all, he did provide Cisco the specs for a Time Sphere.

How did the Ray end up on Earth-X from Earth One?

• He says he's from Earth One, no mention to how he got on Earth-X.
  • We might learn that on the prequel animated series.
• Relatedly, why/how does he know that the Earth One the main heroes refer to is "his" Earth One? (In the initial discussions with the Earth Two characters, wasn't the problem of each person referring to "their" Earth as "Earth One" and others as Earth Whichever mentioned? I don't recall if this was ever resolved.)
  • I think it got resolved when it was confirmed that Earth-1 was the hub of the multiverse, connecting to each of the other Earths.

What kind of sense does it make to leave Captain Cold on Earth One?

• On a meta-level, I mean? Wentworth Miller has stated that he is done with the Arrowverse, so he will be around, but just not.....on-screen? If he'd returned to Earth-X he could appear some more on the upcoming animated Series (maybe not voiced by Miller himself, but better than not appearing at all?).
  • Is this information true? I've heard it before, but after this, it kinda seems like the cast and crew were screwing with us to keep news of Leo on the down-low.
  • Prior to the crossover coming out, Wenworth Miller said he was done filming for the Arrowverse, but that doesn't necessarily mean Crisis on Earth-X was his last appearance. He could have already had another episode or two of The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow in the can by that point.
  • Also "Freedom Fighters" will be a prequel, so Citizen Cold could still be a part of the series.
    • It could also be Miller pulling a fast one as his statement said he was done playing "Leonard Snart/Captain Cold." And he isn't; he's playing Leo Snart/Citizen Cold.
  • Well the question then is why does he choose to stay in the first place, on an Earth he doesn't have nearly the same investment like his home Earth-X of which he has been fighting in a resistance to free? More so, why would he stay when Ray, the man he loves who is actually from Earth-1, chooses to return to continue to fight for a revolution on Earth-X?
    • Answered in the next episode of Legends of Tomorrow: With Mick alive in this reality, Snart-X was hoping to get some closure for his Mick-X's death.

Where on Earth is Ralph Dibny?

• From an in-universe point of view. So it can be handwaved that Jay and Jesse got preoccupied with stuff going on on their own Earths and couldn't make it to the wedding or help with the invasion from Earth-X, and it's likely that Alex and Kara didn't have time to contact J'onn or Superman after the Nazis attacked the wedding, but Ralph's absence is very glaring. Where could he be? They could've easily had him show up and then, due to his inexperience, be told to run off with Wally, Joe, and Cecile. It's just really weird.
  • He and Barry are barely friends at this point and Iris certainly does not like him. That's reason enough.
• Still Central City became a literal War Zone, and he is still a member of Team Flash being trained by Barry. Why didn't he at least check in, or someone check on him to make sure he's okay? More so, even though Iris doesn't like him all that much, wouldn't she at least send out a distress call to her nearly invulnerable ally when she and Felicity where trapped in an extremely dangerous predicament? He may not be that experienced, but in a crisis of this magnitude, beggars can't be choosers.
  • Given Ralph's personality, it's quite possible he was A) out of town; B) hung over; C) taking a long nap and not even realizing there was an invasion until it was over.
• Well he definitely wasn't invited to the wedding. He only started hanging out with the team a few weeks prior beyond them not really liking each other much and starting to become geniune friends until the following Flash episode during Christmas, it was probably too late to add him to the list. And while he could have just invited himself like Mick probably did he doesn't really like Barry enough yet to want to go. After Star Labs is taken over unlike the secret SOS to the Waverider calling Ralph on the phone would probably be picked up by the Nazi's. Afterwards while they could have call him for the final battle, they quite honestly didn't need him as the over a dozen heroes on the ground had that covered and the real problem was stopping Overgirl and the Nazi Waverider, which Ralph wouldn't be any use for. Considering Ralph is at that point still a barely trained rookie and with his powers rebounding the guns the Nazi's were using quite honestly he might be more of a liability than a help.
• "Fury Rogue" reveals why. Barry didn't call him for help because he didn't think he was ready to fight and army of Nazi's at that point.

Earth-X Felicity

• During her speech to Earth-X Oliver, Felicity says that her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Given that the Nazis won on Earth-X, wouldn't that mean Felicity shouldn't even exist, considering that her parents, let alone her grandparents, are unlikely to have survived under the Nazi regime?
  • I was thinking this as well; specifically, if the Nazis have successfully conquered the planet for 72 years, then by now their Final Solution most likely would have made every single Jew on the planet extinct. The idea that Lance-X can just randomly find anyone Jewish at all, let alone Felicity herself, to use as a tool to uncover Oliver's deception seems unlikely.
    • On that, if there's one thing we've learned about the Arrowverse, it's that seemingly impossible coincidences are all too common.
  • The Holocaust began in the last few years of WWII; prior to that, they'd been planning mass deportations of Jews to somewhere far away from German territory. In our reality, that plan proved impractical, so they switched to genocide as a "Final Solution" because their previous "solution" didn't pan out. But in a reality where the Nazis won the war and continued to expand their territory, it's possible they were able to keep on pushing Jews further and further to the fringes as their empire grew.
  • The history of this world is a bit up in the air so it's possible some changes were made in leadership that pushed the idea of simply using Jews as slave labor rather than mass extermination.

Why not just kill them?

• Our heroes who end up on Earth X are places in a concentration camp, then take out and shot. Why go through the trouble of bringing them to the camp? Why not just murder them as soon as possible?
  • Could be the classic bit of Oliver-X assuming that with the collars keeping them powerless, no threat. It can also be him putting in a final shot, letting them see what he intends to turn their Earth into before they die.

Why is Mick at the wedding?

• He’s hardly close to Barry or Iris. Ray Palmer would seem more likely than Rick, but doesn’t seem to have scored an invite.
  • With Mick, it's possible he just followed the rest of the gang, thinking they were about to get into trouble. His opening reaction makes it sound like he didn't even know it was a wedding until he got there and just went along with it.
  • Part 2 mentions Ray was busy on a mission with some of the other Legends to the Stone Age.
  • Of course, the simpler explanation: The writers just couldn't resist the idea of a Heat Wave/Killer Frost team-up.
  • Or as pointed to in the crowning amount of funny section he couldn't resist the offer of free booze and food.

Singh at the Wedding

• Yes he's Barry's boss, but given that he suspended Barry for 2 weeks after he crossed the line in his obsession with the DeVoes, given Barry a deserved if savage dressing down in front of his peers, a week later he is all happy and joyously attending the West-Allen Wedding a week later. Yes, he is putting the difference aside due to his fondness for both Joe and Barry, but here's the hitch. A public official attending one of his reprimanded CSI's wedding could easily be construed as a breach of interest, and show of favoritism. The implications could hurt the CCPD in the long run. Why would Singh, a genuinely intelligent man, probably well versed in city politics, risk this?
  • Because it's known that Singh is friends with Joe and to a lesser extent with Barry. He's not expected to suddenly hate them categorically even if Barry did something wrong.
    • Now that you mention it... i was wondering why the heck was he sitting on the bride side.

Identities Exposed?

• Okay, yes, it was chaotic but there's no way the various wedding guests could not have seen Wally and Barry using super-speed, the singer flying into air to attack, Stein and Jax forming Firestorm and the various others fighting it out. Not to mention the sight of armed Nazis, someone dressed like an evil Green Arrow and a flying woman attacking in broad daylight. How in the hell do the heroes possibly cover for all this?
  • It was specifically mentioned that Mick used the memory eraser the Legends stole from the Time Bureau on the guests who weren't in on the secret.
    • Sidebar on this - how many guests there were unaware of the various secret identities? Captain Singh and his husband...anyone else?
• Ok, give you that. However, that brings up exactly how they're going to explain why these Nazis chose a random wedding to attack and shoot up the church.
  • Given the insanity of Central City the last few years, the populace might just accept this was a totally random thing.
  • Mick also could have also erased the guests' memories of Nazis showing up at the church in the first place.
  • How many guests were there who weren't cops or superheroes? Seems like not that many.

The crisis wasn't really on Earth-X?

• I mean, sure that world sucked but the event was more about people from Earth-X coming to Earth One instead of the heroes going to Earth-X to solve the crisis, so the title is not entirely accurate?
  • Given one of the biggest points of the event is to introduce and set up "Freedom Fighters: The Ray" take it more in account that this is supposed to be something of a Backdoor Pilot for the animated Prequel, take the title as telling the audience what the focus, not of the events of the crossover, but the events of the prequel is meant to be.
  • The 'crisis on Earth-X' could be that Overgirl needs a heart transplant, thus motivating them to attack Supergirl. From their evil perspective, Overgirl's situation is a crisis.
  • Also, let's face it, Rule of Cool. "Crisis on Earth-X" sounds a lot more awesome and intriguing than "Invasion of the Alternate-Universe Nazis."

Only 52(+1) Earths?

• So, instead of millions of possible universes where every variable is a reality, we now get a declaration that there are paltry handful of parallel worlds? And as a minor corollary, does that mean that, between the Wells "casting call" in season 3 and the Council of Wells, we've seen just about every version of Harrison Wells that exists?
  • It's part of DC mythology, just 52 Earths. Of course, there's a difference between established Earths and alternate timelines but that's a whole other can of worms...
  • Not to mention the idea that there is more than one multiverse. So 53 parallel universes are all that can be accessed from the CW shows, but there are technically other multiverses, both larger and smaller, beyond that.
  • Those may just be the Earths they know about. Harry's a genius, but that doesn't mean he knows everything.
  • I've always taken it to mean that it's only those 52/53 Earths that are connected for some reason through the breaches (and as such are known to each other), but Earths/universes are actually infinite in number.
  • It could be that only about 52 or so Earths are close enough to be recognizable, that is to say, 'This is an Earth where a Barry who looks a lot like his father when younger became the Flash in 1990, and had a few similar friends and foes, also younger'. Past that point, you find worlds that diverge too wildly to even begin to get your bearings.

Eobard Thawne surgically removing Supergirl's heart?

• A major plot point of the crossover is that Overgirl needs Supergirl's heart to continue living; however, to both extract Supergirl's heart and surgically insert it into Overgirl, both Kryptonians need to have prolonged exposure to red sunlight in order to make their skin soft enough to allow knives to penetrate them; otherwise, their Super-Toughness would prevent this. However, couldn't Thawne have just vibrated his hand into Kara to remove her heart, and maybe even insert it into Overgirl the same way? This seems like a major case of Forgot About His Powers.
  • Heart surgery is endlessly complicated. The smallest wrong move could ruin the heart for Overgirl and the amount of complexity in attaching the tubes and valves of the heart to Overgirl would require too much precision to just vibrate it in.
  • Maybe Kara-X would have been more careful with her new heart, but then again, being weaker as a result of less concentrated solar power might well have been unacceptable to her, leading to a problem when they barely found one alt-Kara as a donor...
• When in the hell did Eobard learn how to perform heart transplants? As "Wells," he specialized in physics and dark matter, and as Reverse-Flash, specializes in fucking up the timeline. Did he time travel somewhere just to get a surgeon's training at Dark Arrow's request?
  • Could be. Don't forget that speedsters are a quick study (we've seen Barry read entire textbooks in a matter of seconds) and retain information rather well, and Thawne is explicitly a genius in his own time who learned astrophysics in Kindergarten. So if he didn't already have the knowledge of how to perform heart surgery, it would take him about five seconds to get that knowledge.

Overgirl's role in the Third Reich

• I get that she is given a lot of leeway because of her Nordic looks, but why isn't Overgirl regarded as a freak by the Nazis due to her status as an alien and how do they keep her in check? Her words imply she is "revered as a goddess" by them, but its evident that she is subservient to the current Fuhrer as a general. Keep in mind that even Overman (Superman's Nazi counterpart in Post-Crisis) wasn't a megalomaniac incentivized to consider himself superior to humans and was taught to be loyal to the Reich. What exactly is preventing her from ruling the Earth on her own like Regime Superman in Injustice: Gods Among Us and reassembling the Nazis to serve her will instead?
  • She is the most powerful being on Earth-X, the Nazis know this, so they worship her not out of adoration, but fear. As for why she serves the Third Reich, her pod landed in the Motherland instead of America, and she has probably been Brainwashed into serving the Third Reich all her life once her powers were discovered. Plus she unabatedly loves her husband, the Fuhrer, so her loyalty to him overcomes whatever her own ambition may be.
  • She's Fuhrer's wife so technically she IS the ruling one. Who do you think is wearing pants in this relationship? Badass Normal or Nigh-Invulnerable Flying Brick? Oliver even said "My loyality is to the Fatherland... and to my wife." As for why Nazis love her... remember that Nazis believed in Ubermench, a Flying Brick like that would be seen as perfect ubermench for them.
  • The real Nazis (just like every other tyrant in history) were prone to massive hypocrisy and double-think, especially when it was in their interests. It's not surprising that this version of them would violate the minutia of their philosophy when doing so gains them a massively powerful warrior.
  • Plus, Kryptonians have no trouble passing as humans on any Earth, looking as uncannily human as they do.

Why not invade Earth-38?

• Supergirl is not from Earth-1, she was merely a guest from another Earth entirely that paid a visit to Flash's wedding. Why didn't they invade her dimension instead?
  • And risk going up against guys like Superman, Martian Manhunter, or the Legion of Superheroes? Earth-1 is technically the world with generally weaker superheroes, so given the choice, it makes sense that they'd aim to attack Earth-1 instead. Not to mention that considering Earth-1 is the hub of the multiverse and Earth-X didn't have a Breacher on hand, it's possible that Earth-1 was the only Earth they could travel to. Besides, Thawne probably insisted on attacking his home anyway.
  • Actually...do they even know Kara isn't native to Earth-1? They just kind of show up at the wedding assuming she'd be there and she was, and I don't think Earth-38 comes up at all. With Overgirl being native to Earth-X they might just be assuming she's the Earth-1 Supergirl since plenty of other characters had Earth-X counterparts.
    • Overgirl states how they've been watching all the Arrowverse heroes "sqaundering the potential of two worlds".
  • First they needed to steal a piece of technology from Earth-1 that would generate red sunlight, making the heart transplant possible. Thawne says quite clearly they weren't supposed to attack yet, but Overgirl and Dark Arrow saw an opportunity to nab Supergirl at the wedding, and decided to take it.
  • It has been stated in universe that Earth-1 is the one where all the others can breach, as least for normal people. (Cisco's device for Kara is only 38<->1, the rebel device on X is only X<->1, etc.) The X-Nazis, who also needed the prism on Earth-1, had to wait until Kara was on Earth-1 while the prism was available.

Why all the counterparts?

• Wouldn't such a big change so far in the past as the nazis winning World War II erase tons of people from existence? Even if no one's grandparents died before having kids or something, it would probably be life-altering enough that people wouldn't be having the same kids.
  • Chalk it up to "cosmic balance." A classic bit of multiverses is that some people exist in worlds no matter what, some alive in one world dead in another and vice versa. It may actually be part of the "chemistry" that makes the 53 Earths work properly, some people just have to exist for some reason.

Why does Harry treat Thawne as a version of him?

• In a deleted scene, Thawne confronts Harry and tries to kill him. Harry warns Thawne that killing a version of himself might have negative consequences to the timeline. Thawne seems to accept that but decides to try anyway. They're both geniuses, but they're most definitely not the same person. Thawne is simply using a futuristic device to alter his appearance to that of Harrison Wells, and Harry isn't even Earth-1's Harrison Wells.
  • Isn't that how far his own knowledge goes? As far as I remember, when he first got to Earth 1, everyone was always talking about their bad experience with their own 'Wells'. I'm not sure they ever properly explained to him that it wasn't even a real Wells, but just somebody impersonating him.
  • Maybe that’s why the scene was deleted.
  • Also, Caitlin explained that Earth-1 Wells was impersonated literally right after Cisco first explained to Harry what "Wells" did to Barry.

Why not Solar Flare?

• So, Overgirl's life is in danger because she's absorbed too much solar energy. Isn't the obvious solution to just burn off the excess solar energy? If Overgirl knows anything about how her powers work, she'd know that heat vision depletes her reserves fastest, just fire off a prolonged burst of that. And don't say it's about "not looking weak," she wouldn't necessarily have to burn off so much she's Brought Down to Normal (though that might be ideal), and even if she did, being weak for a day or two is preferable to blowing up like a nuke, and the Furher could easily keep her day or two of just being human under wraps.
  • This question is reinforced by the use of red solar lights to drain yellow solar energy from Supergirl and Overgirl. Shouldn't that technology solve the problem? Overgirl should be able to drain off excess energy just by spending some time each day under that lighting. Kind of like a tanning session for medical reasons.
  • Maybe there was some permanent damage to her heart that couldn't be fixed by burning off the excess, which is why they needed Kara's?

Barry and Iris' social lives

• So, at their wedding, we have Cisco and Oliver on the groom's side, Caitlin and Felicity on the bride's. First of all, why wasn't their actual half-brother part of the wedding party? Secondly, do neither of them have no other close friends or family to be part of the wedding party? Iris barely knows Felicity and Oliver at all.