‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’ Part 3 Recap & Ending Explained: Is Diana Alive?

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The third time is indeed the charm, as after the first two parts of the lackluster animated movie adaptation of Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s seminal work Crisis on Infinite Earths, the makers have finally got the recipe right with the final part. Tomorrowverse might not have found a strong reception among seasoned DC fans, but it surely will be remembered for its concluding chapter, as despite taking creative liberties, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three stays true to the core of its source material by reverberating the universal, or, shall we say, multiversal, message of hope! In the Flashpoint comics, there was a really well-placed memorable quote about acceptance, which once again gets reiterated in the climactic moments of the final entry of Tomorrowverse. Worlds lived. Worlds died. And the multiverse was truly never the same. 

Spoilers Ahead


Monitor Protects the Remaining Earths

Crisis on Infinite Earths 3 begins right where the previous entry ended. The multiverse of superheroes faces imminent death as the Anti-Monitor charges up his all-devouring anti-matter wave. Kara, aka Supergirl, who was controlled by Anti-Monitor’s new lackey, the strongest empath, Psycho Pirate, to kill Monitor—her own father figure and the multiverse’s only hope to survive—realizes the gravity of her actions. With his dying breath, Monitor ensures the multiverse’s survival by spending the last of his energies to transport all the surviving earths, along with its superheroes, to The Bleed, a secretive, unstable dimension that exists outside the multiverse fold which is out of Anti-Monitor’s reach. Supermen from Earth-1 and Earth-2, Lois (Earth-1), and Hawkwoman rescue Wonder Woman (Earth-2), who was drifting frozen across The Bleed and bring her up to speed on the situation.

The Bleed isn’t sustainable for the long term as temporal and spatial abnormalities continue to affect it constantly, as seen when Earth-1 Metropolis suddenly gets invaded by a horde of dinosaurs. Superman, Diana, Black Canary, and Green Arrow get into action to handle the situation, and they are joined by time-displaced Captain Storm and his military group, the Losers. The narrative focus shifts to Earth-10, where Lex Luthor, supreme leader of this earth, is seen assisted by his council of villains, and he has managed to capture the perp responsible for Monitor’s death, the Psycho Pirate. Lex is trying to communicate with Anti-Monitor using Psycho Pirate as a medium, and later in the movie, we eventually learn the reason. Occasionally, the focus shifts to Kara, who is apologetic and guilt-ridden for her mistake, even though her mind was manipulated. 


Anti-Monitor Invades The Bleed

While battling Nazi versions of rogues in Earth-2 Gotham City alongside the Batfamily, Batman gets dosed with Scarecrow’s fear toxin, and the vision he saw in the Warworld of a much older version of Flash, aka Barry Allen, starts haunting his mind. The group is transported to Monitor’s satellite, where heroes of the multiverse are accompanied by Earth-10 Lex, and they watch in horror as the fabric of space-time gets torn in places as Anti-Monitor enters through The Bleed. The first victim of the new wave of Anti-Monitor’s attack on Earth-146, and in the face of impossible odds, Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, the prime protector of that particular earth, decides to return to his family to be with them in the final moment. Anti-Monitor leaves, most probably because it cannot sustain itself too long in The Bleed, but the threat of its return remains. 


The Heroes Plan to End Anti-Monitor

As more and more earths continue to get obliterated by the Anti-Monitor, including Earth-2, the Question shares his suspicion about someone ratting on them from the inside. Lois is quick to suspect Lex from Earth-10 as the person responsible, and Lex admits to making a deal with Anti-Monitor to share information about other earths’ locations in exchange for sparing his own in order to observe Anti-Monitor long enough to find his weakness. The majority of the heroes are appalled after learning this and share their wish to bring Lex to justice, but for the time being, Mr. Terrific proposes to listen to his strategy. Lex has deduced that, much like the antimatter shadow demons that Anti-Monitor was using, they can be repelled by a tremendous amount of light harnessed as energy, and he proposes using hundreds of suns of the multiverse as fuel to weaponize Superman (whose source of power is the sun) against the cosmic monstrosity. Lois is aggrieved, but Clark (Earth-1) comforts her, stating the plan is worth a shot if it indeed saves billions of lives, no matter the cost. 

However, as Clark goes to accumulate energy by plunging himself into the suns of the multiverse, he is stopped by Kara, who is hell-bent on making amends for her past actions. Clark tries to convince his cousin to let him be the one to carry the burden of the multiverse’s fate, but Kara is too grief-stricken by the loss of her close ones to listen to his words and wants to sacrifice herself for the greater good. Right at this time, the Anti-Monitor emerges again, almost foiling their plan, until J’onn J’onzz appears with Adam Strange and Lobo and, using Warworld’s enhanced powers, manages to deal temporary damage to the Anti-Monitor. As it turns out, at the end of Justice League: Warworld, Martian Manhunter and the Warworld had survived and were merely transported to another plane.

However, Anti-Monitor has already recovered and is going to attack the satellite next. With Kara still needing time, the heroes of the multiverse need to come up with a plan. Superman conceptualizes using the Warworld’s emotion-to-energy transfer mechanism to full effect by using Psycho Pirate to evoke emotions of hope across all the living beings across the multiverse to be harnessed by Warworld’s mechanism to amplify its attack manifold. Also, like a miracle, a number of newly recruited Green Lanterns, along with Razer (Green Lantern: The Animated Series), meet John Stewart, and they hold off Anti-Monitor’s attack until Warworld completely charged up. Warworld’s energy beam creates a dent in the shield of the Anti-Monitor, where an empowered Supergirl enters and releases all the accumulated energy to blast the cosmic juggernaut out of existence.


A Cosmic Investigation and Speedster Messenger

In a parallel storyline, Bruce wakes up days after the fear-toxin attack in the care of Dr. Mid-Nite in the satellite, and by this time, a number of earths in The Bleed have perished at the hands of Anti-Monitor. Bruce has realized that Flash was trying to convey a warning of this crisis by going back in time, which is why he appeared in Warworld in a much older and frailer state (living a lifetime in the first part of the movie) and eventually was wiped out of existence. Bruce summons Kent Nelson, and the good old Doctor Fate confirms his suspicions by showcasing his vision to others, deducing the fact that the origin of the crisis is somehow connected with the beginning of the very multiverse. Listening to all this talk about premonition, John Stewart remembers the word of Pariah, aka John Constantine, from DCAMU (the previous animated universe in DC continuity), and sensing a possible connection, Batman, Dr. Fate, and others track him down on Earth-18. Diana comes across this earth’s version of Bat-Lash, a major déjà vu moment for her from her experiences in Warworld.

Constantine’s troubled psyche doesn’t allow him to remember the cosmic connection that Flash was alluding to, prompting Dr. Fate to send Batman and Constatine’s spirits through a journey in the astral plane in the past, way before the beginning of the multiverse. They reach the end of the previous reality, as seen in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, where Darkseid’s invasion resulted in the near annihilation of the singular earth’s population and the deaths of the majority of the heroes. This is what prompted Constantine to put a hex on Flash, who went on to undo everything by going back in time and killing Darkseid in infancy. Even though Flash couldn’t bring himself to kill the Lord of Apokolips, the hex put on him by Constantine had made him an angel of death (Rappaccini’s daughter allusion by Batman) and caused Darkseid’s death. However, being the manifestation of evil itself, Darkseid’s presence in history was significant enough to become an unchangeable nexus event, and removing him led to the splitting of realities and the creation of new earths. This cosmic split exponentially continued with every major and minor change until an infinite earth came into existence and risked the collapse of reality itself by breaching the mark of sustainability. 


The Superheroes Create A New World And Destroy The Multiverse

As the Anti-Monitor seemingly gets obliterated, Clark brings Supergirl’s lifeless body back to Warworld and, holding his cousin, the last member of his Kryptonian family, in his arms, breaks down in anguish, recreating the iconic moment of the Crisis on Infinite Earths series cover. However, the heroes don’t have the time to mourn either, as Batman returns and details everything he has experienced in Constantine’s memories to convey that a bigger threat is coming for them. The heroes realize that the Anti-Monitor was a deterrent used by reality itself to stop an entire collapse threatened by the infinite earths, which was not sustainable in the end. Their assumption is proven as a horde of Anti-Monitors appears through The Bleed moments later. This is an impossible oddity that they cannot hope to overcome, even with a lifetime’s worth of preparations. 

Batgirl remembers Kara speaking about a miracle machine—a literal wish-fulfilling mechanism of the 31st century that was hidden between the realities due to the power it holds. With the help of Nightshade, Martian Manhunter brings the Miracle Machine to Warworld, but the team finds it impossible to access it. Meanwhile, Earth-508, the world of Super Friends, bites the dust in the antimatter wave. The antimatter wave reaches Earth-12, the world of Timmverse, where we see Batman and Joker from Batman: The Animated Series scuffling on the rooftops of Gotham. Realizing the end is near, Batman chooses to remain entangled in the last tango with the Joker, and there simply couldn’t have been a more befitting end to this world. What makes this ordeal even more emotional for fans is that this is the last time Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill lend their iconic voices to the roles of Batman and Joker, respectively. Earth-12 ends, and so does its Justice League Watchtower, as we see Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Hawkwoman, Superman, and Aquaman from Justice League: Unlimited perishing in the crisis as well. Earth-2003 of the Teen Titans animated series suffers a terrible fate as well. 

It is pretty apparent that the Anti-Monitor is trying to rewrite reality itself and start anew, and Dr. Fate proposes to take lessons from the situation they have found themselves in—and using the Miracle Machine, they must create a monoverse, a single universe where the collective consciousness of the infinite versions of the people will live as singular beings. Superman is averse to the idea; he doesn’t want to accept the loss of so many lives, cultures, and ideas in the unification. However, Lois quite poignantly reminds himself that the dream of two scientists to save the one child of their doomed world led to the creation of the symbol of hope, alluding to his own origin in the process, and as a teary-eyed Clark accepts the sacrifice, the movie truly embodies the message of the series it was based on. 

To sustain an eternal wish, the Miracle Machine needs something eternal in exchange to activate, and Diana realizes that her immortality as a goddess can allow her to sacrifice herself to activate the mechanism. Earth-2 Clark is adamant about sacrificing himself instead, but Diana manages to assuage him. With Diana’s sacrifice, the Miracle Machine opens up a new vista to a single earth, where each of the singular, definitive versions of beings across all the infinite earths will exist. Spectre, incarnation of God’s wrath, appears to witness this, one of the most pivotal moments of reality, as one by one, everyone present at Warworld moves to the singular earth—except the Question, that is, as he believes this to be a false history and participating in it goes against his principles. With the hope of beginning anew and meeting again, all the characters depart the Warworld, with Batman crossing over at the end.

The deranged Psycho Pirate perishes at last as Earth-10 is engulfed in the antimatter wave. John Constantine remains with Spectre, wondering about his eternal damnation. When Spectre remarks that as a deliverer of God’s justice, this time around, he can try to offer hope, Constantine follows Spectre as the multiverse comes to an end, perhaps joining in his celestial journey beyond the trapping of the cosmos. 


Epilogue

In the final moments of Crisis on Infinite Earths 3, the narrative focuses on Themyscira, as a young Diana Prince is engaging in adolescent mischievousness, only to be reminded by her mother Hippolyta that even princesses aren’t immortal. This sequence hints at the foundation of the new universe, which was laid on the bedrock of Wonder Woman’s sacrifice, and in the future, the Amazonian warrior will take the lead when the new universe flourishes further. 


Siddhartha Das
Siddhartha Das
An avid fan and voracious reader of comic book literature, Siddhartha thinks the ideals accentuated in the superhero genre should be taken as lessons in real life also. A sucker for everything horror and different art styles, Siddhartha likes to spend his time reading subjects. He's always eager to learn more about world fauna, history, geography, crime fiction, sports, and cultures. He also wishes to abolish human egocentrism, which can make the world a better place.


 

 

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