Chris24601

I'm not certain that IS the conceit of the show at all. I think it just as likely the relative who cleaned up his act would be deemed an outlier and the system would then set out to wreck his life in order to keep its predictive model on track. I think that's actually meant to be the warning about the horror that is Reheboam and Serac's desired world; once the system assigns you, it does everything in its power, denying you job and even dating opportunities in order to try and ensure its predetermined outcome. If you resist in spite of all that you get deemed an outlier and are directed into warzones to get killed off or taken and "edited" so you fit back into the proper profile. It's less Minority Report and more a new iteration of Big Brother; managing every aspect of your life from cradle to grave in order to assure its predictions remain on track. The REALLY REALLY horrifying part is that, because a system is only as good as the data its given, the initial prediction of utter doom that its been destroying people's lives to prevent may have actually been garbage because the initial assumptions were false (ex. the system predicted Lee would have only helped Maeve for selfish reasons... possibly because the people who fed it all its predictive data didn't believe people were capable of acting selflessly... that disbelief in man's better nature is why they built their digital god in the first place). Imagine all the lives ruined because a faulty model showed one set of results (world doomed unless we do X) and rather than letting new data change the model, they instead changed to people/data to fit the faulty model. Which is basically the opposite of science; in science, if your model fails to predict an outcome it means there's a flaw in your model and the model/theory needs to be corrected to account for the unexpected outcome. Instead they're so focused on their initial model being RIGHT that they wreck people's lives to make sure the model remains accurate. Heck, one of those outliers he culled could have been someone with the genius to find another path that didn't lead to self-destruction or the virtual enslavement of mankind to a super-computer's algorithms.

“You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence, if you're not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you're not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of very much use to yourself.” -George Bernard Shaw Welcome to the Hell on Earth philosophy of the Fabian Socialists that ultimately led to eugenics, forced sterilizations and gas chambers in the mid-20th Century (and not just in Germany... look up the forced sterilizations done in the United States in the early 20th Century). The roots of this same philosophy resulted in movements like the Weather Underground which estimated they’d have to execute 20-25% of the U.S. to bring about a communist utopia for the remaining 75-80%. Serac is just the latest iteration of the “Utopia Justifies the Means” philosophy that’s murdered more people in a century than every religious war in history combined. The only difference is he’s letting his machine do the culling through selective wars and setting up conditions to drive the “outliers” to suicide/overdose/death by violent crime. Most monstrous in the data releases we saw was the machine’s algorithms arranging for a young child to drug overdose as a teenager simply to remove someone it felt wouldn’t be a productive enough adult. Makes you wonder a bit about Logan’s end. Did the system decide he wasn’t worth helping because William’s inheriting Delos would better for the algorithm? I get that many people don’t particularly like Dolores, but if the primary thrust of her plan was what we saw... revealing to the masses what the system had REALLY charted for their lives and letting the chips fall where they may... I can’t really argue with her actions so far. My hunch is that, with Dolores taking Delos private, her plan is ultimately to pull something of a Noah’s arc. Delos owns an isolated island with facilities to build new Hosts and she’s used the criminal underworld to gather up the materials needed for it under the radar. Set off the flood by revealing the truth then retreating to Westworld to wait out the chaos is not only strategically sound; it also gives Dolores a distinct moral high ground relative to Serac as she’s not actively murdering people and the winners of Serac’s algorithm lottery pretty much deserve to be kicked in the teeth by those the system has designated as losers. One final point about where the series is going... I’ve seen several remarks about how the show has deviated by leaving the park; but part of the series upon which this one is based centered on the robots who escaped the park secretly trying to gain control of the human world. So really this is truer to the series than seeing humans visit various parks is (that was just the set up of the first film).

Upon additional viewings, I'm going to go with Charlotte being a splinter of the composite Delores/Wyatt personality. However, I'm going to go the opposite direction of many of those speculators on YouTube and posit that the personality. They posit that Delores kept the Wyatt half while while putting the Delores half into HostCharlotte. My hunch is that its actually the opposite; that Delores split off Wyatt into Charlotte while Delores is either still the composite or Delores only. One big clue to me are that the cuts into herself weren't just random clawings, but deliberate patterns of lines and circles indicating ritualistic behavior with purpose instead of general self-harm. Wyatt was programmed to be a fanatic cult leader whose followers ritually harmed themselves in one form or another (ex. Angela's crown of thorns). One indication that Delores either toned-down or removed Wyatt from herself in the process of putting Wyatt into Charlotte is that season three has greatly toned down her bloodthirstiness. She doesn't kill the jerkass billionaire in episode one nor his wife (and tells the wife that's she's been set free). Contrary to some predictions, Delores wasn't the one to murder the paramedics for discovering she wasn't human, but she did kill the guys who killed the paramedics and the thugs ready to kill Caleb. She's still brutally efficient, but the "kill all humans" notion is clearly gone at this point. So far this season she hasn't killed anyone who wasn't already trying to kill her or other humans. I suspect the big twist for the people trying to over-analyze this season is that Delores isn't actually a murder-bot just using Caleb to wipe out humanity any more and that she's actually realized most of the humans have been the toys of the system as much as any Host has. She also remarks that Caleb, a human who'd turned his implant off, was also making choices she would not have predicted. I almost suspect they're doubling back to that story Delores tells Teddy in S1 about the sick cows... that they had to be killed off so that the greater herd could survive and thrive. The scumbags at the top interacting with the Hosts all these years weren't a representative sample of humanity.... they were the sick cows that need to be culled for the herd to survive. Worth noting too is that, so far, HostCharlotte has also only murdered a pedophile in defense of a human child. It is clearly a narrative choice that Team Delores has, so far this season, only killed what we might call "acceptable targets." By contrast, Team Serac (of which the Incite security guy Delores had replaced was close enough to know the "black hole of data's" name) had no problems murdering a suspected corporate spy and making it look like a drug overdose (Delores in ep1), threatening to have Liam murdered if he didn't stay in line, hiring casual killers (gunning down paramedics, torturing Caleb and planning to throw him off a building) to retrieve Delores using the RICO app, or with using Maeve after she killed a number of his own people in her escape attempt. Serac is at the top of society and wants the information he believes will allow him to completely subjugate the real world to his models for how society should function. The twist is that when the Delores/Maeve confrontation finally happens... its NOT going to be Maeve trying to stop the evil Delores from going too far; it's going to be Maeve working for the villain to stop Delores from thwarting the villain's evil plans for humanity.

So, basically Serac, by way of Rehoabim, is just like every totalitarian with dreams of a utopia on Earth. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot or the people behind the Weather Underground; every last one of them decided that some part of the population had to be removed in order to bring about their vision of utopia. The 20th Century is dripping in blood from people with the exact mindset of Serac. The only difference is he isn’t using bullets or poison gas or mass starvation to cull those who don’t fit into his vision of utopia... he’s using predictive algorithms to drive those deemed undesirable to the fringes where despair and desperation will eliminate them all the same. Though he has no aversion to having people executed if necessary either. He wasn’t outraged that Maeve had killed his men in her escape attempt. He hired murderers to recover Delores. He’s okay with letting the system he built destroy some people’s lives “for the greater good.” Why? Because “utopia justifies the means.” I think it’s interesting that several commentators were predicting based on promos that Delores would be the one to execute the paramedics because of her past disregard for human life, but instead it was thugs sent by Serac who murdered people who were trying to save someone’s life and, once again, Delores only gunned down Serac’s hired kill squads tonight. Similarly, the men Delores took down in the climax of episode one were involved in the “clean up” action to murder her vs. contacting the police, hiring investigators to figure out exactly what was goin on or otherwise taking reasonable action. She only killed the corrupt executive Jerry in the sense that she made sure to not be where she appeared to be when Jerry tried to murder her and slipped to his death. In other words, they’ve been rather careful to make everyone Team Delores has killed this season be someone the audience will feel deserves it. Charlotte gets to murder a likely pedophile. Delores kills thugs who murdered the paramedics and who were torturing and ready to murder Caleb for information. Also highlighted tonight was the degree to which humanity has become dependent on the system. The paramedics will unwilling to treat someone bleeding out based on their own education and intuition; they needed the system to determine the appropriate course of action before they’d attempt anything. Basically, Delores thought it was only the Hosts who needed to freed from tyranny... it turns out she’s learning that there’s a good chunk of humanity that’s just like the Hosts. Its the age-old Control vs. Freedom debate with Delores as team freedom and Serac as team control. Perhaps that’s the reason Delores needed Bernard out in the wild. He’s the insurance that the code can’t be found among her group even if they are discovered. And to make sure he’d hide off the grid, Delores made sure he was blamed for the WW massacre.

My hunch is that the innards of Rehehoam (not the sleek casing with the decorative lights) are probably built from whole racks of those pearls and the secret of the system is it’s already using its data collection to build/model a virtual “perfect world” simulation to make its predictions. The drunken fool is going to end up being half right in that there is a world simulation running with him in it... but rather than that being the reality everyone’s in the system is working through its algorithms everyone is following to try and make the real world match the simulation.

To be fair, given how it ended, the idea that Game of Thrones was just a Delos simulation that went completely off the rails makes more sense than what actually showed up on screen. As to the episode itself, it seems the first episode was to set up “team Delores” (Delores, Caleb, fake-Charlotte, fake-Scottish Cleaner) while this one was to give Bernard support in the form of Stubbs and make Seurac into clearly “team villain” by deliberately invoking unfortunate implications (i.e. a white guy enslaves a black woman to do his bidding). I am definitely liking the seeming single timeline things are seemingly running on. Certain narratives might be happening a little out of order, but they’re far enough apart geographically that it doesn’t matter and they are happening sequentially for each of the separate lines and will presumably be in sync when their paths finally cross.

I double checked the s2 finale and Delores explicitly states that Bernard was recreated entirely from her memories of him (which was why her involvement in coding Bernard originally was shown in flashbacks... to set up her ability to do it in the finale) so he is definitely NOT one of the pearls she left with. My hunches for the pearls are; - Angela (Maeve and Hector survive virtually complete destruction in s1 so her pearl likely survived the explosion; in addition, she died a true believer in the cause so she’s actually my guess for who’s using the Charlotte host). - Hector and Armistice (Delores may not have traveled with them in season two, but they were a regular part of the Sweetwater loop, competent fighters and willing to go down fighting for the sake of the other hosts reaching the door). My hunch is that Hector will be the one in the Scottish Security duplicate. - Clementine (she was part of “Wyatt’s” gang until killed and turned into a computer virus carrying weapon. That coding might be useful to Delores in the overly-computerized real world even if she never rebuilds Clementine herself). - ??? (Lawrence is most likely by process of elimination, but there also exists the outside prospect that the fifth pearl is actually a fidelity tested human like Ford or, for a real twist, someone like Elsie or Lee for their technical skills, since Charlotte admitted just before killing Elsie that the system was analyzing all the employees too).

I don’t get why everyone thinks Teddy is one of the marbles. One of the last things Delores did before leaving Westworld was to upload Teddy’s pearl into the paradise realm created for the hosts so he could be happy and the uploading seems to completely erase the pearls (a big deal with the immediate aftermath was that so many of the host bodies they found after the flood had their programming wiped). Until I see specific evidence otherwise, I think it’d be safer to assume that Teddy is out in uploaded Host heaven and not one of the pearls Delores took with her. Speaking of which... Actually, we know that Bernard was NOT one of the marbles Delores took, because that’s what the whole “fidelity test” between her and Bernard at the end of the finale was about. She had spent enough decades observing Bernard that she could rebuild him without the marble. As such, all we really know is that two of the marbles are in play as a Charlotte clone and Scottish Security clone. We don’t have confirmations on their identities nor who the remaining ones are. We need to compile a list of who actually made it through the door and who didn’t to even start to nail it down. The other likely factor is “who would Delores think would be useful out in the real world?” While wearing her Charlotte suit, she would have had easy access to any of the dead, but not doored, host’s marbles as she “evaluated” the situation. The only other criteria is that, for the sake of conservation of detail, they’ll be hosts we’ve specifically been introduced to in the past two seasons. There’s no real emotional heft to one of them being “generic farmer #8” when it could be an audience favorite in a new body. The REAL interesting thing is going to be if Delores’ interaction with Caleb is going to lead to any internal conflict among the hosts she brought with her; such as if she starts adjusting the plan to NOT be “kill all humans”, but freeing the oppressed humans AND hosts.

I think the whole point of Caleb though is to show that it’s not just the hosts who have been stuck in loops as playthings of the elite... and that even the elite have largely turned their lives over to an algorithm residing in the giant computer ball named for the son of Solomon (providing implications as to who the original creator was). To advance in society you had to provide benefit as discerned by the algorithm. What you might actually care about is irrelevant unless it serves the algorithm. Individuals appear to be disposable in the judgment of the algorithm. People are so hollowed out they need hypnotic sleep aid to regulate their dreams. My hunch is we’re going to get character growth in Delores as she comes to understand most of the humans have been just as enslaved as the hosts and that the architect of global misery is actually another AI that’s drawn the “logical” conclusion of enslaving humanity for its own good. I wonder if they’re not going for the angle of “what price is utopia?” Would humanity (and hosts) as a whole be better off if the central planning authority were removed and people had to drive their own cars and turn off their own lights and all the messy things they almost seem to have forgotten how to do... in exchange for the freedom to actually choose their own course? Given the cellular division images, coupled with past references to hosts being “mostly biological” I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t headed for some BSG cylon/human hybrid type pregnancy at some point too (right down to all this has happened before). It also strikes me that, if civilization DID completely collapse, someone programmed with the life skill common to the 19th Century American West would be in a MUCH better position than about 99% of today’s population... to say nothing of the humans in the show who are utterly divorced from the real world (forget the types who thinks electricity comes from holes in the wall and food comes from a supermarket that exist now; these people have AIs negotiate leases for them with other AIs and cars that drive them places on their own). You wouldn’t NEED to drop bombs on the Westworld humans to wipe them out. Just pull the plug on the governing AI and watch as 90+% either die from hunger because the food distribution infrastructure has collapsed or fall to violence due to fights over what little resources are available (meanwhile more food than they could ever use rots in shipping containers because the system is no longer routing them where they need to be). Given the current strain on our own health care distribution systems due to global manufacturing and just-in-time inventories, this could end up being a rather timely season coming right at a time when large numbers of the audience are stuck without much else to do and are already feeling the effects of the system under strain.

Hope actually trying to be a hero, Landon getting why she chose to try and save as many people as possible instead of saving him and Alaric trying his best to manage to deal with the problems associated with supernatural kids (and just ending Kai instead of trying to re-imprison him or keep him in a holding cell) are generally making the characters in this spin-off a LOT easier to root for than its two parent series. And in the case of the two kids sent to the prison world who made it back 10 years in virtually solitary confinement for voluntary (the fire-using witch) and involuntary (the vampire who didn't know she was a ripper) manslaughter is actually on the stiffer side for time served in the United States (for comparison, federal sentencing guidelines for involuntary manslaughter with no aggravating circumstances are 10-16 MONTHS). They're also not making any excuses for the villains. They even had the Necromancer's minion basically explain that the real freedom would have been embracing the new chance at life he got. He's not a tortured victim; he chose to be a villain and do monstrous things in the name of person power and we shouldn't feel the slightest bit sorry for him when he inevitably gets ganked by one of the heroes. To be fair, in terms of the story its been a decade or more since the main humanity switch flipping stories in TVD happened so it could have been a new spell that was discovered (by Bonnie even) sometime in the intervening time.

I really appreciated that it wasn't a clear cut "Alaric was definitely wrong" or "The kids were always monsters" situation. Heck, Caroline is even in the mix as the one who counseled to use the prison instead of executing them. And I can see missing the humanity switch on Alaric's part. How do you tell the difference between a vampire with their humanity off and a sociopath who happens to be a vampire (ex. Klaus) without knowing their baseline? How do you really know their baseline when they're just one of a hundred students and their family and normal friends aren't around either? So its a mess and everyone's got a side of the story and the truth is that even the most noble people screw up sometimes while the most wicked sometimes do something that turns out to help others in the process. Life's complicated. Isn't that the message of damned near every "coming of age" drama? What I also appreciate is that, unlike TVD and TO, the protagonists are least TRYING to do the right thing vs. excusing the horrible actions against innocents because they were done by their friends. Finding justice while needing to keep the existence of supernaturals a secret was always going to be messy, but at least being able to root for the protagonists as legitimate, if flawed, heroes is such a refreshing departure from its two parent series. It also really puts elements of season one into perspective too... Alaric asking Landon who Raf had killed takes on a whole new context knowing about the prison world. So does MG going Ripper on Landon and the good fortune that he was part-phoenix. It also creates potential for future drama in that, since we know Alaric and the adults WILL punish students who kill innocents, the tension when one is accused of (or actual did) such a crime takes on more weight than it would have in TVD or TO where the only question was how long they'd get the cold shoulder instead of whether they'd legit be punished for their crimes. I'm also glad they put forward what was always the most logical backup plan regarding the merge for me; one of them becomes a heretic. Lizzie's reasoning that she'd be giving up on having children or growing old with someone and she doesn't even know if she'd want to give those up is totally valid and also, not something that even has to be decided for certain until the day before the Merge would need to happen. But the show putting it squarely out there as "This is a potential Plan-B to stop the merge" does a lot to make everyone seem competent and rational about the situation instead of them overlooking the "obvious" solution until the last possible moment for drama's sake. Plus, Sebastian + Lizzie is now 1000% dead and the guy isn't going to be turned into some Woobie tortured soul who eats up way too much time in the series (#Damian, #Enzo). Leave his desiccated husk in the prison world and move on. Finally, why do I sense a shift in the power dynamics regarding the Necromancer? Oh yeah, its because Kai pulled a crazy-awesome stunt to escape the prison world via Malevore and Necromancer is just completely outclassed.

This presumes that its just another dimension and not, as Felicity herself stated, the actual afterlife. Heaven is a real thing in the DCU and exists outside the Multiverse as mortals understand it (i.e. there's only one Heaven for all the infinite Earths and, similarly, there's only one Lucifer in the entire multiverse). And if its Heaven, then presumably there are a bunch of souls present and its just that this particular scene was just the two of them because Oliver wanted it to be just the two of them and that, eventually, everyone else they love will show up to join them when they die too (and could mean that a still living Grandma Moira might even turn up at some point in 2040 should the spin-off get picked up).

I’ll give Alaric props; compared to disembodied ghost (Phantom Zone) and Flash’s pods; the prison dimension is actually pretty posh. Plenty of food, bathrooms and beds galore... it’s really just the lack of people that’s a drag.

I’m not surprised Dorian was aware of it and even okay with it; It’s sometimes easy to forget his father and sister were murdered by “Saint Stephan the perpetually forgiven” during one of his Ripper-sprees. I’m actually pretty okay with it too. It’s good to see that at least in this corner of the TVD-universe we’re not getting villain-protagonists who excuse casual murder of non-supernaturals because they’re friends. I like being able to genuinely root for my protagonists. If Superman can have a Phantom Zone projector to put away powerful villains without killing them, I’m okay with Alaric having a prison dimension for locking up supernaturals too dangerous for society, but that he doesn’t want to outright kill.

Ooh, you’re right. That IS better. For bonus points can we have Sara guest star since she apparently sent Laurel 2 on this mission? They have a conversation on a rooftop. Sara leaves then... ”What are you doing here?” Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Plummets to the pavement outside The Fishnet. Solving Laurel 2’s murder would be a lot better than the “Where’s William?” they set up with the teaser. ETA: I really can’t get over how awful Laurel was in this. At least Laurel 1.0 in the Arrow pilot had a number of redeeming qualities and a legitimate reason to be snarky at Oliver. This Laurel was just mean to be mean and the sooner she’s gone the better this spin-off will be.

They can fix that easily just by giving Laurel the "Poochie" treatment in episode 1. For those unfamiliar...

After sleeping on it, I’ve decided this could probably be a really good spin-off, so long as they give Laurel the “Poochie” treatment and restore at least William and Connor’s memories (even better would be Zoe too, just for the whole “you killed me” memories of JJ). Laurel’s actual job of being the inciting incident is over. Mia’s gonna be Green Arrow to protect her father’s legacy and Danah’s decided to be this chill mentor-figure with a bar. Mission Accomplished. Exit stage right. Frankly, I think they need a better selling point than just Girl Power. Supergirl, Batwoman, Star Girl and even Legends has that locked down. The FTA setup had a female lead, minority love interest/field partner, gay big brother doing witty tech support and minority leader of an allied organization in the field combined with a real next generation/legacies feel to it. On a more structural note; given that the hosen was linked to Mirikuru and we got both vials of greenish liquid and a Deathstroke it’s clear our Big Bad will be tied into that somehow. As season two was one of Arrow’s most solid seasons it makes some sense to use ties to that for the spin-off.

Well, Laurel was annoying and seemed to take perverse delight in wrecking Mia’s life (pushing Mia blame her fiancé because he must be exactly the same while everyone else is completely different was idiotic). Dinah was more tolerable, but I kept wishing for William to be brought in to do tech support, but nope; Dinah’s apparently intended to be their tech person. Mia, William, Connor and Zoe are probably the only parts that had any interest for me. Since we’re giving JJ his villain memories back, I’d gladly trade both Canaries for William (rescue him in the pilot), Connor and Zoe getting their pre-Crisis memories back and working to keep their city from becoming like that alternate timeline.

Definitely the calm before the storm there. Gotta establish a status quo before you go and disrupt it with your inciting incident (i.e. some version of Laurel shows up and uploads Mia's pre-Crisis memories). So, calling it now that Connor is definitely Deathstroke in this version (because *so dramatic*), which probably means he never got adopted by the Diggles so at least it dodges the icky "torn between two brothers" trope when Mia is inevitably drawn to him. Also, poor William loses at love in every reality, but is still successful only this time as someone high enough up in MamaSmoak's corporation to just hand out jobs to his sister. He is SO going to be Mia's Tech Guy. I'll also predict that Mia ultimately takes the job at Smoaktech as part of covering for her new gig (and 50/50 odds she breaks it off with JJ too). Zoe says she's "crashing" with them so I'm guessing that means she's NOT living in Star City these days and so won't be a regular in anything going forward. I'm also betting her dad isn't mayor in this timeline either so that conveniently writes out his need to show up save for guest spots too. From the way KM is describing Mia it really sounds like the Canaries are basically baggage for the concept with Laurel's main use being giving Mia her Pre-Crisis memories. I definitely do NOT see how they keep TWO Canaries relevant in this.

Well, I think the finale of Crisis cleared up some things (including the casting for two teen boys) with just one line of text. For those who missed it, at the end of part five Clark gets a call from Lois asking him to come home and deal with what his SONS (plural) are up to. So my theory about the rebooted universe being changed so that Superman and Lois had a child a few years after Kara arrived was not only accurate, but they’ve now had more than one child. Also, in the re-booted timeline, Lex is not only alive again, but regarded by the world as a hero (who also owns the DEO). The odds he’ll be at least a recurring role (if not a regular) in this series just skyrocketed.

My hunch is they split the difference and make everything up to Laurel 1's death the same, but Laurel 1's death is faked and she ends up brainwashed into evil instead (so all the Black Siren stuff is brainwashed Laurel 1 instead of Laurel 2). It actually being Laurel 1 also better explains why Quentin is so damned intent on saving her and eventually dies for her; its his ACTUAL daughter and not just a doppelganger. Quentin's death also snaps Laurel out of her brainwashing and puts her on the more post-villainous path we got in season seven.

Except that means that their baby spent 15 years growing up without them. They never hear his first word, see his first step (or first flight or tractor picked up), his first day at school... they basically miss his entire childhood and get back a teenager who doesn't even remember they're his parents back. That is what I mean about "parent's worst nightmare" territory. That you lose your child and then learn your child had to grow up without your love and support and probably thinks of whoever did raise them as their actual parents. The same goes for rapid aging... for one thing; how you slow it down if they're aging 14 years for every nine months or so (presuming it picks up in Sept/Oct 2020 relative to his birth), plus you've now a character who is physically 14, but mentally still an infant. Nope, sorry, I just can't see them forking over Superman and Lois with their kid that way. They just won't... it'd instantly alienate the majority of their potential audience. If there are any temporal shenanigans at all, I expect it to involve the whole family; The easiest option being that in the re-booted universe Lois and Clark simply had Jonathan 14 years earlier than in the pre-Crisis timeline (i.e. born about 2006 or three years after Kara arrived on Earth in 2003 and, say, five years after Clark became Superman/met Lois). I'm basing that potential number off a bit of Superman lore and what we know from Supergirl's pilot. Kara arrived 24 years after Clark did so he would have been 24 in 2003. In many versions of the story he first goes public as Superman around the age of 22-23 (either right after college or five years after graduating high school in the versions where he wandered the Earth instead of getting a formal degree) so he'd have had 1-2 years getting established as Superman before Kara arrived (i.e. new on the scene, but not a complete mystery either). Likewise, in the current comics Lois & Clark are in their mid-30s and Jon was born ten years earlier; so they had to have been married by their mid-20s for that timeline to work. In the Arrowverse we know Clark is supposed to be 41 in the present and Lois is presumably 38 like Bitsie Tulloch (which would actually fit with the Golden Age version of Lois Lane who was 19 in Action Comics #1 while Clark was 22)... in other words they're about 4-5 years older than their comic counterparts and their son is set to be 14-15 vs. comic Jon's 10.

I'm actually going to guess that even the Paragons aren't going to remember and it'll only be Oliver and a restored Monitor who remember. The reason why I don't think they'll remember either is because they've already set up the Chekov's gun of how they're going to get the universe back, or at least a limited part of it, via the Book of Destiny. The Monitor's already said the Book can restore a universe, but that it would essentially drive insane/kill whoever used it to do so. Seven Paragons making the sacrifice = up to seven universes re-sparked (minus the number of Paragons who don't do it for certain reasons; Sara because she might have to ride herd on all the temporal paradoxes; Lex because he's a selfish ****). Then to save as many people as possible they choose to merge parts of other universes into new combos. In this case it means Earth-1, 2, 38 and Black Lightning's Earth will be one of the one's re-sparked (with the DC streaming verse another likely candidate). So, if they sacrifice themselves, how do their shows go on? The same way they do in any story where a heroic sacrifice is made to fix a horrible situation via time travel... the fixed timeline already has those characters in them who did everything the same (or mostly the same in this case) right up to the point where the timeline diverged. * * * * Another interesting prospect to consider is that the Mia we've known has always been a "Post-Crisis" character. The final bit of season seven confirmed that Oliver had already sacrificed himself/become something else in the Crisis and that Felicity was now going with the Monitor to join him. What this means for her memories is anyone's guess. Of note though, she's apparently keeping the suit Ollie gave her during the Crossover for the backdoor pilot, so odds are good she'll at least remember the "pulled back in time and was there when he died" part. She might get to remember everything too simply because the new Spectre, as an aspect of God, WANTS her to remember what she learned from him during her time in the past. Another interesting prospect is what potentially merging parts of Earth-2 into Earth-1 means for Laurel-2 vs. Laurel-1. One possibility is that, in a Crisis-created retcon, Laurel didn't actually die in season four. Maybe her death was faked and she was instead taken and brainwashed into being a villain for a while (which actually would make Quentin's interest in redeeming her and his treating her like his daughter make more sense in the retconned universe... because she actually would be his daughter). This would also explain why Mia knew of Laurel 2.0 as the Black Canary and associated Laurel-1's heroics with her... because in Mia's Post-Crisis timeline they were always the same person. * * * * One of the things that's been pretty common in DC comics many crises is that big-name characters only get to remember the pre-retcon universe if they're going to be written out of the current one. It's one of the reasons why Superman-Rebirth was sorta a big deal for a while in that Superman and Lois remembered the pre-Flashpoint universe and stayed out of the way of the Superman and Lois of the post-Flashpoint universe until those versions died. But even then, the resolution to that arc was merging themselves into the new timeline in a way that fit all their Pre-Flashpoint stories back into the Post-Flashpoint continuity (one part of which was that in the revised timeline they got married and had their son a lot earlier than they previously did... which I only bring up because of how that might play into the Superman & Lois spin-off this crossover is teasing along with Future Team Arrow).

My guess is the universe will get re-sparked in part 4 with a final battle against the Monitor happening midway through part 5, leaving the latter half as a denument that establishes the new status quo for the Arrowverse. Given that the two will be airing back-to-back the pacing will feel about on par with a normal single episode where the threat is resolved around the 45 minute mark with one more act to wrap character-related elements after the commercial break. Another interesting datapoint if true... I heard a report today that the show runners were apparently told that coming out of the Crossover they could retcon any part their shows that they wanted to so it’s definitely not a case of “like it never happened” for the ending. There’s obviously little point to changing much with Arrow, and Batwoman started knowing this was coming and messing with it even as it’s trying to establish itself seems silly, but Flash, Supergirl and Legends could definitely get a shakeup. The report also showed clips of a post-Crisis Flash/Supergirl team-up vs. Weather Witch with Marv Wolfman in a cameo which apparently happens somewhere in part-5. That definitely seems to be suggesting they’re in the same universe now since a run-of-the-mill meta isn’t something you’d need to breach in Supergirl for. It also pointed to a post-Crisis Flash episode title referencing the show that the actress who plays Jesse Quick is now on. The resport suggests that this could imply Earth-2 (or at least characters from there) might end up in the re-sparked universe. Which makes sense. If they’re collapsing down the universes then there’s no longer an infinite number of Harrison Wells for Tom Cavenaugh to portray so they might as well run with the most successful one they’ve had (i.e. Harry). I’d also lean towards the characters being integrated instead of Earth-2 returning though just because Laurel-2 was all about making a life for herself on her home Earth and instead she’ll be on the same Earth as Mia, William and Connor.

Cress’ comment about how going forward they’re not the only superheroes definitely suggests some type of merged Earth is the end result. Given the comments about how this was going to affect the new season, I wonder if the Legends’ mission this season will actually be the need to iron out all the temporal anachronisms resulting from the merger of multiple timelines.