It all started with the 2014 first crossover, and since then, it become a ritual for the annual crossover in Arrowverse, bringing CWverse shows together in one storyline with high stake action and drama.
This crossover has really become popular amongst fans and is something to look forward to. And with the second-last mega-crossover event ‘Crisis on Infinite Earth’, DC’s own TV version of Endgame was such a great treat and payoff.
There has been many team-ups and crossovers since it began, and now it is a good time to look back and rank these crossover and see which ones were the best.
So, here we are ranking every Arrowverse crossover, or even team-up for that matter, from worst to best.
Duet
Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl ( Melisa Benoist), getting stuck in a dream world with Barry Allen aka The Flash (Grant Gustin) doesn’t sound like a mega-crossover event in the Arrowverse.
Well, it wasn’t as well! This one was the most humble and smallest crossover event in terms of involving superheroes, but overall enjoyable for the sole reason – watching Supergirl dancing with The Flash or, precisely, their alter egos.
It starts with a mysterious alien knocking out Kara, so she, along with her boyfriend Mon-El (Chris Wood) and J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter (David Harewood) had to come to Earth-1 to get help from Barry, aka The Flash.
But soon, she and Barry both get sucked into this dream world that is quite musical-inspired, with songs and dances as dialogues to begin with.
We see Kara and Barry dancing to the tunes following the script set to them, which they had to follow if they want to go back to their real world.
It was more like a musical crossover episode that comes up in the third season of The Flash. At least we get to Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist showing off their dancing talents.
And that’s pretty much the fun part of this crossover. yes, the dancing is the best part. Other than that, this wasn’t something of a memorable crossover with high stakes and new chemistry building up as we used to see in other crossovers, hence the ranking.
Armageddon
This crossover had too much expectation to bear because it was released after the endgame, like the crossover of Arrowverse, ‘Crisis on Infinite Earth’. So they thought of going completely another direction.
It wasn’t much about superheroes from different shows coming together to fight more of a global-level threat.
In fact, this one was hardly crossover as falling into this Gray area due to all of its episodes taking place in the same show, ie. The Flash
It was the time when Team Flash faced this new potential mysterious threat which was teased at the beginning of season 8 of the show hinting at the doom of the world.
Overall, the idea of this threat was also not captivating. It was regarding this future destiny where Flash will be responsible for the doom of the world, and then, he has to save it but apparently from himself!!
This is crossover was in the sense that Barry has to get a lot of help from other superheroes and associates across the Arrowverse, which basically qualifies it to be a crossover, we guess!
The crossover definitely piques the emotional tension and drama in the show as it concerns the death of the Flash himself.
So, all the members of Team Flash are emotional and teary about the departure of Barry Allen, which seems to be fixed at the moment. However, they eventually decided to fight back against the situation and come up with a solution.
The conflict in the story wasn’t as powerful and concrete as the show trying to be. There are guests in the shows coming up, like Atom and Black Lightning, but it doesn’t save the crossover from becoming not upto the mark.
World’s Finest
This crossover was quite exciting because it marked the debut of Supergirl into the Arrowverse and the first meeting of Barry Allen, aka the Flash, and Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl.
Barry Allen accidentally lands up on Earth-38, where he saves Supergirl. He soon becomes friends with Kara and helped her fight this combination of two villains taking ip against Supergirl.
They also both have to save Kara’s boss Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), from being murdered by these two revenge-seeking villains.
Today, after knowing the big scope of arrowverse with all superheroes together, this crossover event felt like at most, a team-up, but at that time, it was a huge deal simply because Supergirl was a show from CBS, shifted to CW but not part of Arrowverse.
So when this episode arrived, it was great excitement for both The Flash and Supergirl fans, especially looking forward to how they will interact further in this shared universe. Well, now we know it!
Also, Barry Allen and Kara Danvers have great chemistry and the perfect combination of superheroes teaming up.
This also marked to be the episode which allowed Kara to be part of the Arrowverse opening up the possibility for her to team up with other superheroes in the Arrowverse as well.
The best part of this team-up was how Barry is fun and chilled around Kara with their phenomenal chemistry is a treat to watch.
Heroes Join Forces
This was perhaps the first big arrow crossover where more than two superheroes were brought together to fight a supervillain even though only two shows were involved, shaping the actual crossover format as we know it today.
It begins when Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) tries to kill Kendra Saunders (Ciara Renne) and Barry decided to help them.
He brought Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) and his team onboard to protect Kendra from Savage.
Vandal Savage proved to be much bigger bad villain than they thought, also the fact that he is an immoral and walking on the earth since ages, killing Hawkman and Hawgirl.
This was in fact the second official crossover event in the Arrowverse or CWverse. This was a huge deal back then being a crossover of the scale where more superheroes coming together with new introductions as well.
In fact, this also became the setting up of the new spin-off show from the Arrowverse DC’s Legends of Tomorrow where Hawkman and Hawgirl was part of the spinoff show.
In 2015, this mid-crossover was great fun seeing Arrow and The Flash easily coming up with some reveals and twists in the crossover regarding Oliver’s past and something more going with Team Flash’s current foe as well.
This crossover came after Flash vs Arrow one which was straight up the first crossover event, totally basic and more of establishing these two heroes against as well as later together.
Flash vs Arrow
So, this was the first official crossover between Arrow and the spin-off show The Flash which developed the chemistry between Oliver Queen and Barry Allen that we see today.
It starts from Oliver Queen, Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) and John Diggle (David Ramsey) comes to Central City to investigate a case regarding a murdering Boomerang.
Barry get excited to see Oliver who he regards like a friend/mentor ask them to help Team Flash fighting this emotion-controlling meta human called Rainbow Raider.
So, we get this Flash and Arrow team-up but it didn’t go as plan. The primary conflict comes from the way both superheroes work and view the world. So rather than fighting together, these two friends go against each other.
This crossover was more like pitting these two distinct heroes together to push them understanding each other more at the end as the fight resolves.
Overall it was one of the best crossover in terms of the storyline as it focusses on these two different worlds and two different superheroes where they hails from, their world view, their perspective.
Green Arrow aka Oliver Queen comes from much darker world where he is more prone to violence whereas Barry is more of a hopeful hero who protects people and see positive in the villains as well.
Despite these differences, these heroes come together build a relationship, a bond that goes so much and certainly a great payoff towards the much recent crisis event.
Crisis On Earth-X
This was one of the ‘crisis’ event in the Arrowverse featuring a big team-up between various CW shows like Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl along with some new characters as well.
It starts from quite a positive note which is completely different from any other team-up happened. The initial reason for these heroes coming together at one place was – a Wedding!
Yes! Barry and Iris decided to get married and planned their wedding by inviting the whole lot of heroes across the universe and other universes too ( Supergirl, basically)
But just when the wedding was about to happen, these masked villains came through and disrupted their nuptials.
Since this wedding was comprise of a bunch of Arrowverse heroes, it soon become a fight. Later to find out that these are an invaders from a different alternate reality where Nazis won.
Superheroes from Earth-I are now supposed to fight these super-powered versions from Earth-X who try to take over this world.
What was interesting in this series are some of the great interactions between characters that we never really thought to click, like Sara Lance and Alex Danvers.
This was the first crossover that felt like a large group of superheroes coming together. We also get to see some farewells to some characters in this crossover.
Invasion
This was certainly one of the most fun and entertaining Arrowverse crossovers with an entirely different set of villains that are aliens!
To bring heroes together this time, an Alien invasion was the primary antagonist in the show. It begins with Barry finding a crashing ship in the city, where he see aliens coming out.
Now, Barry taking charge, went for asking help from other superheroes and their teams like Team Arrow, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow to prevent the invasion and stop alien attack.
These aliens who are called to be Dominators have a history to them regarding their visit to Earth which was an interesting addition to the plot. Certainly a good use of time travel in there where legend and their time-ship come in.
However, there is also interpersonal issue arise amongst the heroes. Basically when it was revealed that Barry tried to change the past, saving his mother which caused Flashpoint and changes in time. And that developed some serious trust issues.
Also, there is rift between Barry and his friend Cisco as well. Also, Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow meets Supergirl for the first time, which was quite fun, but he doesn’t trust her.
So, the show apart from the alien invasion, also become a lot about overcoming these interpersonal conflicts so they take down the real villains here- the invading aliens.
This was indeed a great crossover as it touched upon many personal character conflicts and relationship dynamics, not just about teaming up and all.
Another interesting about this crossover was like the predecessor, this event takes places out of the current narrative going on in the shows. Especially the Arrow’s 100th episode fall in-between this event, so it worked out well as audience get to see a some change from the usual timeline.
This event basically married different individual storylines going on each shows and brought together to an overarching storyline for this crossover event.
Elseworlds
This one has to be the most ridiculous plot for a crossover, for sure! Elseworlds is basically based on a plot of role reversal between Oliver Queen, aka Arrow, and Barry Allen, aka The Flash.
Apparently, some mysterious figure gives a powerful reality-bending book to an inmate from Arkhum Asylum, after which The Flash and Green Arrow wake up, switching their place, and living each other’s lives.
Their respective team knows them as each other means Team Flash sees Oliver as Barry, whereas Barry is seen as Oliver.
And when they try to convince the Team Flash otherwise, they don’t believe them and put them in meta prison. So they had to escape to Earth-38 to get Kara, aka Supergirl for help.
The plot obviously taken from the DC comics and it was quite an exciting one for comics fan at the time, so they were also excited to see the CW version of it as well.
Then, we also get to see Tyler Hoechlin as Superman, doing some really great action in the show along with Lois Lane.
Not just that, another surprising guest to this crossover was Kate Kane aka Batwoman who is also coming with her own solo show as well.
Elseworld was the first crossover which has most impact in the later episodes of the show or the overall storyline of the shows in this shared universe, specially become the launching pad for the next grand crisis event.
Crisis On Infinite Earths
This one broke all the records for a crossover that ever happened on Television. In fact, at some level anywhere, including the cinemas.
In terms of the expansion, it went on to include characters from different universes, it was extremely ambitious even beating Avengers Endgame in that, certainly Better than Doctor Strange recent movie what Marvel called to be a ‘multiverse of madness’.
CWverse of Arrowverse went way above and beyond what they usually do, including the known universes and characters within the realm of Arrowverse.
But since it was a multiverse concept that was explored in the show, the show pretty much brought together every DC property ever released on TV and in movies, mostly as a cameo or glimpses but still quite cool.
The primary antagonist in the show was the Anti-monitor and their shadow demons who are trying to destroy worlds. The show actually shows us various worlds ending, wiping out from existence due to wave of anti-matter.
Before Marvel blew out the whole multiverse game, especially how Spider-Man: No Way Home felt, Crisis was something of a similar feel and hype for the fans.
The stakes of this crossover as high as it could be. There was a new reveal, some new cameo down the road every few minutes, including characters from DC properties across time.
Even though there was so many characters coming together, the writers of the show really did good work on giving each character and cast their proper time to breathe and weightage to perform.
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