Thirteen years after he last donned Superman’s cape, Brandon Routh will play the superhero again in The CW’s annual Arrow-verse crossover. He also won’t be the only Man of Steel in the story.
Routh, who stars on the network’s Legends of Tomorrow as Ray Palmer/The Atom, will play Clark Kent and his heroic alter ego in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover. It will be the first time he’s played the role since the 2006 movie Superman Returns. Tyler Hoechlin, who has recurred on Supergirl as Superman, will also reprise his role in the crossover.
The CW is expected to share details of the crossover Saturday at Comic-Con.
“Crisis on Infinite Earths” will span five of The CW’s DC Comics shows — Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and newcomer Batwoman — and is set to begin in December. Three episodes of the event will air before the holiday hiatus, with the remaining two coming in January 2020.
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The story is based on a landmark DC Comics miniseries in 1985-86 that did away with the DC multiverse of the time — hence multiple incarnations of Superman — and reset the timeline on one Earth. At the end of Arrow‘s seventh-season finale in May, Oliver (Stephen Amell) learned from the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) that he would have to give up his life to save Barry (The Flash‘s Grant Gustin) and Kara (Supergirl‘s Melissa Benoist), setting up his death in the final, 10-episode season of Arrow.
In the CW series’ continuity, The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and Batwoman are all set on Earth-1, but Supergirl takes place on Earth-38, meaning Kara has to cross dimensions to team up with the other heroes. A post-Crisis reset would likely bring every show to the same Earth.
Deadline first reported the news.
