Barry Allen, the Emerald Archer!? Oliver Queen, the Fastest Man Alive!? Everything this image sends to my brain is alarming and confusing in the most delightful manner possible.
Stephen Amell, who already gave us a tease of the Black Superman suit making its debut in this December’s Arrow/Flash/Supergirl (slash Batwoman!) crossover event Elseworlds yesterday, took to Twitter once again to drop a wild teaser poster for the event. It’s as weirdly disturbing as it is intriguing, because it features Amell and Flash lead Grant Gustin in each other’s costumes.
Oh god, it feels so wrong. And kind of hilarious to both see Oliver’s facial hair sticking out from the now-chinless Flash suit, and see hapless, time-breaking cinnamon bun Barry Allen trying to look threatening under the hood of the Green Arrow suit.
But beyond that initial freaky-Friday moment of sensory befuddlement, it raises a lot of interesting questions about just what’s going on in this year’s crossover. The tagline of “Destiny Will Be Rewritten” on the poster makes it seem like this is a mucking up of the timeline that twists the fates of our heroes—but it’s Amell’s tweet itself that has equally intriguing connotations, with him stating that it’s not Oliver in Barry’s costume, but actually a different version of Barry Allen. Is the Earth Batwoman’s Gotham in a reality where Barry Allen looks like “our” Oliver Queen, and vice versa?
It’s made all the more confusing by Amell and Supergirl supporting star Mehcad Brooks taking to social media recently to share pictures of them all in vaguely gangster-y get-ups, adding more costumery confusion to the mix:
What does it all mean? We’ll have to wait until December 9 to find out, when Elseworlds kicks off its three-night story with Supergirl.