‘Legends of Tomorrow’s Caity Lotz Previews the End of ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’
Q&A
The end of the end is nigh! After a nearly month-long hiatus, the glorious five-headed behemoth known as the Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover comes to a cataclysmic conclusion Tuesday, January 14 with a two-hour finale that has a lot to get done.
On the docket? Reversing time, undoing the eradication of the universe (or two or twenty), explaining what the hell is going on with the back-from-the-dead Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), and pretty much resetting the courses of Arrow, The Flash, Batwoman, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Legends of Tomorrow.
But first, our surviving heroes—or Paragons, if you will—need to get the hell out of the Vanishing Point. But it turns out that the wonky dimension that exists outside of the time-space continuum — where Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), Ryan Choi (Osric Chau), Martian Manhunter (David Harewood), Kara (Melissa Benoist), Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) and Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) were teleported right before the Anti-Monitor made the last Earth spinning go boom — is way more than just a safe space. It’s become, it seems, more of a prison.
Here, the always fabulous Lotz dodges all sorts of spoilers to give us some details on what we can expect from the last two installments of the epic crossover, what the end of Arrow means to her personally and what Legends has in store for her once their new season finally kicks off next Tuesday, January 21 at 9/8c. Check it out before you shut our the world to watch the finale!
So I am assuming whatever happens in these last two hours really affects what your season of Legends looks like.
Caity Lotz: Yes. What happens in a crossover impacts all of the shows, right? I can’t say how, but it does. [Laughs]
It’s crazy that it was almost month ago that we last saw you guys in the Vanishing Point. What can you tell us, without spoiling anything obviously, as to what happens once you all realize where you are?
Well, it’s been a month, but in their time, you know, the characters have been there for years. I don’t remember it exactly, but it’s a long time. So they’re in a pretty hopeless and… I don’t want to spoil it.
Wait, so when we come back, you guys have been there for years?
It’s been a while. I think long enough for everyone to feel pretty hopeless. So you just see everybody kind of processing and dealing with it in their own way. And they’re they’re going to need some help to get out of there.
And that something is probably Oliver Queen?
Well, maybe not Oliver Queen but Spectre, the “something else” that he is now.
The CW
You share such a connection to so many of these shows, particularly Arrow. Seeing all of that coming to an end and seeing what Oliver’s becoming, how does this affect Sara?
It’s funny because like I feel like it affects me personally, too, in terms of “Oh, the show’s over.” As an actor, I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s been so long, eight years” and that’s definitely [shared] with my character, Sara, losing Oliver. That is huge for her and it’s something that we’re going to see. We’ll really get to see how it’s affecting her. He was the last thing, that last tether that she had and that’s a pretty scary thing, when you [think you] have nobody anymore. Especially somebody like Sara who has been through so much and things are so hard and to lose those grounding points? It’s really difficult.
The trailer they recently released for the finale shows you in your old Black Canary outfit. Is there anything you can tell me about how that happens?
Oh yeah! I don’t know how much I can spoil other than there’s some time-traveling.
We may go back to a time where Sara was the Black Canary?
Yeah, I think that’s okay to think. [Laughs]
Now, this final showdown is obviously a massive undertaking. What kind of time was spent on this final battle? You had to be out there shooting this for at least a week, right?
[Laughs] I mean… we never get as much time as it looks like we’ve got. Yet they somehow manage to make it look like we shot for a week and we probably were there for maybe one or two days. It’s pretty wild how much they’re able to do in such a short amount of time.
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It looks incredible! All of you out there, basically special effects. That must be fun and surreal.
It was weird. [Laughs] There were different ways that we shot that … [Some of it] wasn’t even choreographed and you’re like, “Wait, I’m just running around pretending to be fighting invisible things? I don’t even know what to do! I don’t know what they look like or how high are they!” You’re just trying to like make it look like you’re fighting something. And then other times, which I preferred, we did choreography and they had people come in to do it with us so that we knew what it was like. But even then, [it’s] like fighting a person versus a 10-foot shadow demon. But at least we kind of had a little bit of a sense of what we were doing rather than the times I’m just like, flailing about and not sure what’s happening. [Laughs]
Like those weird acting class exercises.
Yeah! But then somehow, the special effects people come in and design something to match all the weird movements and you’re like, “Wow, that’s what that looks like!”
Sara was revealed to be one of the Paragons who can save mankind. Were you surprised by that, and what role does she play in the final battle?
Mmm… yes. [Laughs] No, I guess it makes sense. But also I feel like a lot of times the Legends always kind of get the shaft. In the final battle, because she doesn’t have superpowers, there’s definitely a level of calling the shots. In the end, like the final hour, she’s more in a position of general. She is the one calling the shots.
That’s her style, she knows how to lead a team! Do we see her interact with Batwoman more? It was a very interesting dynamic between those two.
Not much. Hopefully next year we’ll dive a bit more into it. I think a lot of it was just scheduling issues. It’s so impossible to schedule some interaction with Batwoman and Supergirl. Sara and Barry get a lot of time together, but there were some missed opportunities for Sara and Batwoman.
What about Alex (Chyler Leigh)? Did we do any kind of reference to their previous interactions?
No, I think we tried to plug some stuff in there when we had scenes together, but we’ll see if that any of it makes it. [Laughs] We’re definitely doing the phone-thing, “call me” symbol.
Oh cute. But you’re both taken now, anyway. What’s on tap for Sara when we get into Legends?
When we get into our season premiere, Sara has basically come in hot off the mission of the crossover and everything that just happened. She’s carrying that with her and the team’s going, “Welcome back,” like she’s been on vacation and not just basically seeing the world end..
She has Mick and Ray there with her for Crisis..
Yeah, but Sara has a bit of a different experience than they do, right? Since she was one of the Paragons, she sees so much more, so she comes in with that weight. And it’s always a little weird, transitioning from the dynamic of the other shows in the crossovers into our very unique way of storytelling.
You actually get to have a little bit of fun.
Yeah, we do. All we do on our show is have fun. But I think our writers did a good job of not just writing it all off and letting the weight of Crisis carry over. We actually filmed the Legends premiere episode before we even had a script for the crossover, so it was kind of hard to emotionally carry the weight of what happens when you don’t know what happened. [Laughs] I had a monologue about what happened in the crossover [before anything was filmed] and I was like, “Guys, you have to give me something! Like what’s a Paragon?”
Nice. You’ve got some big changes coming up on the season. What’s the most exciting thing for you?
The main thing for me was that I got to direct an episode.
Oh right! How’d that go?
It was f***ing awesome. So much fun. The episode that I got to do is really, really cool and I can’t wait for it to air. We had such a blast doing it. There’s just so much goodwill with the cast and the crew, we all love each other and take care of each other. So yeah, we had a lot of fun. I loved it.
Listen, I know it probably does feel like you guys like are sometimes like the jokey cousins of the Arrowverse, but I will tell you the fans adore this show and there is so much love out there for this show. You guys are killing it.
Thank you so much, we really appreciate that.
Crisis on Infinite Earths, Tuesday, 8/7c, The CW
