What Does the Arrowverse Crossover Title "Elseworlds" Mean?

We finally have a name for this year's exciting Arrow, Supergirland The Flashcrossover, and it's mysterious enough to leave us speculating about what it means.

"Elseworlds" isn't just the name of the crossover, it's also the name of the DC Comics imprint that dealt with alternate reality stories. They depicted many of the same characters as DC Comics, but these new realities took them out of the typical DC Universe into different time periods, such as an issue that featured Batman in the Victorian Age hunting down Jack the Ripper. Cool, right?

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While we'd totally be down for a random Jack the Ripper episode, this "alternate reality" trick isn't exactly new to the Arrowverse. The Multiverse Theory proven in Season 2 of The Flash and later implemented to incorporate Supergirl is a tried-and-true storytelling method in the Arrowverse, and it even formed the basis for last year's crossover "Crisis on Earth-X." The four-night event saw our heroes face-off with alternate versions of themselves (Nazi versions, because why not?) on multiple Earths.

Superman Joins the Arrowverse Crossover!

It's unlikely that the Arrowverse would rehash this same premise only one year later, but that doesn't rule out the possibility of a crossover set in an alternate reality for "Elseworlds." After all, we could simply get an episode entirely focused on a different world, tellings stories based on wholly different versions of a character we already know. It would certainly be a more convenient way to press the pause button on all three shows' separate plots and take a vacation to a world where Oliver (Stephen Amell) is a 1920s gangster or something. Personally, I'm hoping we get a world in which all these comic characters exist and work together, maybe on some sort of team or, dare I say... League? Seeing as we know we'll be getting visits from comics classics like Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch), Superman (Tyler Hoechlin), Batwoman (Ruby Rose), Mrs. Freeze (Cassandra Jean Amell) and The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) in this year's crossover event, it's safe to say we'll be getting a very comics-oriented crossover this year.

The Arrowverse three-way crossover begins Sunday, Dec. 8 at 8/7c on The CW.

(Full disclosure: TV Guide is owned by CBS, one of The CW's parent companies.)