Sunday night saw the massive crossover start for Crisis On Infinite Earths as part 1 aired on Supergirl; however, it is learned that the ratings and viewership are down compared to last year's Elseworlds event crossover.

While the first part of Elseworld's that aired on The Flash last year drew 1.83 million viewers with a .7 rating, Sunday's episode of Crisis on Supergirl only drew in 1.67 million viewers with a rating of a .6.

That's a difference of around 160,000 viewers.

Fans have been mentioning on social media how surprised they are that Crisis didn't draw at least two million viewers, but worth a mention is that the viewership for Elseworlds did end up going up over 2 million viewers as Elseworlds progressed, so what happens with subsequent episodes of Crisis remains to be seen.

A factor could be that fans are simply waiting to watch the series in its entirety or that more fans watch it streaming or on DVR.

That said, Supergirl is suffering from its lowest-rated season to date (at least live views), so fans could be put off by the different direction DC has been taking with their shows on The CW.

Sunday Night Football did air at 8:30 pm EST, but numbers for SNF were down as well: 19.39 million last year during The Flash Elseworld's Part 1 episode compared to 13.57 million during Supergirl, so it appears as if SNF isn't a factor.

Kevin Smith's Crisis Aftermath also didn't do that well as it only brought in 700K viewers with a 0.2 rating.

Update: Batwoman and Supergirl ratings fall flat; loses 500k viewers compared to Elseworlds.

Crisis may be some sort of reboot

Producer Marc Guggenheim basically hinted at a reboot following Crisis, so we'll have to see how things end up (via Indie Wire):

Hmm. I guess I could safely tell you that when I met with all the showrunners, one of the first things I said was that because of the nature of the story that we’re telling, there’s an opportunity here to introduce some major status quo shift to the various shows, if you want to do them. My job in running the crossover is not to dictate to the showrunner what to do with their end of the show, and I’m very sort of mindful about that. But what I tried to encourage was everyone to recognize that there’s an opportunity here, if they want to take it, to fix something, or introduce a new character, or introduce a new status quo shift. And the shows have embraced that.



So I think, while I can’t specifically spoil any specific change, I can say all the shows are affected coming out of it, with the arguable exception of “Legends,” simply because “Legends” didn’t come into it. Basically, the crossover launches much of that season, but I will say that the events of “Crisis” do have ramifications. Actually in one case, one rather big ramification for the “Legends” show going forward in Season Five. And in many ways, “Crisis” sets up “Legends’” fifth season. How exactly, you’ll need to watch a chunk of the season before that becomes clear. It’s not immediately clear in the first post- “Crisis“ episode. But that’s “Legends” for you, they do things a little different.

Crisis On Infinite Earths Part 2 airs on Monday, December 9, 2019 with Batwoman, followed by Part 3 with The Flash on Tuesday, December 10, part 4 airs Tuesday, January 14 with Arrow, and the series concludes Tuesday, January 14, 2020 with DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Crisis On Infinite Earths Part 2 Trailer: