R.I.P. to the Arrowverse, the most ambitious experiment in the history of superhero TV
As The Flash bows out on The CW, it's high time to eulogize the groundbreaking DC saga
TV Features Arrowverse
With the series finale of The Flash on May 24, The CW’s ambitious and groundbreaking superhero saga known as The Arrowverse (first unofficially, then semi-officially) comes to an end. If not for the fact that it was focused on television, the Arrowverse would be regarded as one of the only cinematic universes beyond the MCU to actually work—and if you’re basing it on pure hours of content, the Arrowverse is completely unmatched.
For 11 years, the Arrowverse tied together one show, then two shows, then three shows, then four, five, sometimes six, then—once the multiverse was introduced in the Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover event—the entirety of all live-action DC superhero shows and movies that have ever been made. Michael Keaton’s Batman movie happened in the Arrowverse. The ’60s Batman show happened in the Arrowverse. Titans, Superman Returns, the 2002 Birds Of Prey show, NBC’s short-lived Constantine, Fox’s Lucifer, and Smallville all happened in the Arrowverse (at least on some level of its vast multiverse).
But it all began with its namesake, Arrow, in 2012. Somewhat incongruously, given where things ended up, Arrow started as an obvious nod to the standalone Christopher Nolan Dark Knight movies: gritty and “realistic” in quotes, with no magic, no superpowers, and no aliens. Just a vigilante in a costume with a growly voice. Early in Arrow, Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen didn’t even have a superhero name—but he did have a surprising penchant for straight-up murdering villains.
Not that the show was ever really as serious as it pretended to be. This was peak CW soapy genre show era, with The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural going strong, and early Arrow was about one-third violent superhero action, one-third survivalist mystery with Oliver learning superhero skills while stranded on a not-so-deserted island, and one-third relationship drama with a bunch of characters who just refused tell each other how they really feel.
The balance was readjusted in the show’s second season, which stands today as one of the best examples of superhero storytelling on television. With a phenomenal villain in Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson, the gradual introduction of more comic book-y concepts (namely a superpower-granting/insanity-causing drug called Mirakuru), and a prominent role for future Arrowverse queen Caity Lotz (debuting as Sara Lance, the assassin eventually dubbed White Canary), the show grew into being more of its own thing rather than a pastiche of CW-friendly tropes and Nolan Batman aesthetics.
Arrow opens the door for The Flash
More importantly, though, season two featured a few appearances from Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen, a crime scene investigator from a nearby city with his own friends, his own tragic backstory, and—once he got splashed by chemicals in the middle of a lightning storm and developed super-speed—the potential for years and years of his own superhero stories. The Flash premiered in 2014 and amiably carried the torch from Arrow’s second season with a standout freshman year that offered a fun, brighter counterpart to Arrow’s typical gloominess.
Buoyed by the Flash’s speed (as in, how quickly it found its footing and knew what kind of series it wanted to be), the two shows began to rapidly expand the fledgling Arrowverse with a bunch of character introductions that would later become noteworthy: Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer, Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold, Victor Garber’s Martin Stein, Dominic Purcell’s Mick Rory, and Ciara Renée’s Kendra Saunders (along with Arrow’s Caity Lotz) would all become founding cast members of DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow, which would premiere the following year.
That same season, The Flash broke down the barriers between not only superhero universes but television channels for a crossover with Supergirl, which was airing on CBS at the time. The bubbly chemistry between star Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin (both veterans of Glee) guaranteed that we’d be seeing more of them together in the future, so it wasn’t especially surprising—beyond the fact that it was a kind of weird shake-up that worked out better than it had any right to—when CBS and Warner Bros. agreed to take the show off CBS and fully move it over to The CW (losing only some budget and Calista Flockhart’s character in the process).
But until Crisis On Infinite Earths, Supergirl remained in its own separate universe away from Arrow and The Flash, if only as an easy comic book-y explanation for why the other heroes couldn’t just call on Supergirl or her Famous Cousin (as Superman was often called) when they needed help. Besides, the other Arrowverse shows had their own issues to handle as they tried to launch another spin-off, and it didn’t go as smoothly as it did the first time.
Legends Of Tomorrow (eventually) finds its footing
DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow made perfect sense on paper: As the superhero universes of Arrow and The Flash had begun to bloat and more characters were being introduced without necessarily having anywhere to go, this series could do exactly that. It was an Avengers-style team-up of supporting players from other shows (Captain Cold! The Atom! A barista with wings!) traveling through time and just generally staying out of the way of the main canon of the other shows. They even had a Doctor Who veteran in the lead, with Arthur Darvill playing Rip Hunter.
The problem with Legends in its first season, as we’ve discussed, is that it wasn’t … especially good. With so many superheroes in its cast, it was hugely dependent on special effects, which meant either limited fight scenes or similar repeated fight scenes or jumping through hoops to explain why certain characters weren’t using their powers (a problem that persisted for the entirety of the show, to be honest). But worse than all of that was the fact that none of the characters got room to do anything. There was a ton of plot that had to be addressed, specifically involving an immortal villain doing evil things throughout history and a pair of star-crossed hawk-lovers from ancient Egypt, and none of that stuff was very interesting.
Legends went through a gradual retooling over the next few years, thanks to the fact that, for a time, The CW seemingly existed just as a creative outlet for people making the kinds of TV shows that attract diehard followings. There were years when the network just renewed everything en masse, which gave Legends time to grow and find its footing, eventually allowing it to become more of a quirky workplace comedy that just happened to also be a superhero action show.
This breathing room also allowed the shows to find things that worked rather than simply force the plot along, like how the largely positive fan response to Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity Smoak and her chemistry with Amell upended one of the DC Comics’ most well-established romantic pairings (some of us will be Team Olicity until we’re dead and buried), or how Caity Lotz was able to perfectly adapt to the shifting tones of Legends so well that she eventually took over the whole series.
But the long, long leash that The CW kept on the Arrowverse also gave the shows room to stumble. After several seasons, both Arrow and The Flash often felt like they were just going through the motions. They struggled to find compelling season-long villains, characters began to do inexplicable things just to create drama. (Oliver Queen unknowingly fathered a son at one point on Arrow, and the boy’s mother insisted—for no reason at all—that he keep the child’s existence a secret.) As a sign that perhaps the Arrowverse’s power had begun to wane, The CW even ordered a new DC comics superhero show, Black Lightning, that was entirely disconnected from the other four.
Making the most of crossover events
By the time another crossover event sent Oliver, Barry, and Supergirl to Gotham City in 2018’s Elseworlds crossover, it felt like the franchise had hit a real “break glass in case of emergency” moment. Finally, seven seasons in, Arrow was doing actual Batman stuff. Of course, the Dark Knight himself never showed up, but his cousin Kate Kane (played by Ruby Rose) did. Kate, as the vigilante Batwoman, got her own spin-off a year later in which she tried to defend Gotham after the mysterious disappearance of Batman (not to mention the unrelated mysterious disappearance of billionaire Bruce Wayne).
The first season of Batwoman was classic Arrowverse: superpower-less superhero vigilantism with a ton of family drama thrown in (Kate Kane’s sister, Beth Kane, had become the villain Alice, and there were a lot of battles over her soul going on). Rose decided to leave Batwoman after one season, accusing Warner Bros. TV executive Peter Roth of running an unsafe set that left her and other cast and crew members injured, in addition to accusing showrunner Caroline Dries of refusing to shut down the set during the pandemic and claiming that co-star Dougray Scott had verbally abused a female stunt actor.
But Rose was at least around long enough to have a memorable role in Crisis On Infinite Earths, the ultimate culmination of everything the Arrowverse had been doing since it began—and, while it had some slow spots, it did exactly what it set out to do. The miniseries managed to adapt one of the totemic texts of superhero fiction, the comic book event that all comic book events are modeled after, with Rose’s Batwoman meeting an alternate universe version of Batman (played by iconic voice actor Kevin Conroy), Supergirl meeting a version of Brandon Routh’s Man Of Steel from Superman Returns, the Flash meeting Cress Williams’ eponymous hero from Black Lightning, and Arrow’s Oliver Queen dying and being reborn as The Spectre—a classic DC character who was about as far removed from Arrow’s grounded beginnings as you could possibly get.
And it all felt earned. The Arrowverse had put in the work to set all of this up, so when recurring character Lyla Michaels appeared as Crisis’ Harbinger, it wasn’t just a bit of comic-book fan service, it was a deep callback to things that had happened years ago on Arrow. The same goes for The Flash’s Tom Cavanagh playing a take on Crisis’ Pariah—a meta nod to the running gag that Cavanagh keeps playing different versions of the same guy on The Flash and Pariah’s multiversal role in the comics.
The series finale of Arrow was deeply weaved through Crisis, a sweet way to pay tribute to the show that started it all that gave the end of the flagship series hugely important universe-shaking stakes. And Crisis cleverly ended with a never-resolved tease for the future that acknowledged that the Arrowverse hadn’t been building toward the creation of the Justice League (something even the mega-budget DC movies were unable to get right), but that it was all building toward the creation of a different DC hero team: The Super Friends. That alone summed up the appeal of the whole experiment. Self-seriousness and gritty action had never really worked for any of these shows, but what always worked was emphasizing the joy of superheroics and the appeal of fun superhero stories with found families and hard-fought-for friendships.
Going beyond the Arrowverse
In retrospect, maybe it all should’ve stopped there—just lovely promises for a future that never really could’ve been (or needed to be) paid off. The Green Arrow is dead, but he got a nice send-off and the other heroes will follow his lead and continue to be good heroes who support their friends.
But all of the shows except for Arrow kept going after Crisis On Infinite Earths, with some of them reflecting the big multiversal changes that happened in that event. (Supergirl and Black Lightning were officially integrated into the main Arrow/Flash universe, though it ultimately didn’t matter that much.) The Flash kept doing Flash stuff, Legends Of Tomorrow fully embraced simply doing its own thing (it even spawned an in-universe holiday special about fan-favorite character Beebo that is legitimately really good), and Batwoman had to be retooled to account for losing Ruby Rose (Javicia Leslie was brought in as the new star and did develop her own fan following), but the most consequential change to the Arrowverse post-Crisis is explicitly not about the Arrowverse.
Originally set up as a spin-off of Supergirl spinning off from the end of Crisis, The CW launched Superman & Lois in 2021 with Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch reprising their roles from Supergirl as Clark Kent and Lois Lane. But it was eventually confirmed that, despite featuring those same actors who had initially been introduced in the Arrowverse, the show is actually in its own separate continuity—for no apparent reason other than that it’s easier than adhering to the established canon. And as soon as you decide to value convenience over continuity, your cinematic universe might as well be dead. (And just after surviving destruction at the hands of the Anti-Monitor in Crisis!)
With The Flash done, the Arrowverse will have officially come to a close. Unfortunately, the end of the saga doesn’t give off a feeling of triumph, celebrating the many great things these shows accomplished. Instead, it feels like sputtering out, with The Flash and Riverdale being the last gasps of the once creatively unshackled CW succumbing to its new, tightly belted corporate masters. The Arrowverse deserved to go out on its own terms, but most of its shows didn’t get the opportunity.
The ultimate thing to take away from the Arrowverse isn’t just that it’s one of the few times this sort of shared universe has actually worked since the dawn of the MCU (and that, creatively, it was significantly more successful than the big screen DC Universe that Warner Bros. was trying to jumpstart for much of its life). The main takeaway, especially these days, is to appreciate the cool things you’ve got while you’ve still got them. After all, the Arrowverse lived as long as it did because its shows built and maintained strong fan followings. Support the characters you like, sure, but also support their creators, the people you like and respect whose work you connect with, so they can keep doing cool things. That, and the fact that Caity Lotz rules so hard that they should put her face on money.
135 Comments
I love that they were at first trying to keep a low key profile about being a superhero show.
Then once Flash met up with Arrow, it just opened a whole hatch of just fun and creative set ups that ultimately still worked out positively for fans.
It’s like…having superheroes be superheroes is really fun!
I’m eternally curious what conversations happened between season 1 and 2 of Arrow – I assume with The Flash getting developed and Geoff Johns having a hand in that, someone made the call to start adapting more faithfully from the source material. Because honestly Arrow Season 1 is like Smallville where the fan service is in little easter eggs and characters are adapted in very broad strokes (like the Royal Flush Gang being a family with playing card motifs painted on their masks).
That’s why I had no interest whatsoever in the first seasons of Arrow, never liked the setup of a Junior Justice League in Smallville and it looked like this would be the same. But then they had Slade actually kill his mom it made me think: “Um…this is usually reserved for the 4th season, wonder where they’re going with this…”
I actually pitched something like this a few times but have had the pieces denied by outlets because I called The Arrowverse more ambitious than any relevant cinematic universe I. E. The Marvel Universe. It is. Regardless of how successful or unsuccessful these projects have been for studios, the CW were the only ones to tackle a proper comic book crisis event on a shoestring budget. That is ambition out of the wazoo.
Absolutely agree. It’s not like the MCU isn’t a noteworthy achievement for superheroes, Marvel Comics, and interconnected cinematic universes, but I think people are too quick to dismiss the success and pop culture relevance of comic book movies in the first half of the aughts. Essentially, the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies walked so the MCU could run. The Arrowverse didn’t have a clear predecessor. Smallville certainly paved some of the road for it, but the Arrowverse ended up being far more ambitious and introduced concepts like the Multiverse long before Marvel did, as well as really replicating the experience of reading superhero comic books. A shame outlets can’t see that.
“The Arrowverse didn’t have a clear predecessor.”Oh, are we pretending that the arrowverse is the first-ever shared universe TV show?
Like, Law & Order doesn’t exist? Neither do CSI or NCIS? There isn’t an entire universe of shows tied to that kid from St. Elsewhere with the snowglobe?
Oh, and how, exactly, were Spider-Man and X-Men blueprints for what the MCU did?
“the CW were the only ones to tackle a proper comic book crisis event on a shoestring budget.”
Um, SFW?
Why is that a thing that matters at all? The Arrowverse is better than the MCU because the MCU had the money to make them not look like shit?
My favorite ArrowVerse seasonsArrow s2Legends of Tomorrow s3Supergirl s3The Flash s1Legends of Tomorrow s5Arrow s5Stargirl s3Legends of Tomorrow s2Arrow s1Batwoman s3
This list is canon
I felt it was somewhat chalk, I was not really trying to reach for any deep cuts
A eulogy is an acceptable time to play the hits.
Supergirl s3 is easily my peak for that series too. Afterwards imo it starts to lean hard into some X-Men angle where aliens are an allegory which never really worked.
Supergirl to me had the highest ceiling of any of the ArrowVerse shows & left the most on the table. Legends of Tomorrow on the other head overachieved almost every season after the first. But season 3 was the only Supergirl season that even came close to fulfilling its potential
The crossovers they did were fucking great.Kara asking if the general cared to step outside to Barry meeting Barry from the movies to us almost getting both Barry and Kara dying.God I loved it so much. I never watched Arrow much or Batwoman or Black Lighting but I loved 1. Legends to Tomorrow. 2 The Flash and 3 Supergirl!RIP, I still would have loved Smallville Clark to save them all! :)Also RIP Stargirl which wasn’t the arrowverse but fuck if it wasn’t awesome! CW is down the drain!
The crossovers were awesome and they could have even done them with other CW shows. I could have seen Supergirl & Batwoman crossing over with Riverdale (and mentoring Betty), and Arrow & Flash crossing over with Nancy Drew (and Nancy deducing lots of stuff about them). And Cheryl as Red Arrow really should have joined the Legends of Tomorrow
I love that legends of tomorrow saw Baby in an episode but in their world Baby was a prop car from the TV show Supernatural! John fighting a demon with Dean Winchester would have been peak TV for me!
There was almost a Smallville/Supernatural crossover, if that counts. The Winchester brothers were going to get roped into some demonic shit on the set of Smallville involving the supposed Superman Curse. It fell apart for various reasons.
OMG I would have lost it!
Did Stargirl have a closed ending?
There was a lot to like about the Beeboverse, but my enthusiasm began to wane when they actually introduced a live-action Super Friends and yet never really made it happen properly.
I’ll always remember the miracle that was Legends of Tomorrow, but also the wasted potential of that Crisis ending.
Not to be confused with HBO’s Booboverse (Rome, GoT, etc.)
I think COVID killed that. I was super hyper for the crossovers. They were my happy moment of the year.
The Arrowverse isn’t entirely dead, John Diggle keeps popping up in Superman and Lois for some reason, so it definitely is connected to Arrow.
I think it’s technically a different Diggle…?
It is, but it’s also a Diggle who worked with an Oliver Queen who died saving people. The decision to separate Superman & Lois was made pretty late.
Yeah it’s pretty confusing and doesn’t make a lot of sense.I wonder if the S&L Diggle took the Lantern ring.
If he did and still works for the US government and doesn’t help Superman when he needs back-up, I kind of love it.
Dig knows Superman can handle his business. How do we know he wasn’t off handling something just as important when the crazy religious lady was trying to merge 2 realities?
I guess its kind of like the Doom Patrol from Titans , and the Doom Patrol from Doom Patrol being almost the same , but different.
But didn’t he show up with the green thing he found in the finale of Arrow? I mean I guess both Diggles could have found it…but I think they kinda just forgot he was supposed to be from a different universe, so they could get some recognition of known characters in??
I’m just as confused as you are, Bob.
Yeah I think that was done as a possible spin off (and since I never watched the JL cartoons ,and due to some weird timing had Guy Gardner as MY Green Lantern , a John Diggle Stewart is the only JS lantern I’d ever be interested in watching) , but the GL movie and original GL show that were supposed to come out nixed it . Ironically they all went to dust after the WB massacre , but its too late now.
They had General Lane deliver a line clarifying that Superman & Lois takes place on an Earth where Superman is the only superhero, thus it’s technically a different Diggle. I don’t really like that decision. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief that Superman doesn’t call for help every time he’s in trouble, but it’s their show, so.
I love you forever, Beeboverse, thanks for bringing so much joy in my life! IT also brought AV Club to my life. It’s a shame tbh that The Flash which hasn’t been good since s3 has been the last surviving and I’ll forever mourn Legends of Tomorrow and its unjust cancellation.
It’s amazing how long this ride lasted. Flash is my favorite hero, so it’s gonna be sad watching that end.The one thing I wish would have happened (aside from some live action Super Friends adventures) is totally unrelated to the Arrowverse shows – I wanted Naomi season one to end with Naomi & the family moving to Smallville and crossing over with Superman & Lois from time to time. I feel like she and Annabelle (who also moves for . . . reasons) would fit in well with the Kent boys, Nat & Sarah, Dee and John Henry Irons would probably be great friends, Greg being in the military would’ve let him slide right onto General Lane’s team. I love the Naomi comics & enjoyed the show, and she’s Justice League now in the comics, so it’s disappointing that this didn’t happen.
It’s a shame Naomi opted to not join the Arrowverse in the first season (partly because they shot in Atlanta, and more it seems because the show runners took a “Let them come to us” mentality). These shows are always stronger together, and I think as the Arrowverse continues to be remembered fondly in the following years you’ll see Naomi and Gotham Knights increasingly left out of the conversation.
You know it takes all Arrowverse heroes at least one full season, if not actually 3, to learn the “we are stronger together” lesson and to stop hiding secrets from the full set of loved ones.
This Arrowverse constant actually made me appreciate the CW Kung Fu run a lot more. Cool family bonds, supernatural and action scences, BUT…. no one extends their weird secrets artificially and everyone is actually has a supportive partner they can trust to share their deal on the romantic side. The only things people struggle over telling others are the real life things people struggle with – coming out to ones parents who seem conservative enough they may not entirely support you and worrying about that reaction, telling a partner or family member about sexual assault/harassment because of trauma and just wanting to move past and not deal with it (and the obligations of doing that publicly to protect others). Everyone gets in on the “we have to find the collective mystic weapons to save the source of my supernatural martial arts powers derived from mom and her secret sister’s bloodline of legacy warriors” pretty quick. Plus… lots of dumplings.
Crossing over into Superman and Lois would be a bit confusing given that in Naomi, Superman seems to be regarded as a fictional character until he is seen in the pilot of Naomi. So it doesn’t seem to be in the same universe. Which was a baffling choice to me. But I know there was some kind of multiversal twist to the show, I just couldn’t get into it so I don’t know how or if all of that was worked out.
They have to get Donald Faison back as Booster Gold in some kind of movie or something in the future, he’s great for the part.
It was a casting I would never have thought of but immediately thought “Oh God yes.”
Right?
It sucked that Legends was cancelled, and then the salt in the wound was that the Flash was going to do an ep where they get rescued from time jail, only the season was cut to 13 eps. We need a Booster Gold/Skeets of Faison and Braff!
Yeah that does suck…though the upshot is that there are fewer Flash episodes to torture us with.
This is true. I’m a little shocked how… un-finale like this last run has been. Sort of weird that they managed to squeeze Red Death AND Cobalt Blue in as two big bads in a short season. Ideally, I was hoping they’d just do one of them in the first half, then spend the last few eps tidying up the Arrowverse loose threads. That woulda been way more fun.
I’m a couple episodes behind but there isn’t as much ‘2 people talking, now 2 more people talking, now 2 more people talking’ bs going on as there has been in the later seasons, at least. I wasn’t expecting to be wowed by any of the plotlines and, so far, I have not been wowed at all.
Chester and Allegra still suck though 🙁
Flash choosing half of the last season over this idea (which COULD have worked in that 4 part finale instead of other crap) is just ridiculous. Going out on the clear strengths – the crossovers – would have salvaged that legacy.
At least Jesse L. Martin sang?
Thank you so much for writing this-the Arrowverse deserves to be celebrated. The whole thing was so much fun from start to finish. And I will always loudly maintain that Arrow Season 2 is up there with anything the rest of TV has to offer. After hate watching the last season of Titans, I started re-watching Arrow for the first time since in aired to get the bad taste out of my mouth. It is as great and fun as I remembered-it is no wonder I got pulled into the Arrowverse as strongly as I did.Of all the Arrowverse shows, to me Flash is the biggest disappointment. The first season was incredible, but the series fell of fast for me. Gustin is GREAT as the Flash, but the plot was usually nonsense. I hung in there for a long time, but quit after everyone started getting stuck in mirrors and such. I am tempted to go back and finish it up, but I don’t know if I have the heart. Still: Gustin’s Flash and that first season especially are gifts.The whole Arrowverse is a gift. So much great superhero action, and each crossover had me grinning ear to ear the whole time. I complained a good bit about the plotting of some of its seasons on this very site, but man was it a fun ride.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be as legitimately excited to watch a network tv show as I was watching Arrow season 2. It took a show i was just fine with to … something else. No other show has ever blown my expectations out of the water like that. Also, it pulled off the not-easy feat of making Deathstroke’s orange and blue, one-eyed suit not look completely ridiculous in live action.It IS kinda bonkers to watch a season 1 ep of Arrow now and realize how completely different of a show it was. They really did a great job introducing superpowers, then magic, then multiverses in a way that didn’t seem cheap or rushed. But it’s kinda hilarious that one of the major plot points was Thea opening a nightclub, and by the end she’s a blood-lusting assassin traversing parallel worlds.
Me too-well said. I just re-watched Season 1 for the first time since it aired. It is amazing what a different show and universe around it the whole thing became-but like you said it works as it is built gradually. And it is still really good-I am really enjoying it all over again!Season 2 was good enough that it spawned a lot of discussion from national outlets about whether this kind of show could stand with the giants and become prestige television like the Sopranos etc. The Arrowverse never quite reached those heights again (although Arrow Season 5 came pretty close for me), but it just shows how incredible that season was. Everyone was talking about it at the time.
Of all the Arrowverse shows, to me Flash is the biggest disappointment. The first season was incredible, but the series fell of fast for me. Gustin is GREAT as the Flash, but the plot was usually nonsense. I hung in there for a long time, but quit after everyone started getting stuck in mirrors and such. I am tempted to go back and finish it up, but I don’t know if I have the heart. Still: Gustin’s Flash and that first season especially are gifts. I tried watching the Flash, but after a while I couldn’t keep pretending that it made sense for a guy with super speed to be struggling with bad guys like “regular guy with an ice gun”. How does he not figure out to just super speed run around behind him and knock the gun out of his hand? Boom, problem solved in 15 seconds, episode over. Super speed powers inherently make it tough to come up with bad guys that can legitimately challenge him.
That was 100% my problem with it as well. Dude you can run 1000 MPH! Why are you hiding from a dude with a boomerang behind office furniture?
To be fair, this is also a problem with all the super-speeded… super-speedy? Heroes in comics in general. They should effectively be invulnerable, because no one could hit them. (Unless they’re… super quiet and just sneak up behind you? “Flash vs. Pillow-Foot the Ninja”?) Hell, there was an entire “Flash” episode where he ran around trying to figure out a way to un-explode an atomic bomb that was in the process of exploding… sooo, he can just exist, for hours, in a millisecond.Yeah, boomerangs ain’t it, chief!
The Arrowverse deserves so much credit for what they did with the limited resources they had on a broadcast television schedule. It’s a shame they were also limited by those resources and schedules, and that WB (and eventually James Gunn) didn’t feel it was worth their time to take any of the creatives that worked on it and see what they could do with a more prominent role in their broader plans, but that’s Corporate America for you. I do hope that some of the actors get to reprise their roles somehow some day, because the casting was often very good.
I remember seeing a promo photo for one of the crossovers, where like 25 people are decked out in network-tv-budgeted superhero outifts, and thought “There’s no way this should not look 1000x more ridiculous than it does, much less actually look kinda cool.” It’s amazing what they did on a second-rate network’s budget. (Though honestly, in practice, when you did get like 10 heroes onscreen at the same time and then like Iris standing there in normal clothes, the outfits did really look kinda ridiculous and cheap. I think the max number of costumed heroes was about 5 at a time before your suspension of disbelief really started to crumble.)
“but that’s Corporate America for you.”
Yep, that’s corporate America! Anywhere else in the world they’d have a whole franchise of Flash movies to go along with the Flash TV show, right?
This article makes me feel like I shouldn’t have given up on Arrow in the first season.
Arrow Season 2 is absolutely fantastic. I suggest not missing it.
I have never had a TV viewing experience quite like Arrow s2. Several times I checked the time thinking an episode had to be almost over because so much had happened and it was so thrilling, but it was only like 15 minutes or less into it
That’s what made that season such a thrilling tv experience- There were not a lot of season-long or even multi-episode arcs that they stretched out and waited to pay off. There were huge payoffs of plot in like every single ep. They didn’t make us wait for anything, and it was grand.
The secret weapon of Arrow s2: Caity Lotz AND Manu Bennett in both the flashbacks AND (eventually) the present day storylines
Absolutely. One of the episodes from that season is The Promise, which started to bring the past and present together. No exaggeration, that is one of my favorite television episodes of all time.
My favorite s2 episode is probably “Heir to the Demon” which introduces Nyssa & has the absolutely electric sequence when Sara & Oliver suit up together for the first time (which gives me chills) and chase down the League of Assassin van on their motorcycle
Heir to the Demon is such a great episode. Nyssa was such a fantastic addition to the show. Not only was her character an awesome warrior, but her ongoing mockery of Oliver following a certain event I don’t want to spoil for anyone was a series highlight.Honestly, you could pick many of the episodes from Season 2 as the best of Arrow, and it would be hard to argue. But in the words of Slade Wilson: “I found The Promise to be particularly compelling……”
Any episode with Sara could probably substitute in as my favorite of s2
That was also said about fellow CW series The Vampire Diaries: it burned through plot like never before. Probably not a total coincidence.
Also true of The Good Place season 2 – they burned through plot so quickly. A lesser show could have stretched it out into at least 4 seasons.
I agree completely. Two seasons of television had me checking the clock like that-Arrow season 2 and Justified Season 2. In both cases I would check partly because so much great stuff was going on in each episode, and partly because I didn’t want the episodes to end. I want to say too: I always enjoyed your comments in the Arrowverse show threads here, so thank you for writing them!
Thanks! The ArrowVerse articles and forums here have always been one of my favorite things about the site & I always appreciate having the space to discuss these wildly fun shows
The last six episodes of the season also had this thing of every episode raising the bet so you’re thinking “where could they even GO from here?” and yet managed to keep paying off the bets they make.
I wanted to add one more thing to my praise of the Arrowverse. LOT is great in every way and so is Beebo. But those two things are also responsible for what I think is the funniest moment in the entire Arroweverse. Young Martin Stein is trying to get Lily a Beebo for Hanukkah at the start of the episode Beebo: God of War. At one point to get the toy Beebo, he has to make a shot with a toy bow and arrow. And right when he lines up the shot, the wacky music in the background is replaced by the sting from Arrow. It is timed perfectly and is so funny. I still laugh every time I see that scene all these years later.
Sometimes when watching these shows, I find myself thinking “I cannot believe Victor Garber was on a CW superhero show.”
When Stein left the Legends I do feel like it had to be on some level a meta statement representing how Victor Garber felt when he tells them that superheroing is “a young man’s game”
…and got to do a Titanic joke on it as well.
Haha totally forgot about that. But for meta-contextual humor, you really can’t top John Noble, who voiced Mallus, appearing as himself while filming Return of the King.
Praise Beebo
The death of Arrowverse and the ongoing struggles of the MCU really goes to show how hard this kind of thing is to pull off. And I think why it worked here (where others have failed) is because – like the MCU – it happened organically. They didn’t go in with the intention of spanning multiple shows across a shared universe, but rather the success of one thing inspired the next, allowing it to effortlessly grow into something amazing.It was also such a great counterpoint to the DCEU during its low points. I vividly recall Batman v Superman coming out the roughly the same time we got the first meet-up between Supergirl and The Flash, and the tonal differences were mind-boggling. The latter was just so joyously fun in the way the DCEU shunned. Which is probably why, of these two DC shared-universes efforts, one thrived over the last 10 years, while the other has been a cringy, incoherent mess.I also think the pandemic caused a pre-mature death-knell for Arrowverse. If they’d been able to keep Melissa Benoist around longer, if not for the firing of Ruby Rose (though I realize that wasn’t pandemic-related), and if they hadn’t been forcing out these awkward, truncated seasons for the remaining shows, I’d like to think that somewhere in a *cough* different universe, the whole thing could’ve lasted longer, passing the torch along to new and continuing shows.I’m sad it’s dying. But I’m forever glad for what it was once.
I feel like the CW getting sold was bound to happen regardless, so maybe the Arrowverse’s lifespan was always time-boxed. But certainly the shows could’ve gone out on a higher note with more crossovers and grand finales instead of what we got.
Ruby Rose quit because of a broken neck sustained while filming and was forced to return to work ten days later without concessions for the injury.
Yeah the Barry Allen episodes of Arrow were very much like the Nick Fury post-credits reveal in Iron Man 1. Both hint at a larger universe, both wink at the audience who know the comics, and both were standalone(-ish) things that don’t weigh down the actual show/movie with tie-ins or promises for future spinoffs.
I think Benoist was done after season 6, pandemic notwithstanding. There’ve been a few interviews where she’s dropped hints that making the show was not a particularly pleasant experience.
The last season of The Flash I watched was the 6th. By that time, I was getting tired of the formula the Berlanti shows were using. Season opener introduces new villain, followed by too many filler episodes, and the season ender dispatches that season’s new villain. I stopped watching the DC TV shows after that, except for those on HBO.I never cared much for the Legends. Way too goofy, not unlike some episodes of Doctor Who. But I guess these shows were good while they lasted, right?
I lost interest in Supergirl just before it ended and dropped off The Flash when all that Black Flame stuff was happening because they both honestly started to feel boring. Which is nuts, because the majority of the Arrowverse shows were at least entertaining and a bit bananas. I will finish The Flash though, I will!I think it helped, getting Arrowverse so popular, was because pretty much everyone in it in real life seemed to enjoy what they were doing. Stephen Amell was super into it, of course.
And it all felt earned. The Arrowverse had put in the work to set all of this up, so when recurring character Lyla Michaels appeared as Crisis’ Harbinger, it wasn’t just a bit of comic-book fan service, it was a deep callback to things that had happened years ago on Arrow. The same goes for The Flash’s Tom Cavanagh playing a take on Crisis’ Pariah—a meta nod to the running gag that Cavanagh keeps playing different versions of the same guy on The Flash and Pariah’s multiversal role in the comics.Going to disagree with you here. The introduction of Harbinger was Lyla just telling everyone “I’m Harbinger now” while wearing a random new costume and no one questioning it.I did enjoy the Arrowverse overall though. It was pure nostalgia to see Amell as Arrow again a few episodes ago on The Flash.
That was the first time I’ve enjoyed the Flash in a few years. Great episode, and it was good to see Oliver and Barry together one last time. Not to mention Oliver and Diggle.
The name “Lyla Michaels” as Harbinger goes back to the early 80’s as a character and is completely the identity in the original Crisis. It is a super deep cut, and realizing it had been in plain site all along was totally fun for a lot of us.
Yea I knew the comic book connection well before Crisis started. I am saying the actual crossover special didn’t do enough to explain why Lyla was Harbinger or what that even meant.
She killed the Monitor! What more do you want?
The magic of the Arrowverse for me was that it perfectly replicates the metatextual spirit of reading comic books in a way that the movie franchises haven’t. Yes Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Guardians etc. were all technically their own line of films, but the reality was you were watching one MCU movie and then the next one in linear fashion. With the CW you had four, going on five+ shows running concurrently that crossed over and referenced each other in both big and small ways. Just like reading a comic you had to keep up with them all or you might have no context as to why Supergirl retreated to the Kent farm after falling out with her government or where Wally West disappears to for a chunk of a season. Even the idea that the episodes are written on a fixed schedule and produced (relatively) cheaply and some seasons are great while others are rubbish is such a comic thing and I’m sort of glad non-comic readers get to share in that experience now with the Arrowverse.
Superman and Lois was screaming at everyone that it was not in continuity with the Arrowverse since the first season.While the first antagonist for Superman was a man named Captain Luthor (who, in reality, was John Irons), the overarching villain of the season was…Morgan Edge.The events of Superman and Lois completely break Supergirl Season 3. The Superman and Lois Morgan Edge would have been able to defeat Lillian and Lena Luthor, as well as conquer and defeat Samantha Arias/Reign. There were no hints that Supergirl’s Morgan Edge could have been Kryptonian, much less being Kara Zor-El’s First Cousin.So, either Supergirl’s Season 3 events don’t happen at all in the Main Universe, or Superman and Lois take place in a different universe within the Arrowverse Omniverse.The safe bet was always the latter.
I’m pretty sure season 1 was produced (or at least started production) with the assumption that it was in continuity since S&L was supposed to crossover with Batwoman at some point and include additional references such as a picture with Kara, all of which got torpedoed with COVID. “Captain Luthor” coming over from another world and Lois remarking on their recent multiverse encounters is clearly a nod to CoIE fallout. All the shows were allowed various degrees of no-questions-asked continuity resets after CoIE and Morgan Edge getting retooled was, at the time, understood as one of those resets.
There’s references to Ollie sacrificing his life in the first season and apparently a photo of Kara Zor-El on Lois’ desk but the shot was cut; the first season was filmed with the intention of it being canon with the Arrowverse. COVID definitely killed the crossover potential and it was easier to cordon the series off than explain why he wasn’t calling in other heroes.
The events of Supergirl Season 3 already happened differently even within the context of Supergirl, because of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Superman and Lois having a different Morgan Edge therefore works fine if it’s set in the same universe as Supergirl, since we don’t see a different Edge on Supergirl after Crisis.
The real sign that it wasn’t in the same universe was how different Superman’s fortress looked and functioned in Season 1 of S&L compared to Season 6 of Supergirl. Both seasons take place after Crisis and it’s pretty clear that the Fortress, and Kryptonian culture in general, are very different. But then we got Diggle which led everyone to believe it was in the same universe, even though S&L never even mentioned Kara. Then Diggle shows up again in the S2 finale right after they’ve confirmed it’s not Earth Prime! Very confusing choices.
This breathing room also allowed the shows to find things that worked
rather than simply force the plot along, like how the largely positive
fan response to Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity Smoak and her chemistry
with Amell upended one of the DC Comics’ most well-established romantic
pairings
This is a very kind way of putting it. A less kind way would be that they completely messed up Black Canary as a character by turning her into a lawyer with addiction problems, which made the character a drag, even in a dark show. Her relationship situation bothered me less than how uncool the character turned out to be.
Laurel Lance suffered from what I call ‘Lana Lang syndrome” where a female character designated as the “love interest” for the show gets the short end of the stick if she’s not actively in the will they/won’t they melodrama. Emily Bett Rickards got lucky in that she had a defined role on the team before her romance plot replaced Laurels.
(Captain Cold! The Atom! A barista with wings!) I gotta say trashing on the Hawkpeople is gonna be missed.
Casper Crump. Need I say more?
That cameo of his later on is one of my favorite LOT moments.
I feel like the main reason the Arrowverse doesn’t get the credit it deserves is, ironically, because of the main reason it worked in the first place:Because it ran with the fact that superhero comics ARE soap operas.The people you could trust to big up and celebrate any other superhero media, even (and especially) the terrible ones, habve some major dislike of genres they term as ‘beneath’ them—and honestly, much of that comes from sexism, ageism and all number of other ‘ism’s. Soap operas are among them, because they’re predominantly liked by girls and—depending on which we’re talking about—often aiming either younger or older than the superhero-loving crowd likes to associate themselves with.But superhero comics are just soap operas with different branding; they’ve got the high melodrama, the consistent characters cycling into different parts of the same environment, the longstanding continuity and character relationships. So the reason the superhero-fan loudspeakers ignored it is also the big reason it worked; soap operas provide the long runway for complex characters and stories that the most beloved superhero arcs need, but movies can never provide. And in return, I think the superhero context also elevates certain parts of the soap opera format, giving the genre’s penchant for weird twists and sudden big climaxes an environment where that feels less incongruous.Of course, that’s not to devalue the talents of everyone involved; just because you’ve found a good match of content and genre, doesn’t mean it’s inherently going to work. And the Arrowverse was far from a slouch there; even in unimpressive seasons it had defining depictions for so many iconic superheroes; live-action versions of Green Arrow, the Flash and Supergirl should be rightly compared to Stephen Amell, Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist in the same way that any Professor X depictions will get compared to Patrick Stewart, they were that good. To say nothing of how well they used characters that are unlikely to ever have live-action depictions again, like Captain Cold and Heat Wave.
I always wondered if this universe was going to end with a whimper, and how sad it would make me. It’s hard to believe how big this whole thing was just a few years ago. I loved it. It’s sad to see it go, but even though I’ve been watching from the beginning, I have a hard time caring about what’s happening. They’ve somehow lowered the stakes so much that it’s hard to be invested. Meanwhile, Superman and Lois has had some of the best storytelling for a super hero show I’ve ever seen. I hope it gets one more season before saying goodbye, but I’m happy with what we did get. Maybe down the line, in a decade or 2, another show will pop up, and we’ll get to see where these characters are at, if only for a few minutes. I really enjoyed talking with you all about these shows in the last 11 years.
I gave up on Arrow after the episode where the flashback included Oliver leaving the island — and then returning to it at the end of the episode, who knows why. I realized right then that the tedious flashbacks might not finish until the series itself finished. So I had to pull the plug myself.
I wanted the season after the island flashbacks ended (season six, I think?) to just flashback to the first season scenes with Ollie returning to Star City.
Even if it wasn’t for all the other good and not-so-good and great parts, the entire Arrowverse would have been justified just for bringing us this moment:
God, this was such a great era for the show. At this point anything in the Arrowverse seemed possible, and we got some really good stuff.
Even the delightful Batman: Brave and the Bold episode “Mayhem of the Music Meister!” couldn’t match the Arrowverse in the arena of tap numbers.
Whoa whoa whoa let’s not talk crazy here. I like the Arrowverse musical numbers fine but nothing there is gonna top “Drives Us Bats” for greatest DC musical number.
I actually wasn’t super impressed by the Super Friends song. It felt like it needed another draft. The original song that really makes that episode for me is “Runnin’ Home to You.” One of the few moments I actually liked Barry and Iris, and I love how it incorporates the show’s theme music, almost like it’s finally delivering on a legit “theme song” for the show (that also works for the Arrowverse as a whole). And its reprise by Melissa Benoist in the next crossover at Barry and Iris’s wedding (the peak of the entire Arrowverse for me) always brings a tear to my eye.
Yeah I found the musical episode immensely disappointing. Which was a shame because when it was announced it was easily the most hyped I’ve been for any Arrowverse (maybe TV in general?) episode. I still feel it’s a damn shame they couldn’t convince Neil Patrick Harris to come be the live-action Music Meister.
This article is incredibly generous to the Arrowverse, but that’s fine. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that the whole thing would have ended years ago if it wasn’t largely subsidized by the ongoing deal with Netflix.Honestly, I wouldn’t give the whole thing a second thought, if a lot of them hadn’t started well, and showed real potential, only to fall apart after the first couple seasons (or, right out of the gate, in the case of Batwoman). The tipping point for me was Watchmen on HBO, that demonstrated how good a super hero show could be, even with limited VFX, if you have excellent acting and writing.
Watchmen had a $15 million budget per episode, Arrow, for example, had like 1 or 2, if that. Now I’ll agree with you, this article is pretty generous to the Arrowverse, but Arrow season 2, the first few seasons of The Flash, and the majority of Legends of Tomorrow were genuinely great. Pulling off those stories on a CW budget is no small feat.BTW, if you liked Watchmen, which, so did I, you should check out Lovecraft Country!
If the Arrowverse shows had been 13-15 episodes, that would have helped. There’s a lot of treading water in most of the series, except maybe Arrow’s last season, but that was short and all CoIE-related.
[…T]he fact that Caity Lotz rules so hard that they should put her face on money.Maybe don’t deify someone who endorses Jordan fucking Peterson.
Who dis bi……….waaaiiit, its not even an actual person? You dumbfuck woketards
I’ll always be a fairly staunch defender of the Arrowverse, while acknowledging it’s many many many flaws and missed potential.It feels weird being along for the ride for something as ambitious as this from the very beginning to it’s, arguably, bitter end. When the whole shebang was at its peak (which for me is before and during Crisis on Earth X) it was genuinely exciting watching these shows every week. I kept up with every single one of them and I simply felt dumb silly simple joy. When these shows hit they hit hard and when they flounder, you hope that they can pick up the pieces.I wish you’d have talked about the crossovers a bit more, though. Aside from Crisis on Infinite Earths and Elseworlds, there were two excellent crossovers beforehand. Invasion! is still very underrated, even if Oliver’s mistrust of Kara didn’t make a lick of sense. But what it gave us was the effortless charm and veritable star power of Melissa Benoist getting to share scenes with all of our other favourite characters. I also love that they actually doubled down on Kara being ridiculously overpowered, something they couldn’t exactly do on her own show all the time. It was a taste of what we would be getting going forward with these crossovers, and the next one remains one of the finest crossover stories in live-action cape media.Crisis on Earth X because who doesn’t love the classic tale of superheroes beating up nazis. While you briefly mentioned the Arrowverse doing the Justice League (or Super Friends, I suppose) around the time the movies were happening, I can’t stress enough how hilarious and emboldening it was to see that network television did the Justice League better than its eponymous movie. Not to mention Justice League and Crisis on Earth X released mere days from one another. I remember reading Twitter, the AV Club and a Discord server I was in and it was a period of genuine delight seeing these shows come together in such a dynamic fashion. It had high stakes, lasting consequences, gave Amell and Benoist a chance to really ham it up and was just plain fun.This also reminds me that for all its faults in the writing, vfx and whatnot, it almost never missed with casting. Furthermore, practically everyone was great and that was all the more evident in the crossovers.I may be waxing poetic here, but I truly believe that the Arrowverse was something special. I’m sad to see it go and I wish it had gone out on better terms, but I’m definitely glad it was on air for as long as it was.
One of the most impressive and craziest things remains the fact that when it came to Oliver, Barry, and Kara, all of their casting literally came from the very first person that auditioned.
That’s honestly so nuts. They really struck gold with those three.
Oliver’s weird “Aliens?! >:( “ reaction to me was always a subtle way of bringing old, S1 Ollie into a bit more alignment with the rest of the Beeboverse. Once he got on board with the aliens idea OF COURSE he could be a supernatural apparition to balance the universe from his afterlife.
That’s fair, he hadn’t dealt with too many supernatural (let alone extraterrestrial) things until that point.“Once he got on board with the aliens idea OF COURSE he could be a supernatural apparition to balance the universe from his afterlife.” – I love that this is a sentence that can unironically be said now.
I may be waxing poetic here, but I truly believe that the Arrowverse was something special
I don’t think you are just waxing poetic. It was something that honestly I don’t think we’ll ever see again, and not just because of the slow death of network television. I mean, as everyone points out, its closest brother-from-another-mother is the MCU, and while that was kind of birthed the same way the Arrowverse was (a B-string hero getting a movie? How ridiculous!) Marvel had money, especially after Disney bought them. The CW didn’t have the money for the effects for an Iron Man suit (boy they sure didn’t *glances at the Atom*) or even the practical effects of a Batman movie, like the Nolan films they were aping at the start, but they took one buff Canadian and a salmon ladder and by god they made a universe out of it.
A backdoor pilot and/or a crossover between just two shows was (and still is for the most part) pretty amazing when it happens, so when the CW was able to do it with 3, then 4, and finally 5 shows and make it all work narratively, it was fucking stunning, even if it wasn’t exactly high art. I mean, Marvel themselves proved they couldn’t quite do it when Netflix’s Defenders show kinda fell on its ass.
I will genuinely never not be impressed by the, 5 shows(?) that were on at the same time, all the while having crossovers and smaller guest appearances from people from other shows. Were they sometimes more self-contained than they should’ve been? Yes. But even when Felicity or Diggle showed up in Flash or when Wally appeared on Legends, it was a delightful reminder that “oh yeah, they all really do come from the same place”They sure didn’t have money though, I’m with you on that. But the Atom suit sorta grew on me, that was also largely because of Ray. “…but they took one buff Canadian and a salmon ladder and by god they made a universe out of it.” – Oh salmon ladder, how I miss thee. Let’s also remember those S2 posters, with all the buff, sweaty, shirtless men.And yeah Marvel sure tried to do it. Netflix worked up until Defenders. It’s a shame too, because the cast bounced off each other really well. But by that point the grander MCU cared little about those pesky TV people. I genuinely really wish that their plan with Agents of Shield had worked, however. AoS itself is one of my favourite shows and to see how a movie can impact a series as much as The Winter Soldier did was nothing short of spectacular. It sucks that behind-the-scenes shit and logistics had to ruin that potential. AoS at least continued on its own and became increasingly more superb.PS: I will never allow anyone to forget how exquisitely fantastic the church fight was in Crisis on Earth X
I’m dismayed at the lack of love for Zari in both the article and comment section 🙁
What made the Arrowverse work for me, when it worked, was that it kept taking things that fans would say “wouldn’t it be cool if they did THIS” about, and then ACTUALLY DOING THEM. And then they KEPT DOING THAT, OVER AND OVER AGAIN. As comic book fans, we’re so used to not getting that sort of thing when comics are adapted into other media, that actually getting it felt like a special occasion that just kept going and going. Even when the shows themselves weren’t that good, that sense of constantly getting offered things we wanted made it hard not to enjoy them.I can only imagine that was the result of 1: the shows being made by people who were themselves fans of the source material, and 2: the creators being given free rein by the higher-ups to do whatever they wanted, rather than having to adhere to a particular bottom line. Obviously those weren’t conditions that could be expected to last forever, but for the brief time that it was working like it was supposed to, it really felt like something special.
I grew up a regular reader of super hero comics and still dip into them from time to time. They’ve been incredibly important to me, but it’s the one thing I’ve always enjoyed I‘ve never been able to share with my wife . . . until the Arrowverse. The real miracle of these shows is they did an amazing job of replicating everything that is great and very little of what is terrible about reading a whole bunch of super hero comics and expressing it in the medium of television in a way that works for both fans of the comics and people who have never read a comic. It will be missed.
Caity Lotz mentioned this article on an Instagram post yesterday.
When the Arrowverse was good, it was amazing. When it was bad, it was a dumpster fire of low budget sadness. I remember goosebumps when Caity Lotz showed up the first time in Arrow, saved his ass, and broke every window in the police station then started working out of a BoP inspired clock tower. You could tell they had fanboys writing the show and it was so much better for it.
After years of coverage, how was the last episode- or even season- of FLASH not covered by this site? This retrospective on the Arrowverse concept was good and all, but an actual recap and talkback was called for!
Maybe because its ratings collapsed and most true fans (e.g. this site’s readers) dropped it 5-6 years ago?
I mean maybe. But it was a longtime staple of this site and its end was the end of an era. A one-off finale recap/review wouldn’t have been too much of an ask.
My feeling has been that if the whole Berlanti slate had wrapped up after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the critical perspective would’ve probably ended up being kinder. But all things considered, a hell of a run (Barry) run.
Although I petered out well before the Arrowverse did, I’m so glad it exists. I remember watching Arrow with the same dawning awe I felt when I first watched the Keaton Batman 89 movie (my Batman, I saw the damned thing over 10 times in the theater to the regret of my paying parents).Then, The Flash. I was in love!After that, every new show was another layer of bliss. Even at their most formulaic, I eagerly welcomed the weekly adventures.It all became too much to keep up with, but I love that we went from a superhero TV famine to a bounty that lasted as long as it did.Maybe a binge-watch is in order now that it’s all over.
Would gladly trade it all for a few more seasons of Doom Partrol
This is a legitimately great take on the many wonders of the Arrowverse. I can’t think of any other set of TV shows that’s ever morphed to such an extreme degree – from a character who’s basically a Batman ripoff (and the writers wisely had Barry give Ollie some ribbing over it on the crossover ep where they introduced Gotham), to a fully fledged multiverse featuring multiple metahumans as well as aliens. (Seriously, not even “Fast & Furious” has changed THAT much!)My one criticism would be the article’s failure to acknowledge the model for the OG “Arrow” and most Arrowverse shows: “Smallville.” “The Flash” largely repurposed that show’s original “meteor-rock metahuman villain of the week” model with metas created by the STAR Labs explosion. They didn’t call it that, but “Team Clark” existed well over a decade before Team Flash did, and also included a bizarrely brilliant hacker (Chloe) who could crack the DOD mainframe in 30 seconds; Cisco, Felicity & Chuck are all direct descendants!As for this bit:“[T]he show is actually in its own separate continuity—for no apparent reason other than that it’s easier than adhering to the established canon. And as soon as you decide to value convenience over continuity, your cinematic universe might as well be dead.”Point taken about removing “Superman & Lois” from the Arrowverse, but this omits a problem that the ENTIRE Arrowverse ALWAYS had: why on earth did no one from other shows appear on non-crossover events, even when the world was quite literally at stake? Supergirl or Superman could’ve obviously helped with nearly every crisis on the other shows. Ditto Barry: the writers were severely inconsistent as to the exact peak of his speed – one episode is spent almost wholly within a fraction of a second, as Barry tries to figure out how to defuse a nuke – but is there some reason he couldn’t just dart over to Star City & be back in literal moments?
That did happen once or twice. If it didn’t happen all the time I just assumed it was because he was busy with some other crisis.
We’ve covered the ambition & success of the Arrowverse, but there’s very little mention of the epic messes it produced. The crossover events were great, but why on earth wouldn’t, say, Kara fly to Central City in mere seconds to help with the speedsters? The writers were inconsistent with Barry’s exact speed, but we’ve seen him travel the planet in under a second, so what rational reason would he have not to help Ollie out in Star City? (especially with any of the “world-ending events” near the end of many shows’ seasons)I still completely fail to get the quasi-embargoing of the Superman & Batman characters throughout The CW’s entire existence (well pre-dating the Arrowverse – this goes back to “Smallville”) – at least until we FINALLY got to see Superman’s face on “Supergirl” S2, and later on his own series. (You might recall him being shown only in shadow in the first season credits for “Supergirl.”) And we did see Bruce Wayne on the S2 premiere of “Batwoman,” but a) he was a fake Bruce and b) it was necessitated as part of the explanation for Ruby Rose’s still-odd departure. Finally, Crisis ended up Lois telling Clark to come home to their “boys” (plural), using it to introduce their twin teens – except it turns out they’re not in the Arrowverse, period.The Arrowverse was exceptionally ambitious, especially for a fledgling, perennially low-rated network, but in many ways it simply didn’t work to have that many heroes on that many shows (and only interacting for Crisis, Elseworlds, etc., considering Barry/Kara/Clark can travel cross-planet in literal seconds). I have no idea why DC is cancelling literally almost all of its televised shows – this at a time when even Marvel wised up to the error of their ways, and are rebooting their Netflix shows on Disney+ – but I hope the success of “The Flash” (meaning the movie, and considering James Gunn has called it one of the best superhero movies of all time, I’m inclined to believe it!) will spur DC to revisit the idea of televised spinoffs. (No, not with any of the three new Flashes teased on the finale. I’d assume Gunn would want his own, much baudier take on DC heroes; see, e.g., “The Suicide Squad.”)
Did COVID kill the arrowverse? There were supposed to be more crossovers but they stopped.