There has never been more superhero content on TV than there has been over the last few years. As comic book heroes and villains have spent the better part of the last two decades dominating the box office, their media conglomerate parents have tried to slowly ramp up the size and scale of what superheroic content could look like on the small screen. Of course, there has been a long history of adapting comic properties for TV, dating all the way back to the 1960’s era Batman and the 1970’s era The Incredible Hulk.
However, one could argue that the modern iteration of superhero content for TV began with the CW’s Arrow back in 2008. Since then, shows from Marvel, DC, and other comic outlets have become more ambitious, more cinematic, and more closely inspired by the comic lore of their namesakes.
Now, as Marvel Studios brings their cinematic vision to Disney+ and Warner Media continues to announce DC Film TV-spinoffs headed straight to HBO Max, it seemed like the perfect time to check in on the state of the genre from time to time, and pull on the most interesting threads TV has to offer. Super Sundays with Alex will be my monthly attempt to do just that. I have a lot of exciting things planned for the coming months, but it seemed only natural to start off with the long-awaited return of The CW’s Arrowverse!
For those of you who are less familiar, The Arrowverse is a term used to describe a set of interconnected Greg Berlanti-produced superhero series that currently all air on The CW. It began with the launch of Arrow back in 2008, which starred Stephen Amell (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows) as Oliver Queen, a.k.a. The Green Arrow. Eventually, The Arrowverse expanded to feature live-action spinoffs like The Flash, Supergirl, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, and Batwoman along with animated limited series tie-ins produced for CW Seed such as Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray. This universe reached its epic, Avengers: Endgame-esque climax last season during the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event, where our superfriends, many of whom actually exist on alternate Earths despite being part of the same collective universe, help prevent the annihilation of all reality across their shared multiverse. Their success meant an end to their multiverse as they knew it (though other non-CW DC shows still do exist in a multiverse that our heroes are simply now ignorant of) and all our superfriends from The CW series are on Earth-Prime, making crossovers easier in the future.
All of this took place across December and January of last year, meaning the individual series all had the remainder of their stories, post-Crisis, air in COVID-abbreviated seasons. That was nearly a year ago, and now we are finally getting to check back in with The Flash, Batwoman, and Black Lightning, along with the premiere of the brand new Superman & Lois (technically a Supergirl-spinoff, though both Superman & Lois have factored in more during recent crossovers than Supergirl proper). Supergirl and Legends are expected later this year, but in the meantime, here’s what to expect from all the shows heading back to The CW over the next month.
Batwoman (Premiered on 1/17): This will certainly be the briefest entry into our preview guide, as Batwoman’s second season has already begun airing. You can check out my review of the premiere where I break down a lot of the shifts to the status quo that last month’s debut episode was forced to reckon with, mainly the fact that last year’s season arc ended abruptly and without any resolution due to the COVID production shutdowns of spring 2020 and the fact that Batwoman herself, Ruby Rose (Orange is the New Black), left the series during the offseason. So far, the show has done an admirable job tying off loose ends and resetting the series around a new Batwoman, played quite effectively by Javicia Leslie (God Friended Me).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu4ruPPuLOY
Black Lightning (Premiering on 2/8): Next up is Black Lightning, entering its fourth and final season with the network (though a spinoff focusing on the Painkiller character is said to be in the works). Last season, we saw Black Lightning’s (a.k.a. Jefferson Pierce) home turf of Freeland under siege, first by the nefarious metahuman creating/imprisoning/exploiting the governmental agency the A.S.A., and later by an invasion of the fictional Eastern European nation of Markovia, lead by Jefferson’s long lost cousin Gravedigger, played surprisingly well by a menacing Wayne Brady.
Though Gravedigger did make it out of S3 alive (if significantly de-powered), Pierce and his crew, featuring his superpowered daughters Anissa and Jessica and a few of their superpowered friends, were able to send the Markovians packing and expose the A.S.A.’s crimes, resulting in the agency being dismantled. This season seems primed to pay off Pierce’s wife’s drug addiction storyline from last year, tie up loose ends with Gravedigger, and set up a final confrontation with newly rejuvenated Tobias Whale, who is back in Freeland and ready to retake control of the city.
However, the Season 4 trailer suggests that following the Markovian assault of Freeland, which left Jefferson’s best friend Billy Henderson (Freeland’s Chief of Police) fatally wounded, Jefferson is maybe ready to retire Black Lightning for good this time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YihlJOsAmTU
Superman & Lois (Premiering on 2/23): Closing out February is the special two-hour premiere of Superman & Lois, starring Tyler Hoechlin (Teen Wolf) and Elizabeth Tulloch (Grimm). Pre-Crisis, we last saw these two lovebirds retired from super-heroics, raising their newborn son Jonathan on the Kryptonian colony of Argo. Then the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths caused them to return to their Earth-saving ways, before seeing their reality wiped out of existence and merged with Earth-1 (home of Arrow, The Flash, Batwoman & Legends) and Earth-3 (home of Black Lightning) to create Earth-Prime, a universe where Lois and Clark have two teenage sons and appear to be returning to Smallville so the boys can be raised outside of the hustle and bustle of Metropolis. Returning home for Clark means renewing a friendship with first love Lana Lang (Emmanuelle Chriqui, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan), now a struggling single mom, while balancing fatherhood and superhero responsibilities.
Meanwhile, Lois’s father, General Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh, Nip/Tuck) will be mixing things up, the last scene portrayed by a different actor entirely but no fan of capes on Supergirl Season 1. Expect a family-centered story somewhere between Black Lightning and Supergirl, with more than a little early Smallville thrown in for good measure, I’m sure. With Supergirl delayed until later this year due to star Melissa Benoist’s pregnancy, it is unclear how many Supergirl cast members may crossover. Batwoman was scheduled to have a crossover, but COVID concerns seem to have delayed those plans until next year. Meanwhile, David Ramsay’s John Diggle, last seen in the Arrow finale moving to Metropolis and obtaining what seemed an awful lot like a Green Lantern ring on his way out, is expected to appear across several Arrowverse shows this year, and Superman & Lois very well could be one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97oUvUeyO0
The Flash (Premiering on 3/2): Last season of The Flash may have felt like it ended on a satisfying cliffhanger, but that was not exactly the original plan. The COVID production shutdown of last spring forced The Flash to end its season three episodes early, after evil tech businessman Joseph Carver was murdered by his vengeful ex-wife, who he stranded in a mirror dimension for over five years, but before Team Flash could rescue Iris and Kamila from the mirror dimension or bring said ex-wife (Eva McCulloh, aka the Post-Crisis Mirror Master) to justice. Team Flash also has the pesky problem of Crisis causing the Speedforce, a cosmic force from which The Flash derives his super speed, to be destroyed. Unless they figure out a way to “build a new Speedforce” quickly, The Flash will lose his superspeed completely.
The original intent for those final three episodes was to resolve those arcs, and Season Seven will do just that, shifting those final three episodes to the first three episodes of this season before launching into a new arc. Little is known about where things will head after they finish mopping up season six, but we do know some changes are coming to the cast. Chester P. Runk and Allegra Garcia were both new members to Team Flash last season and have been upgraded to series regulars, while Ralph Dibney (aka Elongated Man) is being written out of the show, at least “for the indefinite future,” due to the unearthing of offensive and bigoted social media posts by his portrayer Hartley Sawyer during the offseason. It has been confirmed that his love interest on the show (and wife in the comics) Sue, who debuted last season, will get to stick around. As Sawyer was fired outright over the summer, the show will apparently be taking advantage of the character’s shapeshifting powers to help write him off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xEWXMJ9y78
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (Premiering: TBA): With no release date and no trailer to go by, little is known about what to expect from the sixth season of Legends. The creative team is back, which means that the strange alchemy of wacky comedy, superhero action, and character-driven heartstring-tugging should be back as well. Some cast changes are coming, but nothing that will rock the boat…er, I mean, Waverider. Most of our principals are back for another year, with Shayan Sobhian’s Behrad Tarazi and Adam Tsekhman’s Gary Green being upgraded to a series regulars, and Maisie Richardson-Sellers’ Charlie leaving the show, as established in last season’s finale.
Also established in last season’s finale was team leader Sarah Lance being…abducted by aliens on her way out of a late-night rock club in 70s London, unbeknownst to her teammates. Word is, this was not just a mysterious cliffhanger, but it actually is a tease for a season’s worth of alien antics to come, which are rumored to tie into David Ramsey’s new cross-series arc as maybe, but almost certainly, the Arrowverse’s Green Lantern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIySKo0TV-I
Supergirl (Premiering: TBA): I’ve placed Supergirl as our final show in this preview because it seems to be the furthest away, as we know next to nothing about what to expect from what has been announced to be the series sixth and final season. Initially, production was intended to be delayed due to news that star Melissa Benoist was pregnant with her first child. It was expected to be a midseason replacement, with most of the other Arrowverse shows debuting in the fall of 2020 as usual.
With the COVID production lockdown of the spring and summer, production on Supergirl ended before all of Season 5 could be filmed and production on all Arrowverse shows was delayed enough to require all the shows to debut midseason. Still, we have not heard word on when Supergirl will return or what the final season of the beloved series has in store. All we know is that the principal cast is returning and that they will be greeted by the potential new Green Lantern John Diggle at some point this season, possibly seeking out some help with his new alien-based powers from the only aliens he knows (Supergirl and J’onn J’onzz).
