Last year marked a huge milestone for The CW’s superhero lineup. For the first time since the network’s launch of the “Arrowverse” in 2008, one of its endlessly expanding lineups of superhero content was coming to an end, as Arrow aired its abbreviated eighth and final season. Despite the fact Arrow had been struggling in the ratings for years, The CW pulled out all the stops to say farewell to their cornerstone series, crafting the largest television crossover event in all of televised comic book history and allowing its flagship hero, Oliver Queen (aka the Green Arrow, played by Stephen Amell), to selflessly sacrifice himself in order to literally reboot the entire multiverse.
This epic television event was a touching tribute to a character whose time in the zeitgeist had long passed but who opened up such a rich and vibrant world of stories and helped reshape the network in doing so. It felt like the way a film franchise might honor the end of a beloved, core member of the ensemble, more so than the end of a television series, which typically tries to find some way to honor the characters while pushing them into new phases of their lives that the audience will no longer get to see. It is hard to treat a superhero in an interconnected universe of superheroes in this manner, however.
If Arrow had ended with him continuing as a hero despite reaching satisfying closure on his arc as a character, Arrowverse viewers would wonder why Oliver and the gang were not popping up in the big universe-spanning events that always punctuate an Arrowverse season. And if Oliver hung up the bow and arrow for good to retire and be more present with his family, audiences may also push back at the idea that he would just stand aside and allow the universe to be under constant threat without lending a helping hand to his buddies Barry, Kara, and Sarah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NTly2L_hHE
The solution for Arrow was for Oliver to go out on top, sacrificing himself to literally create a new Arrowverse that’s name fits both in and out of the universe this time around. But this got me to wonder: how will future Arrowverse series handle saying farewell to their heroes? Surely every hero cannot take themselves off the interconnected universal storytelling board by dying. But if not for that, how will their individual creative teams balance the need to give their stories a satisfying conclusion with the need to give future Arrowverse seasons a justification for why their newly formed Justice League is missing a few members the next time the universe is at stake?
2021 will unfortunately give viewers two chances to see for themselves, as both Black Lightning and Supergirl have announced that their current seasons will be their last. Black Lightning, the story of Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) and his super-powered family’s attempt to manage their interpersonal relationships while protecting the fractured city of Freeland, has always been a very localized series. Despite the fact its characters are often at war with governments of metahuman-obsessed nations (the United States’ government included), the size and scope of the threats Jefferson and his family face have always been specific to his hometown of Freeland. He technically began his run on a different Earth from the rest of the Arrowverse, which (along with the fact they shoot in Georgia whereas the rest of the Arrowverse film in Vancouver, Canada) had traditionally kept him away from the rest of his network’s DC heroes. And while he did show up in the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event and receive his own seat at the Justice League table last year, it feels like these lingering interconnected universe questions are less likely to factor into the character and his series’ endgame.
What we have seen in the opening act of Black Lightning’s final season is an arc tightly focused around Jefferson’s personal identity as a hero and his commitments to his community and family. Distraught over the loss of his best friend and the city’s police chief, Jefferson lashes out at everyone from racist cops to immoral street thugs to even his own loved ones as he works through his grief and tries to decide if he is fit to live up to the mantle he has made for himself as Black Lightning. Things seem to be headed for a battle over the soul of Freeland as Jefferson and his arch-nemesis, Tobias Whale (Marvin ‘Krondon’ Jones III), the man who killed his father when Jefferson was just a boy and has tormented his family and city from afar ever since, appear set to square off once and for all. However that conflict resolves, it will likely feel like a fitting end to the story of Jefferson and his family, and future considerations are likely secondary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRWQBuXh6g
The CW’s other super series ending this year presents a more challenging proposition, however. Supergirl will be ending this summer after six seasons, as star Melissa Benoist appears interested in pursuing new opportunities following the large production deal she received from Warner Media earlier this year. Without Melissa, there is no Supergirl. However, a world where Supergirl lives but isn’t stopping by Central City to help out The Flash or stopping by Smallville to help her cousin Superman (now the star of his own seriesSuperman & Lois after guest starring on Supergirl and multiple multi-series crossovers), seems much harder to believe than a world where Black Lightning sits out the next alien invasion. We have so far only seen two episodes of Supergirl‘s final season, and the premiere was mostly tying up the COVID-related loose ends from its unexpectedly abbreviated fifth season. As such, we have little idea what Kara’s (a.k.a. Supergirl’s) endgame might look like.
Some rumors say that she may give up her powers and her Earth-based family to live on the remnants of her home planet Argo, where her mother resides, which seems more than a bit out of character for her. Others think she could be tasked by her future-set friends in the Legend of Superheroes with a future-set mission only she could solve, resulting in the kind of self-sacrifice that allows the character to pop back up if Melissa ever was interested. It could be that the series decides to just end with Kara continuing to do what we’ve always seen her do, save National City, and occasionally the planet, from whatever threat comes her way, but doing so off-screen, in adventures that leave her too busy to pitch in during the big crossovers.
The latter option would be a similar way to how Angel handled the end of its interconnected sister series Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it ended several years before Angel did. At the time, Angel took advantage of the end of Buffy by having a few Buffy fan favorites stop by, some for longer than others, and the audience would occasionally hear mentions of what Buffy and her team were busy doing that kept them off-screen. However, Angel and Buffy crossed-over with each other very seldomly in the first place, and there was not an annual precedent set where the two would team up when the threat was large enough.
Whichever way The CW chooses to handle this problem, it will be interesting to see if they can balance the already near-impossible task to conclude this kind of ongoing series, which, by design, is built to continue in perpetuity, with the equally tough challenge to justify why these essential superheroes are no longer appearing when the world is under threat. And while Arrow ending with the funeral of Oliver Queen felt fitting for that series, I hope that all our heroes do not have to die just to liberate them from the Arrowverse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p03L5hCDloM
