TAGGED AS: comic books, DC Comics, Superheroes, TV
Superman & Lois officially ended its run on Monday, closing out 12 years of a grand cinematic universe experiment on TV — the Arrowverse. The CW superhero franchise was truly the biggest competitor to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one that sprung from a single superhero drama to include six live-action shows, two animated series, and multiple crossover events at a time when superheroes were mostly found on the big screen or in animation, and when done in live-action TV, they were self-contained as low-key dramas rather than big blockbusters. Now, James Gunn is giving the DC Universe yet another reboot on both the big and the small screen, starting with Creature Commandos this December, set to kickstart a multi-year plan with multiple shows and films. Before a new Superman flies to our movie screens in 2025, let’s take a look back at the Arrowverse, what made it unique, what its legacy is, and how it changed the superhero genre forever.
(Photo by ©The CW)
From the moment The Flash spun off from Arrow and the Arrowverse began in earnest, it became clear that this was a franchise where every title would be quite different from its predecessors. Arrow was very much TV’s answer to the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, a grounded show about a vigilante, whereas The Flash brought in soapy elements, Batwoman sported a noir tone, and Superman & Lois and Black Lightning focused on the ways superheroics can affect family dynamics. Therein lies the beauty of the Arrowverse: From the very beginning, it felt auteur-driven, each show given free rein to build upon what came before and carve its own path with a vastly different tone. Even while Marvel Studios began as a filmmaker-friendly franchise, its formula remained (and continues to remain) so strong and established that it offered little wiggle room for creatives to play with.
(Photo by Colin Bentley/The CW)
Despite the limits of TV budgets and standards, the Arrowverse nevertheless managed to deliver big superhero thrills on a weekly basis, and by the time Superman & Lois premiered (the show started as part of the Arrowverse before it got retconned as part of a separate continuity once the other shows ended), the VFX team managed to make big-scale spectacle on a much smaller budget than any superhero movie, with Doomsday in particular looking better than his previous depiction. Because these were TV shows, the faster turnaround gave the Arrowverse series an opportunity to respond to the real world faster than any movie could, with timely themes and commentary, like Batwoman reacting to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and Supergirl quickly becoming an inclusive and forward-thinking show about immigration and queerness — even introducing a transgender superhero.
(Photo by Dean Buscher/©The CW)
More impressive, however, was the way the Arrowverse managed to build a cohesive cinematic universe on TV, proving that the concept could work outside of the big screen. Years before Marvel moved its cinematic universe to TV via the Disney+ shows, and even before the Netflix Marvel universe launched, the Arrowverse was doing crossovers between its shows that felt like must-watch TV events. It even managed to rescue and bring in shows from other networks like Constantine and Supergirl and integrate them into the rest of the Arrowverse cohesively and seamlessly — or take out shows from the main timeline without the whole thing falling apart. The Arrowverse even incorporated animated titles that were canon to the universe, which DC is now doing again with Creature Commandos, and which Marvel is set to do eventually. Watching the crossovers didn’t require the audience to do homework to know what was happening, and the franchise proved you could adapt some of the biggest comic book events on a TV format like Crisis on Infinite Earths, even doing cameos that rival the biggest guest appearances on superhero movies.
(Photo by Katie Yu/©The CW)
But it wasn’t just in the annual events that the Arrowverse shows crossed over. Unlike, say, the MCU, where the Avengers rarely meet outside of their big team-up movies, characters constantly jumped from one show to another in the Arrowverse, which helped make it feel like a living, shared universe populated by multiple heroes — and helped it avoid the question of “Why weren’t X characters around to help?” The Flash’s Cisco Ramon spent a good amount of time on Arrow helping upgrade the team’s tech, John Diggle appeared in multiple shows, and even side characters from Arrow and The Flash like Ray Palmer and Martin Stein became lead characters in Legends of Tomorrow.
As a comic book adaptation, the Arrowverse was unafraid to take huge liberties with the source material — such as reinventing Green Arrow to make him more like Batman — but also stayed faithful to the comics, like Superman & Lois delivering the most faithful depiction of the Man of Steel since 1978, one that is goofy, kind-hearted, spectacularly human and good even as superheroes become increasingly cynical.
(Photo by Colin Bentley/©CW)
This also showcases the way the franchise evolved with the years, as superheroes became more and more common on TV and the Arrowverse became able to stay closer to the zaniness and the earnestness of the source material, quickly going from grounded stories to introducing the multiverse (many years before the genre became oversaturated with it), and much more. We can also see how the Arrowverse evolved in the way it treated secret identities, something that started as the key to the drama of both Arrow and The Flash. But toward its end, Arrow saw Oliver Queen reveal his identity, and even Superman & Lois did what no live-action Superman adaptation has done, revealing Clark Kent’s identity to the entire world in its final episodes.
While connected universes like the MCU and the upcoming DC Universe create excitement out of the idea of intricate plotting and plans that span several years, the Arrowverse showed the value of experimentation, of reacting to what worked and what didn’t and constantly pivoting to explore new ideas. Now that it’s over, TV will never be the same again.
Superman & Lois
aired its series finale on December 2, 2024.
