An Introduction to the CW's DC "Arrowverse"

By the time that Clark Kent finally moved his underpants onto the outside, Smallville had become the world’s longest-running, live-action comic book show as well as the longest-running science-fiction series in North American history. Bombarded with Emmys and Teen Choice awards, not to mention the acclaim of viewers and critics alike, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar’s groundbreaking 9,220-minute Superman origin story proved that there was a real appetite for serious TV dramas inspired by comic books. It was hardly unexpected, then, that the CW moved quickly to develop a Green Arrow show to succeed it - one surprisingly divorced from Justin Hartley’s popular portrayal of the character on Smallville and so dark in tone that it would make the show that paved the way for it look more like the farce of Batman ’66 and rom-com of Lois & Clarke in contrast.

 Above: Justin Hartley’s Green Arrow meets a young Clark Kent in Smallville
 

Arrow’s first season débuted in the autumn of 2012. Now, almost seven years later, it has been renewed for a truncated eighth and final season, but its legacy will live on through the CW’s Arrowverse – an ever-expanding pantheon of superhero-based TV dramas masterminded by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Marc Guggenheim, Phil Klemmer, Ali Adler and DC Entertainment’s chief creative officer Geoff Johns. To me, the Arrowverse is more than just another shared universe in today’s seemingly endless sea of shared universes; it’s even more than the small-screen answer to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. With much more screen time available to its key players, the Arrowverse offers a much more immersive experience than any silver-screen alternative ever could. Its principal characters develop over hundreds of hours instead of dozens; its intricate storylines play out over entire seasons rather than just a few flicks. Classic comic book arcs are adapted alongside brand new material, with each show putting its own idiosyncratic spin on its output regardless of its source. From the ubiquitous darkness of Arrow to the brightly coloured capers of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, every corner of the Arrowverse has its own distinct identity, and these identities are enriched each year when, in classic comic-book spirit, the CW makes a pop-culture event out of the shows crossing over. The Arrowverse truly captures the magic of the comic-book experience and translates it into the live-action medium - perhaps with greater success than any other such endeavour.

The Arrowverse is currently comprised of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. These will be joined next season by Batwoman, whose eponymous vigilante, Kate Kane (Ruby Rose), was introduced to viewers in this last season’s memorable crossover event, Elseworlds. To date there have also been several tie-in webisodes and comic books released, as well as a couple of full-blown web series (Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray) and even a couple of extraordinary smash-and-grabs: The Flash TV series from 1990 has been retrospectively adopted and takes place on Earth-90, one of the Arrowverse’s many parallel universes, while Matt Ryan’s definitive John Constantine has been plucked from his short-lived NBC series and deposited as a series regular on the Waverider, leaving us with a tantalising question mark over the status of the underrated Constantine show within the Arrowverse. Even the Earth of Smallville is teetering on the brink of inclusion, with the recent Elseworlds crossover going so far as to use Smallville’s most iconic setting and its inimitable theme music. We can only hope Tom Welling is conscripted to play an ageing Smallville Superman in the Arrowverse’s take on Crisis on Infinite Earths later this year - he'd be the perfect choice to carry the Earth-2 Superman’s pivotal part of the original plot into live action.

 

Above: Superman finally takes flight in the Smallville finale

 

Speaking of infinite Earths, all of the Arrowverse’s core shows are set on Earth-1, with the notable exception of Supergirl, which is based on Earth-38 (so numbered, I’m told, in reference to the year that Superman hit Action Comics). Supergirl’s setting is a necessary incongruity, not because it started out on a different network, but due to its depiction of a cosmopolitan present-day Earth where aliens are commonplace – something irreconcilable with the grounded present-day world of early-days Arrow especially. This might all change, of course, post-Crisis - but for now, the Arrowverse would be more accurately described as a shared multiverse rather a mere shared universe. 

 

When it was announced, Arrow’s terse title proudly declared its narrow focus, hinting at its eschewing of super-powers, and indeed most of comic books’ usual trappings, in favour of a much more recognisable world more redolent of Chris Nolan’s then-recent Dark Knight trilogy than most issues of Green Arrow. An enthralling dissection of Oliver Queen, a one-time billionaire playboy who finds himself shipwrecked on remote island in the North China Sea, Arrow dared to tell two tales simultaneously: the first explored Oliver’s murderous exploits in the present as he donned a hood to put arrows through all those whose names graced his late father’s list of people who had “failed” their native Starling City, while the second chronicled his adventures five years earlier on the island of Lian Yu (“Purgatory” in Chinese, quite aptly). Each episode cleverly intertwined these two ongoing narratives, with the events of the past informing those of the present, and more often than not offering an explanation – if not quite a justification – for Oliver’s disturbing decisions.

The most alluring aspect of Arrow has always been the character at the centre of it - Kreisberg, Berlanti and Guggenheim’s interpretation of the Emerald Archer would be vastly different from the boycotting-sporting Robin Hood of recent comics and cartoons. Visually and tonally, Oliver’s alter ego would be portrayed much closer to the Longbow Hunters-era Green Arrow than any of his more derivative incarnations, only even darker still. Focusing on the billionaire-turned-vigilante’s murderous mission to right his father’s wrongs, Arrow would even distance itself from the Batman comparisons that had dogged the Green Arrow since his inception. As dark as the Knight purports to be, in all his most recognisable iterations he will not kill, whereas the Hood’s first season body count rivalled most villains’. This would ultimately prove to be the series’ greatest lure as its first few seasons focused on Oliver’s skewed morality in the wake of his five years in Hell, charting his journey from homicidal Hood through anguished Arrow all the way to heroic Green Arrow, with later seasons moving onto to explore the devastating legacy of his actions. Arrow’s seminal fifth season, for instance, brought the series full circle as the show’s flashbacks finally caught up with the start of the first season and a new, show-created big bad rose up from the ashes of Oliver’s past to mercilessly persecute the man who killed his father.

 

Like much of episodic television these days, Arrow and its successor shows use the tried and tested “villain of the week” model to progress a larger, season-long narrative, with the line between episodes blurring more and more as the season nears it climactic end. Despite the show’s originality, it has always done a magnificent job of being faithful to the spirit of the Green Arrow as a warrior for social justice, even incorporating some of the most memorable storylines from the comics into its epic narratives where appropriate. Oliver’s stint on the show as Star City mayor, for instance, was clearly inspired by Judd Winick’s post-Infinite Crisis run on the Green Arrow comic, while Roy’s (at the time) world-shattering drug addiction storyline in 1971’s Snowbirds Don’t Fly was echoed on screen in the character’s prolonged abuse of Mirakuru. And, whilst the show has yet to find a place for ideas as provocative as having one of its crimefighters living with HIV, as Winick did so memorably with the Mia Dearden Speedy in print, it has dealt with comparable issues in similarly enlightened ways. Thea’s bloodlust, Laurel and Quentin’s alcoholism, the breakdown of Curtis’s marriage, Felicity and John’s respective injuries, Rene’s single-parent vigilantism and all the custodial issues that go with it –  Arrow’s characters have always been study in adversity. The heartbreaking genius of the show is that they don’t all overcome it.



As well as its credibly pitched human drama, philosophical questions burn beneath Arrow’s action – questions that the show explores through its characters’ intricate interactions rather than the sort of sledgehammer storyline moralising shows like Star Trek are infamous for. Even as the Hood, Oliver had a mission that he believed was right. Detective Quentin Lance, on the other hand, couldn’t countenance the slaughter of criminals – he had a moral and public duty to bring the Hood to justice. Meanwhile, Quentin’s daughter Laurel, the future Black Canary as well as a practising legal aid attorney and erstwhile love interest of Oliver, ostensibly bridged the gap between the two men, sharing her father’s devotion to law and order while also admiring the Hood’s ruthless obsession with justice. Audience omniscience gently coloured the issue, of course, particularly as the first season neared its end and the Hood’s mission developed from hunting those who’d failed his city into trying to save it from Malcolm Merlyn’s Undertaking, at which point Quentin’s increasingly desperate attempts to bring the Hood down only played into Merlyn’s hands. In later seasons, as Quentin was brought into the fold and Oliver became a hero in the more traditional mould, complex moral questions still underpinned every long-running arc. With Oliver generally more centred, Arrow turned to new and fascinating team members like Rene / Wild Dog and Dinah / Black Canary III for its ethical conflict, eventually leading to a Captain America: Civil War-style split in the show’s thrilling sixth season.

Throughout its run to date, Arrow has turned over a number of regulars, but the principal Team: Arrow -  Oliver Queen / Green Arrow, Felicity Smoak / Overwatch and John Diggle / Spartan – have proven to be a TV trinity comparable to any other. Whilst this has been thanks in no small part to the magnetic performances of Emily Bett Rickards; David Ramsey; and particularly Stephen Amell (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows), the writers did a phenomenal job of developing these characters gradually and plausibly back and forth through time, culminating in the seventh season’s bold switch to flash-forwards instead of flashbacks and their painful-yet-pleasing payoff to Oliver and Felicity’s long-running romance. Paul Blackthorne’s long-suffering Quentin left a similar mark - for six years he stole almost every scene that he appeared in, regularly frustrating viewers before breaking their hearts with the efficiency that only a man who’s daughters both died (before returning to confound him…) can. Almost as extraordinary is Echo Kellum’s Curtis Holt – a terrific character responsible for much of the show’s levity in later years, as well as many of its most touching moments. The show’s unsung hero of late, though, has really been Rick Gonzalez’s Rene. He’s at once Arrow’s most flawed and most brilliant human being - impulsive and unwise, but dedicated to both his daughter and the city that they live in. Two devotions that are not often reconcilable…

 

Lest we forget the villains. John Barrowman’s Malcolm Merlyn proved to be a fascinating foil for the Hood in the first season, only to gain even greater depth as the show delved into his past before delivering a truly shocking future for him as the Demon’s Head. Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson / Deathstroke raised the bar unbelievably high in Arrow’s second, and probably still best, year, before live action’s most comic-book faithful Ra’s al Ghul to date (Matt Nable) stepped out of the shadows to drive Season 3. Having established such a high standard for its big bads, it was with a mixture of shock and awe that I watched the show’s spectacular fifth season unfold, revealing a completely original villain so cruelly intelligent and downright disturbing that he threatened to eclipse even Deathstroke’s dominant turn. Like the very best of comic book nemeses, Josh Segarra’s Adrian Chase / Prometheus was effectively an anti-Green Arrow; the antithesis of everything that Oliver stood for and held dear. And yet, Oliver was single-handedly responsible for his creation. Everything that Chase did was ultimately on Oliver’s already heavy conscience.

So imposing was Chase, in fact, that the show’s sixth season didn’t even try to present us with anyone to take over his role as chief antagonist for a long time - there was enough drama to be mined just dealing with the fallout from his devastating actions. In an impressively subversive move, the red-herring-strewn Season 6 kept its real villain in the wings until well into the latter half of the run, and when he was finally revealed, he was categorically the right man for the job. Like Chase before him, Kirk Acevedo’s (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD) Diaz set out to systematically destroy Oliver’s public life as mayor and private life as the Green Arrow, gradually corrupting the city’s key officials and instigating a full-blown criminal takeover. Unlike Chase, though, Diaz wasn’t driven by reckless fury. Cold, clinical and more plausible than any Arrow villain before him, he proved to be so perfect an adversary that just one season pitting Oliver against him wasn’t enough.

Arrow’s first three, fifth and sixth seasons rank amongst some of the finest seasons of television ever made, and even its more problematic fourth and seventh years only shot wide of the target by straying too far from the show’s fundamental strengths in misguided attempts to refresh it. As the success of Chase and Diaz demonstrates, the series works best when grounded in Christopher Nolan-esque grit, but with its focus on magic and the dark arts, Season 4 often felt like a more typically fantastic superhero runaround – even the previous year’s Ra’s al Ghul had a Batman Begins sort of plausibility to him, despite everyone saying “Raz” instead of “Ra’s”. Yet the fourth season still introduced one of the Arrowverse’s most charismatic and dangerous desperadoes in Neal McDonough’s (Captain America: The First Avenger) Damien Dahrk, and more importantly it rescued Matt Ryan’s Constantine from arcane obscurity by bringing his version of the character – and perhaps, by extension, his series too – into the show’s multiverse.

 

Uniquely, the more recent seventh season was typified by high highs and low lows - Oliver’s extended stint in prison turned out to be one of the show’s most interesting arcs to date, even bringing back Vinnie Jones’ Brick as one of Oliver’s collars-turned-tormentors, while Oliver’s subsequent release and integration into the SCPD had all the hallmarks of a show that had just jumped the shark, teasing the audience with an ultimately hollow inversion of the first season as Oliver and his team found themselves quite literally in the shoes of the SCPD while a new, ruthless Green Arrow pursued her own lethal vendettas.

 

Yet despite its impressive 5/7 strike rate, Arrow can’t lay claim to the Arrowverse’s best season of television – that honour belongs to The Flash Season 1. It’s incredibly rare for a series to hit the ground running, but if one was going to, then it’s quite appropriate that it would be the Scarlet Speedster’s. If the Arrowverse does have a perfect jumping-on point, then I’d suggest that it’s here – whilst awe-inspiringly good, Arrow is just too dark and too high-concept to pull in those simply craving some top-notch superhero action. The Flash instantly delivered on this front, its bright-white sheen showcasing a generally lighter, family-friendly tone that set it instantly apart from the show that sparked it.

That’s not to suggest that The Flash is a show without darkness - if anything, it’s a show about the triumph of the light over it. With his mother dead and his father rotting in jail, falsely convicted of her murder, it would be all too easy for Barry Allen to be portrayed as a frenzied neurotic mess. Instead, Barry is a character of relentless depth and moral fortitude; a grown-up Harry Potter whose greatest battle isn’t facing down his rogues gallery, but the darkness festering within himself. Cheery Glee alumnus Grant Gustin might not have seemed like an obvious choice for such a role, particularly as he doesn’t even come close to conjuring the physicality of the muscular blonde comic-book character, but after five years in red he has cemented himself as The Flash. You’ve got to feel sorry for Ezra Miller. We’ve seen Gustin convey anguish, rage, heartbreak and joy with equal conviction; his easy charisma carrying the show from strength to strength.

And as a series, The Flash has gradually got better and better after its incredible start. Nonetheless, its first season had a certain quality that later seasons haven’t been able to reproduce. Charged with intrigue, the season boldly explored Barry’s past and the Flash’s future, using his defining nemesis, Eobard Thawne, as a catalyst. I found it fascinating to see a story unfolding as much backwards and forwards, with the Flash’s long-time rival from the future returning to assume the identity of someone close to him – someone who could subtly influence his development for his own selfish ends. It didn’t even matter that the identity of this person was an open secret to anyone watching who’d ever held a Flash comic – clueing the viewer in as early on as the show did (in the first episode’s epilogue) only added to the tension, as we sat on the edge of our sits and waited for Harrison Wells to finally rise from his.

The writers deserve the credit for executing such a thrilling and complex tale so very captivatingly, but I don’t think The Flash’s first season would have been the rousing success that it was without the performance of Tom Cavanagh. The thin veil on his character’s contempt was always palpable, but just contained enough to be waved off as eccentricity. And when unmasked as the Reverse-Flash, that pent-up scorn was unleashed full force on the rest of Team: Flash. Even now, five years on, it remains one of the best-ever performances in the Arrowverse.

With the Reverse-Flash seemingly defeated in the first-season finale, I went into the show’s second season feeling a little disenchanted. The Flash hadn’t just lost a big bad that would be all but impossible to top, but an integral part of Team: Flash too. The show dealt with both my concerns in quick succession, though, turning to the multiverse to replace Dr Wells with his just-as-curmudgeonly (but not secretly evil…) Earth-2 doppelgänger, and introducing Teddy Sears (Masters of Sex) as Jay Garrick, Earth-2’s very own Flash – iconic helmet and all. It was a move both charming and clever, sucking viewers in with its heart-on-sleeve DC nostalgia before punching them in their faces with a shocking twist that, unlike the year before, hadn’t been signposted from episode one.

For its principal second-season antagonist, The Flash would turn to Hunter Zolomon / Zoom, a speedster from the comics who had chiefly served as the Wally West Flash’s own Reverse-Flash, right down to the Thawne-homage yellow suit and red eyes. Here, though, the black-clad Zoom looked more than Marvel’s Venom on fast-forward, and Tony Todd’s typically unsettling voice work really helped to sell the character’s outright horror. Whereas the show’s Reverse-Flash had been a chilling psychological terror, Zoom was outright terrifying, outmatching and overpowering the Flash at every turn, even breaking his back in a move redolent of Bane’s shocking destruction of Bruce Wayne in Batman’s Knightfall saga.

Just as important to the success of the second season was the introduction of the multiverse, which opened up The Flash and Arrow’s native Earth-1 to the DC Universe’s many parallel worlds and all the intriguing doppelgängers residing there. As well as opening the door onto the parallel Earths of Supergirl and the Ray, to my delight it permanently cemented show MVP Tom Cavanagh’s place in the series. Whenever the story of one Harrison Wells reached its natural end, he would simply appear as another. In addition to Harry Wells, Earth-2’s STAR Labs director and father of future Team: Flash speedster / Wally West love interest Jesse Quick, we’ve been treated to a full season of HR Wells, the scientifically ignorant co-founder of Earth 19’s STAR Labs – and wannabe writer – serendipitously stumbling on solutions to the team’s high-tech troubles. Hot on his heels came ladykilling sleuth Sherloque Wells from Earth-221, whose most peculiar quirk wasn’t his shameless Holmes rip-off gimmick, but having been married to five different iterations of the same woman seven times. And thanks to the dimension-spanning Council of Wells, Harry and the Harrisons are likely to continue to be a feature of The Flash for many years to come.

The show’s third season has been its most ambitious to date, but probably also its most troubled. Oddly, its difficulties didn’t arise from its writing or the performances - rather, they came from an audience who found themselves watching a nihilistic epic in place of their customary exciting escapades. As Arrow did in its fourth season, The Flash had made the mistake of straying too far from the traits that make it unique. The Flash’s strongest quality throughout its run has been its lighter touch, and particularly its emphasis on family - it casualises comic-book television in the same way that Star Trek: The Next Generation did science fiction. The STAR Labs team have lives beyond their heroics, and it’s to the show’s great benefit that it has focused as much on these lives and the people in them as it has the meta-human heroics driving its narratives. In the third season, though, the show’s family was damn near torn apart. Every dramatic beat was delivered full force - Candice Patton’s performance was especially affecting as imperilled Iris – but those beats hurt.

 

Even Caitlyn Snow’s transformation into Killer Frost, which had been teased for such a long time, and to a certain extent was to be expected, proved so harrowing that I found myself wishing she’d never changed at all. The loss of Danielle Panabaker’s quiet and sweet presence in STAR Labs was then compounded by Tom Felton’s Julian Albert joining the team. The Harry Potter star had been so thoroughly unlikeable at the start of the year – so Reverse-Caitlyn – that it made his journey to valour all the more affecting, and so to see him then fall for a girl whose heart was literally and figuratively turning to ice was just too much to take, especially when taken against the backdrop of everything that Barry and Iris were facing with Savitar.

The third season also faced a more fundamental challenge in that it had to deliver its version of Flashpoint – one of the 21st century’s most ambitious and acclaimed storylines, if not its most noteworthy comic book outright – without unravelling the entire Arrowverse. The second-season finale had lent great sincerity to why Barry would suddenly and recklessly try to rewrite history, something that I never got from the comic, but the opening episodes of Season 3 didn’t capitalise on the promise of the premise anywhere near as successfully as Geoff Johns’ groundbreaking limited series did. In print, Flashpoint saw the world spectacularly torn apart by superheroes at war –  every corner of the DC Universe was ablaze – and even following the resetting of the timeline, the shape of the DC Universe remained altered, albeit less obviously, enabling the company to launch into its New 52 era free from much of the post-Crisis era’s (by then sprawling) continuity. Sadly, on screen, The Flash limited itself to exploring how its principal characters’ lives had been changed rather than present the Arrowverse-wide crossover carnage required to match the scale of the comic. Fair dues, it was certainly fun to see Carlos Valdes rocking a designer suit as a self-made millionaire version of Cisco, and there’s no denying how thrilling it was to see Matt Letscher’s Reverse-Flash return for the character’s flagship arc, however curtailed it might have been, but the feeling lingering after “Flashpoint” / “Paradox” was nonetheless one of an opportunity missed.

Fortunately Season 4 swiftly saw the series return to its former tone in a season-long tale that pit Team: Flash against renowned Flash villain Clifford DeVoe - the Thinker. After three years spent watching evil speedsters dominate proceedings, the thought of pitting the Flash against the most cerebral opponent imaginable was an enticing one. Neil Sandilands brought something very different to the table as DeVoe – quite literally slower, and more measured, than previous big bads, the season’s multifaceted tale unfolded like a great game of chess.

It says everything about the show’s fourth season that the brooding Julian Albert found himself replaced by Hartley Sawyer’s Ralph Dibny / Elongated Man – the closest The Flash ever gets to outright comic relief. Particularly with Cisco becoming a more serious character since becoming Vibe, the show really needed another loveable character to bring back a much-needed touch of levity. Ralph’s comedy might be more slapstick than Cisco’s endless barrage of mordant quips and nerdy references, but just like the STAR Labs whiz kid, Ralph also has the capacity to break your heart when you least expect it.

 

The Flash’s recent fifth season, much like Arrow’s sixth, was one that looked to break the wheel. Rather than build towards a showdown with a single big bad, the team would find themselves facing an opponent that, for the first time, would be bigger than just one person. Instead of turning directly to the comics for a villain, the showrunners took the concept of Cicada and imposed it onto a whole family while at the same time using Cicada’s comic-book alter ego as a red herring. American Pie veteran Chris Klein’s Orlin Dwyer would spend half a year hunting meta-humans with his power-dampening dagger before his time travelling niece, Sarah Carter’s Grace Gibbons, travelled back in time to prevent his repentance and assume his deadly mantle. But even these two seemingly unstoppable threats would turn out to be mere pieces in a larger game – one devised by The Flash’s first and finest villain, Eobard Thawne, and built upon the latent powers of Barry and Iris’s as-yet-unborn daughter, Nora West-Allen / XS.

Evoking the spirit of the first season in more ways than one, The Flash’s fifth year did a terrific job of balancing the show’s upbeat thrills with consequence and heartbreak. Jessica Parker Kennedy carried the season as much on her shoulders as Gustin and Patton did theirs, particularly in the absence of Jesse L Martin’s Joe West who, until his disappearance towards the start of the season, had always served as the walking, talking heart and conscience of the show. Nora was hard not to love, yet incredibly hard to trust, particularly the more that we learned about the future that she hails from. Her arrival also confirmed a troubling truth that had hung over the show since its very first episode: Barry Allen is a man on borrowed time. His disappearance in the looming crisis isn’t some malleable future that could be averted; she has lived it. That’s so not schway.

Almost every time that I watch an episode of The Flash, by the time that it’s finished I’m convinced that it is, hands-down, the franchise’s greatest show. But then I’ll watch an Arrow, and wonder how I could have even conceived that any of the others could match it. Often though, I’ll put on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and end up with the unshakeable view that the Arrowverse’s best show is its wackiest.

This probably shouldn’t be as surprising as it is, as whilst the Arrowverse’s other shows were all inspired by long-running comic books, Legends of Tomorrow was built around characters from the franchise that, in most cases, had already been well-developed and were already clear fan favourites.  Better still, the flexibility of the show’s format has allowed these characters to develop well beyond their boundaries  - or in Mick Rory’s case, amusingly not – and explore inventive storylines that can literally take our misfits anywhere, anywhen.

 

Loosely inspired by the little-known 1990 Time Masters limited series, Legends would see popular Doctor Who companion Arthur Darvill perfectly cast as the inscrutable Rip Hunter on his mission back through time to prevent the rise to power of the immortal Vandal Savage in the twenty-second century. The show would quickly become far more than the sum of its changeable parts, though, as Rip’s rag-tag group of failed heroes and convicts that he pulled out of 2016 to crew his timeship, the Waverider, soon eclipsed him. Since the fall of Vandal Savage and the advent of the Time Bureau, Captain Sara Lance has led her crew of Legends into battle alongside the original Justice Society of America against the Reverse-Flash and his Legion of Doom, before turning their focus to the anachronisms that they inadvertently created and the demons and magical creatures unleashed as a result. 

Deliberately designed to be significantly showier than its Arrowverse counterparts, Legends exudes colour and expense throughout. Whilst the other shows generally limit themselves to familiar ground, the Waverider takes the Legends somewhere new almost every week. From Salvation in 1871 by the side of Jonah Hex to the trailer of John Noble on the set of The Lord of the Rings, Legends never fails to dazzle with its audacious ambition and craziness. Very few shows could survive, let alone thrive, after making one of its principal villains a twisted parody of a Disney icon, sing-alongs and all. Legends, though, executes it effortlessly. It even gets away with putting Constantine in shorts for a summer-camp jaunt.

The series’ relentless sense of fun makes it more than just an Arrowverse sensation –  few TV programmes out there at the moment are as incessantly enjoyable. Whilst perfectly capable of conjuring both fears and tears when called for, Legends often teeters on the brink of outright comedy – a trait that often serves to lull the viewer into a false sense of security, as so effectively demonstrated by the recently-concluded fourth season. Constantine’s storyline with Desmond / Neron in New Orleans, for example, was both horrific and affecting – yet within the same episode, Constantine’s comrades were scrambling around the Waverider trying to catch an enchanted muppet. It speaks volumes about the show that, in a wonderful Ghostbusters homage, the big bad of its third season ultimately turned out to be a giant cuddly toy – and it worked.

 

In its first four years Legends’ regularly refreshing roster has included characters as notable as Keiynan Lonsdale’s Wally West / Kid Flash; Wenworth Miller’s definitive Leonard Snart / Captain Cold; Victor Garber’s Professor Stein and Franz Drameh’s Jax (together Firestorm), but the core of the show has always been the increasingly close-knit group of characters proudly defined by their prior inconsequence in the larger DC Universe. Chief amongst them is the Waverider’s long-serving captain, Sara Lance, also known as the White Canary. Probably my favourite character in the Arrowverse, everything about Sara is striking. She’s survived shipwrecks, the League of Assassins - even death itself. Despite being arguably the toughest person in the many manifold multiverse, she’s constantly cracking wise, using dry humour to motivate her team as often as she does example. And, somehow, Caty Lotz makes it all real with a performance that, for all the character’s fantastic traits, is incredibly human.

Sara also deserves more credit than she gets for breaking down barriers – it’s incredibly frustrating to hear people excitedly mumbling about the arrival of “TV’s first lesbian superhero” in Kate Kane / Batwoman when they’ve already got one who’s in a serious same-sex relationship, has been for some time and is also captaining a ship at the head of a successful series. Supergirl might be the Arrowverse’s go-to show for discussing diversity and inclusivity, but on board the Waverider such things are taken as read. They don’t talk about it - they just live it.

Another firm favourite is Dominic Purcell’s Mick Rory, who continues to steal the show with his meat-headed obstinacy whenever he gets the chance. The long-term accomplice of Captain Cold and one of The Flash’s original rogues, “Heatwave” started out as the personification of the silent tough guy, with only his scars and pyromania setting him apart from the other career criminals periodically populating Blackgate Penitentiary. Legends, to its credit, doesn’t really look to soften or redeem the hardened villain, instead walking the tightrope between hinting at what lurks beneath the surface of the character without every really letting us see much more than the tip of the iceberg. Rather than reform, Mick begrudgingly and silently forms unspoken bonds with his fellow Legends, but rarely does he let these get in the way of doing whatever he wants to do –  which, even after four seasons, is still usually just a bit of modest larceny, though recently he has taken to bashing out surprisingly lucrative pornographic fiction on his typewriter. And, Mick being Mick, he’s ashamed of neither.

The third of the series’ mainstays is a character just as familiar to Arrow viewers as Laurel’s long-lost sister. Best known for playing Superman in 2006’s ill-fated homage sequel, Superman Returns, Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer / Atom has enjoyed far more success in Legends than his star-crossed Man of Steel ever did. A brilliant scientist at the head of a flourishing technological empire and creator of the Atom shrinking suit, Ray was perfectly placed to become the world’s next big hero as the Atom –  but, somehow, he didn’t. Embodying the spirit of the show in microcosm, Ray’s passion and inveterate failure make him the definitive Legend – one that’s it’s impossible not to love.

 

Even Ray, though, doesn’t look like that much of a loser when he’s stood beside John Constantine, the most recent addition to the show’s complement of regular characters, if not its cast (a notable quirk of the Arrowverse is its penchant for writing out characters, only to bring back the actors who played them in a different guise). In all the incarnations that I’m familiar with, Constantine’s life is defined by tragic failure; his continuing existence feels like little more than a penance for grievous errors made in youthful arrogance. It’s quite ironic, then, that Matt Ryan’s portrayal of the character has become so all-pervadingly successful that it is still continuing to expand ever outward in the DC Universe. Following the cancellation of Daniel Cerone and David S Goyer’s NBC series after just thirteen episodes, popular demand saw Ryan reprise the role in a Red Dwarf: Back to Earth-style stop-motion, metafictional quest to find Constantine’s showrunners, before being called up for a guest stint on Arrow that would lead into his third season introduction on Legends. Meanwhile, Ryan has voiced a similar version of the character – same performance, slightly altered history - for the straight-to-video animated movie Justice League Dark and its webisodic sequel, Constantine: City of Demons, and Ryan even threw his name in the hat for the lavish DC Universe series, Swamp Thing, though its recent cancellation has effectively put paid to that, more’s the pity.

I think the reason that Ryan’s Constantine has proved so popular is its close ties to the source material. Not only does the Welshman look exactly like the character in the old Hellblazer comics, but he behaves exactly like him too – nothing has been tempered for TV (the language in City of Demons is especially colourful, though the word “wanker” is thrown around a lot even on the Waverider). Little touches like always having a packet of fags tucked into his rolled-up sleeve really sell the character, especially today when on-screen cigs are few and far between. Ryan’s Constantine is every bit the chain-smoking, bad-tempered bisexual English warlock that fans want to see; a character that’s so subversive and magical you can really believe that his creator, Alan Moore, does bump into him from time to time.

 

Still the most recent addition to the Arrowverse in terms of its core shows is Supergirl, which formally entered the shared continuity in March 2016, a good six months before it network-hopped from CBS to the CW, when the Flash found himself on Earth-38 for an inaugural crossover with his soon-to-be super friend. Developed by Ali Adler; Greg Berlanti; and Andrew Kreisberg, Supergirl would finally do justice to a character that has the potential to be even more interesting than her famous cousin.

Supergirl’s path to becoming the critical darling of the Arrowverse would be built as much upon its appetite for challenging contemporary themes as it would be its phenomenal performances and careful characterisation. What started out as an action-packed, popcorn superhero show driven by two strong women and two black men has since become as much of a beacon in the real world as its lead character is within the fiction. Though I would disagree with those who say that the show puts gender and racial optics ahead of telling a good story, it’s certainly true that the vast majority of its arcs, particularly in later seasons, tackle social injustices head-on.

The casting of Melissa Benoist as Kara / Supergirl was a masterstroke. Although she clearly projects beauty and strength, Benoist still possesses the girl-next-door vibe necessary to endear her character to viewers. Super-powered characters can be difficult to sympathise with, and Kara sits just about as high as you can get on the super-powered scale, but there is enough vulnerability to Kara – enough humanity – to make this Kryptonian idol not merely relatable but incredibly compelling.

 

One of the main reasons that I find Supergirl more fascinating than Superman is her background. There’s something too Christ-like about Superman; an infant from the heavens sent to save us all. His story is too clean, too perfect – even too easy. On paper, he’s the last survivor of a dead planet, but ultimately it’s a planet that he never knew. Superman’s real parents are the Kents. His real home is Earth. Kara, on the other hand, was already thirteen years old when Krypton was destroyed, taking her beloved parents and everyone else that she knew with it. All she had to cling onto was her mission to watch over her infant cousin, but even this went awry when she found herself lost for decades in the timeless Phantom Zone. By the time she reached Earth, her young charge had grown up to become Superman, leaving her alone and without purpose on an utterly alien world. Nevertheless, she persisted, and when her adoptive sister’s life was in danger, she finally stepped up and became the Girl of Steel.

Despite being such a bright and visually arresting show, Supergirl’s finest episodes haven’t been focused on spectacle. Kara’s internal struggles are the real source of drama, which she never fails to tackle with anything other than courage and determination. Kara was never more compelling than in the show’s third season, when she struggled to balance keeping National City safe with all the despair and loneliness pent up inside her, or in the final episodes of the recent fourth as she anguished over revealing her secret to her best friend, Lena Luthor. Even when Kara makes the wrong choice, as I’m convinced that she did with Lena, it’s for the right reasons – something that I can’t say of any other hero in the Arrowverse.

To the show’s credit, it spends almost as much time with Kara’s adopted sister as it does its eponymous heroine. This is key to its success as Alex Danvers embodies the same admirable qualities as her super-sis, but in a very different package that’s sure to be appealing to those who don’t identify with Kara’s more archetypal superheroine. An agent of the Department of Extra-Normal Operations (“DEO”), Alex is highly skilled and highly professional. Much more boundaried than her warm and approachable sibling, she’s nonetheless every bit as resilient and resolute – and every bit as vulnerable when it comes to matters of the heart. At times, it’s felt as if Chyler Leigh has been playing two separate characters on the show – Agent Danvers and Alex. It’s a duality that many of us share, but we don’t see reflected in television often enough. Supergirl presents us with the Alex that the world sees - the all-conquering, tough-as-hell DEO agent – beside a perfectly played portrait of a woman coming to terms with her sexuality.

Supergirl being Supergirl, though, it’s not content to stroll through well-trodden ground. Whilst Alex’s initial coming out is dealt with convincingly and comprehensively, in 2017 it felt a little passé - a feeling uncomfortably exacerbated by the bigotry demonstrated by Alex’s fiancée’s father. I’d thought better of Tony off 24.  However, as her journey since has shown, back then the show was just laying the foundations of the real struggle to come - Alex’s longing for a child, its destructive effect on her relationship, and her subsequent dogged pursuit of adoption alone. I’ve not seen such issues tackled in the world of superheroes before, be it on the screen or on the page.

Another character that the show handles magnificently is J’onn J'onzz, who over the past four years has become so synonymous with British actor David Harewood that I now struggle to separate the two. Whereas both Kara and Alex’s stories are quite transparent, even reasonably straightforward in terms of their nuts and bolts, J’onn’s is incredibly convoluted and was for a long time shrouded in mystery. Whether this is down to a post-pilot rethink or a carefully-laid plan broken in the writers’ room makes no difference; the result is awesome. Introduced as Hank Henshaw (a name that will be familiar to readers of Superman’s Reign of the Supermen arc), the first season would gradually expose the character’s Martian origin and beneficence, culminating in a comic-book-accurate J’onn J'onzz triumphantly taking to the skies alongside Kara whenever the show’s budget could accommodate it. Just as significantly, though, J’onn would also serve as a surrogate father to both Kara and Alex, just as they would fill the gaping hole left by his daughters when Mars was destroyed.

As the series has progressed, it has also delved deep into DC’s Martian lore, introducing J’onn’s father as well as M’gann / Miss Martian and, inevitably, the White Martian menace. Not only has this been handled with great care and reverence, but it has also enriched the show’s sensibilities, exploring unexpected subject matter like living and dying well with dementia – as opposed to suffering from it – and, a little more obviously, racial intolerance, in a storyline that would ultimately see the character leave the DEO behind to finally become the Martian Manhunter of legend.

Perhaps even more surprising than a secret Martian, though, has been Mehcad Brooks’ James Olsen. With Marc McClure’s Jimmy from Superman movies burned into the collective consciousness of the public, Brooks’ smooth-talking tough guy is a real shock to the system – but a welcome one. I had expected Supergirl’s Jimmy to be characterised broadly in line with Aaron Ashmore’s memorable Smallville double-header, but this “James” is much more dynamic – in fact, he’s Superman’s all-conquering best bro. Over the course of four seasons, James has graduated from photography to head of a media conglomerate, taken to the streets as the vigilante Guardian, fallen in love with a bourgeoning villainess and even become a fully-fledged superman himself. That’s quite a CV for a character previously defined by bow ties, red hair and crippling naivety.

The show’s four central characters are supported by a number of fantastic regulars, including Kara’s long-serving BFF (and son of the Toy Man), Winn Schott, played by the ever-amusing Jeremy Jordan; Chris Wood’s Mon-El and his Legion of Superheroes, Jesse Rath’s delightful Brainy chief amongst them; Kara’s mean mentor and clandestine champion, Calista Flockhart‘s dominant Cat Grant; and, most recently, Nicole Maines’ Nia Nal / Dreamer. Only an Arrowverse show could use a transgender woman as a convincing allegory for a fictional minority.

Where Supergirl has suffered, though, is in its big bads, which until recently didn’t land with the same impact as those on the other Arrowverse shows. This last season has been the exception, however, delivering an abundance of riches all at once. With Earth 38’s xenophobia mounting, the show created a credible human foil for our heroes in the form of Sam Witwer’s (Star Wars, Smallville) Benjamin Lockwood. The man behind Darth Maul and Doomsday delivered another brilliantly tortured performance – one that didn’t just see his character spout the all-too-familiar rabble-rousing rhetoric, but looked behind it too, dissecting the reasons that inspired this once decent man to give into hate. Almost as notable was his opposite number, Manchester Black, who served as disturbing reflection of what our heroes could become in response to Lockwood. Whilst much more sympathetic than the Elite leader of Superman: What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?, David Ajala’s grieving Mancunian was the clear highlight of the fourth season’s first half.

 

I was initially troubled by Supergirl’s borrowing of Lex Luthor to serve as the season’s chief antagonist, though, particularly as it curtailed Manchester’s stint on the show. The show has borrowed heavily from Superman’s roster of supervillains throughout its run, but Luthor is in a league of his own, and I thought that the show was above nabbing one of DC’s greatest threats when it could capably develop its own. Of course, I was wrong –  Jon Cryer’s Lex makes for a great, game-changing adversary, and, better still, only Lex could trigger the transformation of  Lena Luthor from Kara’s best friend to Supergirl’s soon-to-be nemesis. Lex headlining Season 4 wasn’t Supergirl selling out, it was Supergirl setting up.

 

One of my favourite through-lines in the show has been the awkward relationship between Kara and Lena. In a very positive way, it has mirrored the friendship of Tom Welling’s Clark and Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex in Smallville (right down to the Luthor having a villainous parent of the same gender whispering in their ear), and we all know that it’s heading in the same direction. Here, though, there’s perhaps an added element of tragedy to the proceedings as Lena has consistently confounded the audience by doing the right thing despite her upbringing, only to be kept in the dark by everyone that she cares about as her reward. The writing of the character has been exceptional, but Katie McGrath (Merlin) has knocked it out of the park with her performances, and I can’t wait to see what she does in the fifth season.

 

It’s ironic that DC deliberately separated the continuity of their films and television series to allow “everyone to make the best possible product, to tell the best story, to do the best world”, and in so doing inadvertently giving rise to the greatest shared superhero continuity in television history – once principally built around the property’s fringe characters, mistakes and misfits. Watching these shows collide in their annual crossover every autumn is the television highlight of my year. The humble novelty of “Flash vs Arrow” in 2014 paved the way for the Legends of Tomorrow setup story, “Legends of Today” / “Legends of Yesterday” in 2015, which itself proved popular enough to warrant bringing in reinforcements from Earth-38 to save Earth-1 from the Dominator invasion over three memorable nights a year later. It wasn’t until 2017, though, that the CW would fully combine all four of its assets to present Crisis on Earth-X, a fully-fledged four-part story told across all four shows and featuring all four show’s regulars, and more besides. Earth-X would introduce the Ray, who would be given his own spin-off web series, and mark the return of both Earth-38’s Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and Wentworth Miller’s Leonard Snart – as well as the heartbreaking exit of one long-serving hero and the marital union of four more. It isn’t hype when the CW bill these crossovers as “events”.

 

Last year’s crossover was perhaps the most interesting though, even if it did exclude my beloved Legends (you can’t have Mick Rory referring to Supergirl, one of the most powerful beings in any universe, as “Skirt” often enough for me). Charged with the introduction of Gotham City and Batwoman into the Arrowverse, as well as laying the groundwork for this year’s upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths, the three-part Elseworlds struck a pleasing balance between the playful hijinx of previous years’ events and the crushing weight of the cataclysm to come. I could have cried when the camera cut to Earth-38’s Kent farm – the same farm featured for a decade in Smallville – with “Save Me”, Remy Zero’s Smallville theme, playing in the background. I couldn’t stop laughing when Oliver launched into his tirade about Batman being a Green Arrow rip-off, defending himself as the “original vigilante”. The world of Batwoman is one that I can’t wait to explore – Bruce Wayne has long since left Gotham for reasons as yet unknown, leaving his cousin Kate Kane to manage both Wayne Enterprises and his Bat legacy. The perfect complement to Supergirl, Batwoman promises to be just as progressive and inspiring as its sister series, but in a much murkier environment and with a much more grounded protagonist. The most alluring takeaways from Elseworlds, though, were its introduction of the Monitor, Mar Novu, and the terrible deal that Oliver struck with him – a debt that he came to collect on in the series-finale like Arrow season finale, “You Have Saved This City”.

Crisis on Infinite Earths has been teased since the first episode of The Flash, and whilst I don’t expect the small-screen Crisis to adhere to the plot of Marv Wolfman’s iconic, multiverse-streamlining comic, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that in print both the Flash and Supergirl both lose their lives. Whilst the Arrowverse is explicitly setting up a very different outcome, there can be no certainties other than that the first phase of the Arrowverse is hurtling towards an event that will alter the shape of it forever. As was the case with the comics after the first Crisis, things will never be the same again. If I were you, I’d jump aboard right now…