When it comes to strategically planning and capturing audience’s attention, Marvel has always been on the forefront; be it movies, comics or even TV series. This could be observed with the the Phase One stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) wherein Marvel decided to first spin the story around each of the Avengers team members and later incorporate them in the final edition of the phase -Avengers Assemble. This kind of planning was further extended to their television series that has been introduced in the recent years.
Seeing the positive response that Marvel was garnering with building a MCU in not just movies but also on the television front, its competitor, DC also thought of adopting the same game plan by building its own DC Extended Universe (DCEU). And Man of Steel became the first film of the DCEU with its upcoming movie, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice adding to the plot that will build up for its other movies, Wonder Woman and Justice League.
Whereas on the small screen front, Arrow, Gotham, The Flash, iZombie, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Lucifer are being currently aired. Arrow, The Flash, iZombie and Legends of Tomorrow is being telecasted on The CW whereas Supergirl is being shown its sister channel, CBS. Fox took over the Gotham and Lucifer series. Recently, we observed many crossovers taking place in these series.
As The CW broadcasts four titles out of the seven DC titles, it had the opportunity to explore the DC universe and it tapped into its resources to get the best out of it. Arrow being on air since 2012, already had a huge fan base and with the introduction and the positive response generated by the initial episodes of The Flash (2014), The CW decided to use these two DC properties to generate more viewership and started with the ‘Arrowverse’ episodes wherein the characters come together and share universes.
This brilliant idea came to the The CW president Mark Pedowitz who announced the intention to do a Flash/Arrow crossover every season, which would further include an animated web-series, Vixen, featuring the DC heroine of the same name and set in the universe of Arrow and The Flash, debuting on CW Seed in late 2015. The character hasn’t yet appeared in the Arrowverse episodes but is expected to make a live-action appearance which will be played by Megalyn Echikunwoke (the voice os Vixen on The CW Seed) on Arrow’s fifteenth episode that’s scheduled to air on the CW on 24 February.
In the Arrowverse series, the heroes are fighting baddies and helping each other to keep safe their home city which is The Flash’s Central City and Arrow’s Starling City. The newly launched spin off show, Legends of Tomorrow also made its debut on The CW whose characters Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Vandal Savage were seen in the Arrowverse episodes as they also share the same fictional universe as them. Though the show is directly tied into the Arrowverse, its time-traveling nature will allow it some additional flexibility.
As DC’s universe is slowly collaborating, it’s becoming more dynamic but till date it was limited to The CW series who were sharing the universe. However, DC fans received news that was music to their ears – the much awaited crossover of The CW’s The Flash and CBS’s Supergirl. The Flash will finally be heading to National City.
Supergirl was earlier passed on by the CW, but got picked up by CBS in an effort to get them into the superhero game, and ratings have been strong so far. When CBS president Nina Tassler was earlier asked about the possibility of a crossover, she was not interested in it as she saw Supergirl as a standalone show and Pedowitz was not getting involved.
When asked Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl’s director and executive producer, Greg Berlanti pinned his thoughts on the crossover as he had earlier said, “The network has said publicly at this point they’re going to keep her to themselves. I always approach the shows as a fan first, so I would love to see (a crossover). I think in success, all things are possible. But there’s a lot that would have to happen before everybody might say yes to that.”
This got DCEU followers’ hopes high that there might be possibility of their favourite comic superheroes coming together. And few days back, the news of crossover for The Flash and Supergirl got a confirmation and fans were delighted as ever.
“We are so incredibly excited to announce something that we have dreamed of happening since we starting making Supergirl —The Flash and Supergirl are teaming up!” said Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg. “We want to thank Grant Gustin for making the time to come visit (on top of his already immense workload) and all of the folks at CBS, The CW, Warner Bros., and DC for working this out. And finally thanks to the fans and journalists who have kept asking for this to happen. It is our pleasure and hope to create an episode worthy of everyone’s enthusiasm and support.”
The details of the crossover have been kept under wraps for now, building up the curiousness of the viewers. The Emerald Archer will be missing out on this outing and only the Scarlet Speedster will be heading to CBS and whether the Kryptonian superhero’s cousin will also head to The CW is also not disclosed.
So why is this crossover so important?
For the Supergirl series, this will be a major event since the ratings for the show are dropping steadily and there is a question mark on its second season. The crossovers have been rating boosters for the channels with the Arrowverse crossovers, seeing ratings go up tremendously and with The Flash coming to CBS, we can safely bet that Supergirl’s rating will also take an upward trend.
As for the other characters, if Barry Allen can make his way to National City, that means so can Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) in the future. Right now, the question is how will Flash enter an altogether new universe? The universe which he isn’t aware of (till date).
This is possible in the current season of The Flash as we can observe 52 breaches have been opened, connecting different parallel Earths. So as there’s Earth Two where Flash’s enemy Zoom resides, there’s a high possibility that through one of these breaches, Flash/Supergirl might discover one another.
If not this theory, then whichever theory that gets these two heroes together and Berlanti plans to use, it can open up the possibility of other DCEU’s characters to also be a part of the future crossovers. As Legends of Tomorrow also have meta-human characters, they might as well get incorporated in these superhero crossovers whereas though Arrow doesn’t have meta-human powers, he shares the same universe as Flash, so we can expect him to also join in the force.
As for Gotham and Lucifer, there are low probabilities of these two series joining the crossover due to the fact that they both are aired on an altogether different channel – Fox , have different producers and directors and have a complete different story and timeline.
For now, reserve the date 28 March as we will get to witness the much awaited crossover taking place on CBS’s Supergirl.
