[This story contains spoilers for the series finale of Superman & Lois.]
The sequence finale of Superman & Lois aired Monday evening on The CW. It marked not simply the tip of the present’s four-season run, but in addition a whole programming philosophy on the community.
Superman & Lois was the final sequence primarily based on DC Comics characters to air on the community. It was additionally the final connection to The CW’s Arrowverse (even when it wasn’t technically a part of the primary continuity of that franchise), which outlined the 2010s for the community and have become one of many extra profitable multi-show franchises in TV historical past.
The ending of Superman & Lois, which — spoiler alert — flashes ahead a number of many years to indicate the tip of its title characters’ (Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch) lives, precludes any continuation of the present elsewhere — as do new regimes at each The CW and DC mother or father Warner Bros. Discovery, which each have very completely different approaches than they did throughout the Arrowverse’s heyday within the mid- and late 2010s.
The CW, as THR has lined extensively, is generally out of the homegrown scripted enterprise: All American — which like almost all of The CW’s DC exhibits comes from Greg Berlanti’s Warner Bros. TV-based firm — is now the one scripted sequence left from the community’s pre-Nexstar days. Most of the community’s schedule is now given over to unscripted and sports activities programming, and what scripted exhibits The CW does air are co-productions on sequence primarily based exterior the United States, with budgets which might be a fraction of even the comparatively cheap ones of the previous.
DC — formally, DC Studios — in the meantime, is taking its TV initiatives to WBD siblings HBO and Max, with larger budgets, shorter seasons and really completely different tones than the CW franchise: The Penguin was primarily a mob story, and the upcoming Lanterns is claimed to have a True Detective-like vibe, whereas Peacemaker (which predates the DC Studios reorganization however is folded into the primary timeline) may be very a lot its personal, TV-MA (after which some) factor.
With Marvel additionally siloing all its TV properties on Disney+, it’s not a stretch in any respect to say that there gained’t be one other sprawling comic-book franchise on community TV once more. The CW’s DC period left an enormous imprint on the community; listed below are a few of the numbers behind the exhibits.
10: The variety of sequence primarily based on DC characters that aired on The CW, starting with Arrow in October 2012. All of them got here from Warner Bros. TV and what was then referred to as DC Entertainment, and 9 — Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights — have been government produced by Berlanti by way of his Berlanti Productions. The tenth is 2022’s Naomi, co-created by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship and produced by DuVernay’s Array Filmworks together with DC and WB.
46: The mixed quantity seasons of all 10 sequence. The Flash (9 seasons) and Arrow (eight) had the longest runs.
817, 797: The mixed episode complete from all 10 exhibits, and those who ran on The CW; Supergirl‘s first season, which spanned 20 episodes, aired on CBS. The 817 episodes prime all however three multishow franchises since 1990 — solely Law & Order (1,363 episodes as of publication time), JAG/NCIS (1,249) and CSI (838) have extra. NBC’s Chicago franchise might want to air 131 extra episodes — about six 22-episode seasons’ price of exhibits — to go the DC complete.
699: Number of episodes among the many six core Arrowverse sequence (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning and Batwoman). Hoechlin and Tulloch appeared in a number of episodes of these sequence as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane throughout crossovers (extra on that under), however Superman & Lois was set in a special a part of the DC multiverse.
6: Multi-series crossover occasions, the most important of which was primarily based on DC’s seminal “Crisis on Infinite Earths” comedian sequence and spanned 5 exhibits. The formidable occasion, which aired in December 2019 and January 2020, resulted in season-high viewership for Arrow, The Flash, Legends and Supergirl and the second-largest viewers for Batwoman, behind solely its sequence premiere. Several different crossovers have been confined to a single present, together with two within the latter seasons of The Flash when characters from ended sequence reappeared to assist Barry Allen (Grant Gustin).
12, 53: Years and days that The CW had a DC sequence on its roster, courting from the premiere of Arrow on Oct. 10, 2012, to the ending of Superman & Lois on Dec. 2.
