It’s time to suit up! The highly anticipated Fall Television Season may have only just gotten itself into gear with the Season 2 launch of Batwoman now starring Javicia Leslie who has stepped into the cape and cowl as Gotham City’s latest caped wonder, and Black Lightning starring Cress Williams returning for Season 4 and marking the series’ final run! It’s an exciting leap from a tall building and is certainly satisfying for those many of us battling the quarantine blues.
We may be deep into winter (the usual “half-way” mark for many of The CW hits) and fans are eagerly anticipating the arrival of The CW’s newest original series Superman & Lois the latest spin-off addition to the DCTV primetime universe, fans can also rejoice in the revelation that even as The Flash is picking up momentum for its Season 7 premiere (after Season 6 production had been cut short due to COVID), the primetime favorite has been already renewed for another season ahead of its March 2 return!
The CW Network’s Chairman and CEO, Mark Pedowitz has expressed his excitement over the primetime line-up in the 2020-2021 offers. He remains properly optimistic that as the shows move further along into production, the series that everyone is looking forward to will be even stronger and ready to wow audiences in the next Television Season heading into 2021-2022. This decision to green-light the return of The Flash, along with Batwoman and the team-show DC’s Legends of Tomorrow going for a Season 7, as Season 6 is ready to roll, will give the show-runners a proper opportunity to staff the productions as well as hammer out story arcs going out of their current seasons and into the next.
With both Black Lightning and Supergirl ending their runs, and Stargirl returning for Season 2 on The CW with a proper full-season roll-out, depending on the success of Superman & Lois how likely is it that Greg Berlanti might add another feather in his cap and introduce another primetime hero in the near future? Anything is possible in this open field especially with subscriber platforms including HBOMax which is now the home of the former DC Universe Original Series Titans, Doom Patrol, and will soon add The Green Lantern Corps to its catalog.
Swamp Thing premiered on The CW in the fall, to great critical success sparking rumors that the network might revive the show (perhaps as a limited-series run).
As for the much-lauded crossover spectaculars that have been the benchmark of The CW DCTV season, due to the pandemic and the safety restrictions that come with keeping the production crew and cast healthy, the crossover has been canceled for 2020-2021. Don’t expect the heroes to team-up anytime soon. Although understandable, it is going to be sharply disappointing that Batwoman won’t be going toe-to-toe with Supergirl to prove they’re the World’s Finest pair, or that Black Lightning won’t be leaguing up with The Flash, but fans will have a Painkiller spin-off to look forward to which may (or might not) include a pair of electrifying siblings to the cast.
Given the two-hour premiere treatment that Superman & Lois are getting on February 23, plenty is riding on the success of this revisiting of the Man of Steel mythology to primetime. Starring Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch, as the titular characters (and both reprising their roles first introduced in Supergirl) and now part of the Post-Crisis (on Infinite Earths) “Prime-Earth” continuity, the series is also from Greg Berlanti and Todd Helbing (The Flash) and sees the Man of Tomorrow and his dutiful wife dealing with very real and pertinent problems of today, all the while raising a pair of sons. In the series premiere, the Kents return to Smallville…
Here is the trailer for Superman & Lois premiering on The CW in February:
