Supergirl Moves To CW: Time For A TV Justice League?

Nerds can breathe easy tonight. After a rocky few weeks in limbo, Supergirl has finally been renewed. For a while, a steady dip in ratings saw the show with one foot in cancellation, its viewership not quite matching up to its expensive production costs. Its renewal comes with a twist though: Supergirl season two will happen on The CW.

If you live outside the United States, what I just said probably makes as much sense as Einstein’s blackboard. “What’s a CW?” I hear you say, “and why is Supergirl now sitting on one?”. Both good questions. The CW is a television network – generally considered America’s fifth biggest behind ABC, FOX, NBC and CBS. For reasons that are too boring to go into now, The CW is partly owned by CBS, like its trendier but less successful brother.

So what does it mean if Supergirl jumps from CBS to The CW? First of all production costs will be lower. The CW caters to a more niche audience, meaning it has less money to throw frivolously at huge action sequences. The upshot though, is that this niche audience is more genre savvy, and for the last few years The CW has been bashing out some of the best genre shows on television.

What am I talking about? Shows like The 100 and iZombie have turned The CW into the channel you turn to when you’re looking for high concept television made well. Let’s not forget the obvious though. The CW is also home to the Arrowverse.

Crossover Heaven

Arrow and The Flash are The CW’s two biggest shows. No question. In the era of the superhero blockbuster that’s probably not a surprise, but the world they’ve crafted for themselves has somehow won the hearts of casual fans and comic book fanatics alike. Arrow is all about brooding muscle man Oliver Queen, at this point probably the best version of Batman we’ve got easily to hand. Barry Allen as The Flash is the hero with a heart of gold. He’s somewhere between Spiderman and Superman, with a generous pinch of goofiness thrown in. When the two do their semi-regular cross over episodes it’s some of the network’s best viewing figures.

So, enter Supergirl, like the last jigsaw piece that you didn’t even know was missing. Technically The CW’s Flash already made an appearance on Supergirl earlier this year, but if I get my way the next cross over will begin to build to something much more spectacular. With three DC superhero shows on one network, isn’t it time for a television Justice League?

Look, I know Warner Bros are busy making their grey-brown Justice League feature film, but oh my god please no. I mean, when we think the Justice League we probably picture Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman standing together with hands on hips, but the Snyderverse just doesn’t feel optimistic enough for that. The idea of Supergirl, Arrow and The Flash hanging out and saving the world, on the other hand, is just too much for my small mind to ignore. The possibilities: who would they fight? How would they be around each other? Which supporting characters would talk to which other supporting characters?

Cynics who’ve seen too much of this world will likely be shaking their heads. “But Chris,” they’ll say, “there’s no way Warner Bros would allow the TV shows to have a Justice League – it would undermine their movie version.”

To this, I have a ready made rebuttal. The movies can have the name – with all the bad press and rumoured daily script rewrites, the Justice League movie is going to need all the help it can get. What would the television version be called? Well, we’d all know they’re the real Justice League, but they could easily sidestep the problem by calling themselves the Justice Society. Job done. You’re welcome, CW. I take PayPal.

Whatever happens with Supergirl next season, more crossovers might not be the biggest change. With the extra creative freedom offered by being on a smaller network, and the opportunity for more serialised stories, expect Supergirl to take the identity it’s formed for itself and take flight with it. But ask yourself this: who do you want to bring you the live-action Justice League? The guy who made Sucker Punch, or the network that brought you Veronica Mars and Supernatural?