When Supergirl first launched on CBS, we were all told that the series would exist inside the same universe as the CW series Arrow, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. A big part of cementing that relationship was to be the airing of a crossover that would bring all the heroes together this season. Now, it looks like time may make that impossible.
EW is reporting that the shows have less than a month to get their stuff together if they want to try and make a crossover happen this season.
The king of the DC TV universe, Greg Berlanti, had this to say:
“I would love it, a lot of things would have to go right and people would have to say ‘Yes. It would have to figured out very soon. It would all have to be figured out in the next month or so. As it remains right now we’ve talked internally about how cool it would be, but we haven’t had official conversations. [The CW chief Mark Pedowitz] is supportive.”
One of the things that may have complicated matters is that the show has solid, but not impressive ratings. To that, showrunner Andrew Kreisberg said:
“I’m as proud of Supergirl as anything I’ve ever done and in some ways prouder because it’s so hard to actually pull off the sheer scale of it. And while I’m so proud of the pilot and some of those early episodes, I do think there was an expectation of what it should be, what the ratings should be, what the character meant. And because it’s a female superhero as well, I think there were expectations on the part of the audience and the people we were making the show with. And I think it’s taken awhile to shake out. Once we stopped trying to make the show to be everything for everybody else and just started telling stories we wanted to tell with these amazing actors, the show has become a lot easier to make. We were blessed with The Flash, which came out of the gate fully formed in a way that Arrow didn’t. Arrow took awhile to find itself. Arrow needed Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) which it didn’t have early on, and it had voiceover, which it didn’t need. Whereas The Flash came out like The Flash — you can watch the pilot and the finale back to back and it’s the same show. Supergirl was one of those shows that had a learning curve on how to make it and how to tell the stories and the audience’s part on how to watch it.
It’s at its best when everyone’s involved. In the beginning there was a lot of this person’s over here doing this thing, and this person’s doing that thing, and Kara’s got a relationship with Kat, and another relationship with Jimmy. Now things are much more integrated — and they’re going to get further integrated moving forward … but I can’t look back at the early episodes and say, ‘Gee we really blew it there,’ because I don’t think we did. I think it’s the natural evolution. Maybe there were times the storytelling was too timid, or too bold, but I can’t say we’re not being bold now. I just know in my heart the show keeps getting better, and that seems to be the general impression people are getting.”
I’m going to guess that we probably won’t see a full crossover event this season, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the DEO from Supergirl has to take on a Metahuman from central city and then hands her over to Barry for storage in the super collider. Other than that, one great way to bridge the shows would be to use ARGUS as a go between. They seem to have their thumbs in everyone’s business anyways.