The Great DC Comics Show Crossover

Smallville: it all began in a small Kansas town filled with cows, corn, and a disturbing amount of “meteor freaks” roaming what otherwise would be the dullest place to be. Of course, the handsome and naïve blue-eyed boy in the Kent farm made all the difference, and we loyal fans watched him grow up in ten seasons into the legend we’ve always known he would be.

Fast forward to today, where costumed crime fighters are popping up on screens both big and small everywhere you look. It’s the era of the superhero shows, and DC Comics is at the forefront of the TV universe with crossovers between our favorite characters that leave us with nothing but nerd-gasms. A friendly warning: there are mild spoilers for the shows up ahead!

1.On “Arrow”

Seeing Green Arrow teaming up with The Fastest Man Alive in live-action used to be just an impossible dream, but we geeks are taking over the world one show at a time, and now, anything is possible. CW’s Arrow has been steadily building up the shared universe that Arrow and Flash have (Vixen is coming soon, too!), and everything is coming together with shared villains and epic superhero team-ups. It only makes sense because Flash actually spun off from Arrow in the first place, so pairing them up (along with their corresponding super teams) is as natural as Ollie’s supposed goatee.   

But, as unnatural as Black Canary’s so-called blond hair, Arrow has always been a sort of replacement for the doom and gloom that only The Dark Knight can bring, and it’s getting incredibly annoying. You can pit Oliver against the League of Assassins—even get him hitched with the daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul—but you cannot just blatantly grab concepts right out of Batman’s brooding book. It simply does not sit well with fans. It’s a good thing the creative team behind the show is finally accepting that, turning Ollie into a lighter version of himself and adding the “Green” to “Green Arrow”. They even added a little jab at Bats when Ollie gave Felicity her codename and said he was going to go with “Oracle” but it was already taken. Does that mean we’ll see a crossover between Arrow and Gotham soon? Given that the two shows are on different networks (and different timelines), it might be a bit of a stretch.

What isn’t a stretch is the shared world of GA and Constantine, who’s already proven his mettle with the dark arts when he helped the Arrow team bring Sara Lance back to her normal self after coming back from the dead. It’s a shame they didn’t create more episodes like this, as Constantine is just absolutely brilliant.

2. On “Flash”

Aside from the obvious team-ups with GA, Flash has been quite busy with a myriad of beloved DC characters of his own. There’s Cisco (a.k.a. Vibe) and Caitlin (a.k.a. future Killer Frost) working with Felicity from time to time, and of course, there are the hawks.

Recently introduced in the timeline, Hawkman and Hawkgirl have been up against the immortal Vandal Savage since forever, and this became the jump-off point for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Ray Palmer (a.k.a. The Atom) and Sara Lance (a.k.a. White Canary) from Arrow joined up with Flash show characters Captain Cold, Heatwave, Firestorm, and the hawks to star in a show of their own, blatantly giving viewers an in-your-face announcement that all three of these shows have one big shared universe.  This concept initially seemed like it was doomed to fail from the very beginning, but this recipe for disaster actually turned out to be a pretty sweet set-up, with surprisingly good reactions from the two-part pilot episode. It’s basically one heck of an enjoyable ride, and it’s so wild it might just work.

3. On “Supergirl”

The most recent breaking news here is that Flash and Supergirl are crossing over into each other’s worlds on March 28, which is exciting but begs the question on how they’re going to pull this off. For one thing, an actual Superman exists and is common knowledge for everyone in the world of Supergirl, while Flash has no idea any other hero exists outside his and Green Arrow’s world. Will The Big Blue be a big surprise for Barry, or will it be another parallel dimension thing? They did, after all, already establish the multiverse DC Comics is so famous for, with characters from Earth-Two already making headlines in Flash. Plus, they’ve got the Martian Manhunter in Supergirl, too. So with Hawkgirl, Flash, and the Martian in the picture, could we see the beginnings of the Justice League (as in the animated series that ran years ago called Justice League Unlimited) soon? We can only keep our fingers crossed. Hal Jordan should be the next big reveal, shouldn’t he?

Speaking of Sector 2814’s Green Lantern, in a brief flashback on Arrow, someone in Coast City had on a bomber jacket with the nametag “Jordan” on it, so yes, the appearance of the Corps is very much a possibility. This is just too much for my poor little geeky heart.

4. On “Gotham”

This one’s a toughie, given that the show is on a different network and is set at an earlier time period than the rest. Little Brucie is just a boy, and the Batman is yet but a future concept. But they did show the big “Q” logo of Queen Consolidated on one of the buildings against the Gotham skyline, and both Arrow and Gotham shared one villain once—the Dollmaker. It’s a different incarnation of the character, but the same one nonetheless.

“Gotham would be a tough one,” says Arrow star Stephen Amell, “just because I think they’re out in a different time but the crossover with The Flash was so much fun and did so well that I can’t imagine a world — a universe, no pun intended — where that didn’t happen and continue to happen all the time.”

5. On everything else

What about the DC Films universe? That merits a whole new article and commentary altogether, but just to lightly touch on the subject, Arrow has already had its incarnation of the Suicide Squad way before the movie was announced. Deadshot and a little Easter egg of Harley Quinn were in the show, and now, they’ve just gone and shot Amanda Waller in the head. There’s no going back from that, now that the Lazarus Pit from Nanda Parbat is kaput. Perhaps DC is killing off Arrow’s Waller to make room for The Suicide Squad movie version of her.

There’s also Midway City mentioned in Flash, where Patty Spivot is moving to pursue further studies. Midway City is also in the Suicide Squad movie, and the hawks also used to live in Midway City before they made St. Roch their home. So could there be something there, after all? That’s what time travel and the multiverse are for, right?

Deathstroke and Shadowspire have also made appearances in Arrow, so could Teen Titans be in the works? All these fan theories just prove that anything is possible, and there’s no better time to be a comic book fan than now. So kudos to DC Comics, and onward to good things!

*This article was first seen on The Philippine Online Chronicles HERE.