SDCC: DC Entertainment’s Super Hero Saturday Night

DC fans, get ready for Super Hero Saturday Night! Warner Bros. Television and DC Entertainment welcome fans into the world of some of DC Comics’ greatest characters during a three-hour experience in Hall H. The exclusive evening will feature a pilot screening of the highly anticipated new drama series Supergirl, followed by a Q&A with stars and producers, plus individual special video presentations and Q&A’s with stars and producers from Arrow, The Flash, andGotham. Also, don’t miss a special Q&A with cast and producers of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and a peek at the new digital series Vixen.

Warner Bros. and Comic-Con organizers took to the stage to introduce the evening, including thanking the fans and DC Entertainment for making the evening a reality.

They then handed it off to master of ceremonies Ian Somerhalder, who teased tomorrow’s The Vampire Diaries panel in Hall H and then what’s to come here, including a screening of the Supergirl pilot.

There was a screening of the Arrow sizzle reel featuring a black screen and audio from last year, and then an appearance by Arrow star Stephen Amell in his snazzy new duds and gave a modified version of the show’s monologue. He confirmed that Starling City has been renamed as Star City, and that he’s now called the Green Arrow.

Another trailer, then — this one with video, but also full of footage from last year.

Next, Somerhalder introduced a moderator from Buzzfeed, who brought out Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti, Paul Blackthorne, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards, Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, Willa Holland, John Barrowman, Wendy Mericle, Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg.

“First of all, we need to give credit to Maya Mani, who has made every single suit on our show since the original Arrow costume,” Amell said. “She’s up in Vancouver right now, she does such a bang-up job, everything that the producers, the creators, the writers, me, asked her to do for the suit, she did it.”

Producers said that the new costume will help inform how he is.

“There’s a little bit more fun this year, a little more humor,” said Kreisberg, promising that the show won’t lose its identity.

Geoff Johns teased that Damien Darhk came from a conversation with Marc Guggenheim. “There’s another big [villain] coming from Damien Darhk,” Johns said. “There’s a lot of characters coming up that people won’t really guess from the DC Universe.”

Guggenheim said that Anarky will be joining the series, and that “one of the things we like to do on Arrow is tell the secret origins of various characters….This year, we want to introduce a new character to the Arrow show, Mr. Terrific.”

“Everything” about getting to transition to Black Canary excited Katie Cassidy, who said she feels like it’s been a long time coming but it absolutely was worth the wait.

When asked what excited her about becoming Speedy, Holland said that it’s been “absolutely a beyond honor to play a strong character who has come out the other side” of her problems.

“That’s my girl,” joked Barrowman.

In her appearance as the Atom, Rickards said that she was wearing only the top half of the A.T.O.M. suit, which was way too big for her.

“I don’t really know if I’ll be ditching the hood for the robes,” said Barrowman of his transition to Ra’s al Ghul, but he does have the ring. Producers said he’ll have the robes, but will be back in the hood for Episode 3.

Diggle will get a “new helmet,” said David Ramsey. His new costume “is called Black Driver,” he joked. Blackthorne joked that he won’t be getting a superhero costume just yet, “but we’ll see.”

Rickards praised the fans at Comic-Con, saying that their passion helps feed their passion to make the show better.

A fan who identified himself as the first question-asker last year who “didn’t like my answer” and is going to try again, asked whether there will be any sillier and lighter.

“We are going to move in a more Green Arrow-y direction,” Amell joked. “If you’re here next year, I’m going to be super mad.”

The next fan asked about the long-discredited fan theory about Diggle being Green Arrow, and whether Oliver would be rich again. Amell joked that he “has a sugar momma.”

The next fan asked whether there was ever a scenario where actors had to “be their character in real life.”

“I once got mad at a guy at a hockey game and he started talking back at me and some guy yelled out ‘Hey! That’s the Green Arrow!’” said Amell.

After a look at Vixen and then one at The Flash, ending with some new footage overlaid with audio from last year was introduced. In it, The Flash appears to glow blue instead of yellow when he runs. Jay Garrick’s voice is heard, telling Barry that “your world is in danger.” At the end, it said, “ZOOM is coming.”

Variety‘s Laura Prudom introduced Kreisberg, Berlanti, John Wesley Shipp, Candice Patton, Grant Gustin, Tom Cavanagh, Danielle Panabaker, Carlos Valdes and Johns.

Kreisberg confirmed that Zoom will be the big bad this year, and that they will add Jay Garrick and Patty Spivot to the show…and Wally West.

The first episode will deal with the fallout of last year’s cataclysm — and then characters from Earth-2 will be the new source of metahumans on the show.

“We find Barry dealing with some extra tension on The Flash,” and weighed down by the expectations of being the hero of the city, especially since he feels that Eddie didn’t get the credit he deserved.

There’s “a lot of tiptoeing” around what Cisco learned in the finale, Valdes said. “As fans saw in the latter half of Season One, Cisco starts having these dreams and starts underoging these biological changes that take place in his mind. Those kind of augment themselves over time, and yeah, the beginning of Season Two deals with how Cisco deals with that change.”

“Jay Garrick is integral to the Flash mythology and he’s never really been portrayed in live action,” said Kreisberg.

Patton says that Iris will be “part of the Flash team in some aspect” and that she’ll spend plenty of time at S.T.A.R. Labs.

“Eventually, Henry will get out, we don’t know how or what,” said Shipp.

“I’m so excited for Season 2,” said Panabaker. “I’m beyond excited to get to hopefully be Killer Frost…one day.”

A fan from Russia asked about the Rogues.

“We’ll be definitely adding to the Rogues gallery, and we have a lot of returning favorites,” said Kreisberg. Grodd will come back, and there will be more Captain Cold/Golden Glider stuff early, as well as some new villains they won’t reveal yet.

“He’s going to be terrifying and scary and fast, and it’s going to be all kinds of cool,” Kreisberg said of Zoom.

Another fan asked Cavanagh about beating himself up, and Cavanagh joked about it.

A fan asked whether Cisco will become Vibe this season, and everyone on the panel handed it off to other panelists until Gustin said, “…sure?” And Geoff Johns pimped his old Vibe series with Sterling Gates.

A trailer played for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, followed by the original teaser video for the show featuring Arrow and The Flash.

Geoff Johns decided to be the emcee of the Legends of Tomorrow for himself, saying that it celebrates expanding the DC Universe. He introduced Guggenheim, Berlanti, Ciara Renee, Victor Garber, Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Wentworth Miller, Phil Klemmer and Andrew Kreisberg.

Johns asked how they were going to see the show roll out from Arrow and The Flash, and Guggenheim said that the first few episodes of those shows will set the table for Legends, placing characters on the table for the show, and then the Arrow/The Flash crossover will set the stage.

Hawkman will be in the show, Johns confirmed.

Brandon Routh said that he believed Ray Palmer will want to take control of the team. Lotz said that the White Canary thing is a result of a dip in the Lazarus Pit.

“I want her to go just nuts, off the wall, that’s my plan,” she said.

“Heat Wave will be pissed” about joining the team “but has to do it,” said Dominic Purcell.

Cold will “respond badly” to being told what to do by The Atom and Professor Stein. “These guys have to work together, but it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Kreisberg said that Vandal Savage is immortal and has been around for thousands of years. “Part of the fun of the show is, how do you defeat somebody you can’t kill?” He said that the team will encounter Savage in various eras throughout history. “Legends of Tomorrow, all it is, is the crazy ideas. It’s bonkers.”

Garber, who said he “is overwhelmed” by his first visit to Comic-Con, thanked the fans. Asked how he thinks Stein will mesh with the team, Garber answered that “He has a certain arrogance that believes he’s actually capable of mediating this dysfunctional family” and is “naive enough to think that this could work,” and he’s “confident that he will make it.”

Firestorm, he said, will be a part of the show.

Renee said that she had read “like a million comics” and watched the previous shows, as well as boxing and doing krav maga to prepare for Hawkgirl.

“I think just the reincarnation is really, realy awesome and it’s going to be interesting to see her in this different time periods.” She said that as an actor, she gets to play many different characters in one.

Berlanti thanked fans for giving them the confidence that a show like this can exist, and the cast who made “a surplus” of talent. He said they wanted to do a team-up show in the vein of Ocean’s 11 and The Magnificent Seven.

“I don’t know if I find myself drawn” to superheroes “Or something else is drawing me to it, but I’ll take it,” said Routh. “It’s so exciting to come and play in the playground every day.” He, to, praised the fans, saying that people are responding to the product they’re making, and it’s fulfilling. “We get to make silly stuff look awesome, every day.”

“I think one of the great things about the show is that we get to visit all these different corners of the DC Universe all throughout all time,” Guggenheim said. “We’ll be allowed to go to all of these incredible places and all these incredible moments.”

Canary is the most dangerous member of the team because “she’s not afraid to die,” said Lotz. “She’s died multiple times. Imagine you have no fear of death: every situation you go into, there’s this reckless abandon that you can have. Nothing can stop her and you can’t threaten her with anything.”

Klemmer called working on Legends of Tomorrow “one of the easier decisions I’d ever made.” He said he loved working with Berlanti and that to be able to do something like this with a cast like this “was literally like a millisecond sort of decision.”

A Gotham sizzle reel was up next, followed by a brief trailer with inmates taking over Arkham.

EPs Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon stepped onstage, along with stars Ben McKenzie, Donal Logue, Robin Lord Taylor, Sean Pertwee, Camren Bicondova, David Mazouz, Erin Richards, Cory Michael Smith, John Stephens and Geoff Johns.

Heller says that this season will be the rise of the villain — bigger, more colorful, more intense, more exciting — and that crime will step away from the mafia and start to be more and more theatrical and grotesque.

Geoff Johns said that Batman is “better than Sherlock Holmes,” and that finding the way for the series started with Bruno Heller.

“There’ll be new heroes introduced on the good guys’ side and they’ll have to band together to fight the villains,” said McKenzie.

Harvey “might be beaten down and a little less idealistic than Jim Gordon about our chances” to stem the tide in Gotham,” said Logue.

Heller calls Barbara Kean “the crazy ex-girlfriend from hell.”

“I think that you’re going to see in Season Two more of a contract being drawn between” Bruce and Alfred, Pertwee said.

During the fan Q&A, the line was crashed by the actor who plays Jerome, who was dragged way.

Then we get introduced to Supergirl, along with a trailer.

Yet another moderator introduces the cast and crew, including producer Ali Adler, stars Melissa Benoist, Mehcad Brooks, Chyler Leigh, David Harewood, Jeremy Jordan, EPs Sara Schechter, Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti and Geoff Johns.

“I think for us it was a story that needed to be told,” said Ali Adler. “You come in and see her as female and you’ll go out and remember her as powerful. She’s a badass.”

Johns said that it was “far past time” to have a female superhero-lead show. Berlanti said that “We do it right: We do it just like the comic books.”

“It’s hard to articulate the way that that feels,” said Benoist of the Supergirl costume. “It really does transform internally. It’s impossible not to feel empowered and to feel hope and strength and brave when I’m wearing it. I feel like a different person.”

“I like to keep people guessing, so the gray area I think is where this character exist,” said Harewood. “You don’t know whether he’s got good intentions or bad intentions; you’re just going to have to wait and see.”

Mehcad Brooks then lifted his shirt to reveal his abs to the room, joking that “I feel really violated.”

Ali Adler announced that Reactron will appear in the series, as will Livewire…and then Schechter teased Maxwell Lord, played by Twilight‘s Peter Facinelli.

Kreisberg said that Supergirl is inspired by Superman: The Movie and will be uplifting for the audience.