Does a Supergirl Movie Mean the TV Show is Ending Soon?

For fans of DC superheroine Supergirl, Friday offered some exciting news. A report from Forbes indicated that a Supergirl movie, news of which first surfaced last summer, is now slated to begin production during the first quarter of 2020 with casting information likely in the next few months. While this is good news for those hoping to see the Maid of Might return to the big screen, it also opens up quite a few questions about what the Supergirl film means for other Warner Bros. DC movie projects (specifically Man of Steel 2) as well as the fate of another live-action Supergirl — The CW‘s Supergirl series.

Part of the Arrowverse of connected, DC Comics-inspired television shows airing on The CW, Supergirl just concluded its fourth season with the titular heroine having defeated Lex Luthor and his nefarious plans for Earth as well as for getting ultimate revenge of Supergirl’s cousin, Superman as well as setting up for what might be the most mysterious “big bad” yet in Season 5, Leviathan. The series, which will return for said fifth season this fall, will also be a part of the eagerly anticipated “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event. Between Leviathan and “Crisis” — and its possibly multiverse-shattering outcome — Supergirl will have no shortage of stories to tell.

But having plenty of story to tell doesn’t mean that the series will get to. For the most part, there’s not a lot of overlap between the DC characters featured in films and those featured on The CW’s Arrowverse. A prime example of this is Slade Wilson/Deathstroke who was a major antagonist on Arrow during the show’s second season but was off the show for several seasons after due to permission to use the character being revoked as the character was set for movie use. While this sort of permission situation isn’t universal — after all, The Flash remained on television without issue even with Ezra Miller’s portrayal of the Scarlet Speedster appearing in Justice League, it’s clear that the movie versus television situation is a consideration.

If Warner Bros. did want to end Supergirl to shift the character from the small to big screen, the 2019/2020 would provide the opportunity. Season 5 will see Supergirl hit 100 episodes, a milestone that is generally the traditional threshold for a tv series to enter syndicated reruns so it would financially be decent time to bring things to a close. Story-wise, the season would also offer the opportunity given “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. We don’t yet know the details of what “Crisis” will entail other than Arrow‘s Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) will die, as revealed by The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) during that show’s Season 7 finale, but we do know what happens in the comics version of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. In the comics story, most of the various universes within the multiverse were destroyed and of the ones that survived, they were all merged into one. That merge — if the Arrowverse does such a merge — would off an opportunity to close out Supergirl.

Even with the opportunity being present, however, there’s still plenty of ways that a Supergirl movie could be just different enough from the television series to allow for both and, based on the limited information about the Supergirl movie, that may very well be what Warner Bros. opts to do. Last fall, it was reported that the Supergirl film would be set in the 1970s and would focus on a version of Kara Zor-El whose pod was never knocked off-course and who made it to Earth before her cousin Kal-El did, in theory making her Earth’s primary Kryptonian hero as well as offering a very different story than what we see on The CW.

For now, fans will just have to wait and see if and how a Supergirl movie impacts the Arrowverse series. In the meantime, those wanting to get caught up on television’s Girl of Steel can check out all four current seasons of Supergirl now streaming on Netflix.

Do you think that a Supergirl movie will mean the end of The CW series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter @lifeinpolaroid!