Four Ways Arrowverse Shows Can Improve This Year

The CW’s Arrowverse shows will soon be returning, and already we’ve seen some exciting footage from Supergirl season 3, The Flash season 4, Arrow season 6, and Legends of Tomorrow season 3.

While each show seems to have excitement and new intrigue in store (with an epic new crossover event on the horizon), there still is room for improvement on all fronts. The early arcs of each new season may already be in the can, but from what we’ve seen, there are a few things that can be polished up in the middle and latter half of the 2017 – 2018 Arrowverse seasonal arcs.

Here are 4 Ways the Arrowverse Shows Can Improve This Year:

Save the Drama

The CW Arrowverse show have all achieved moments of genuinely moving drama – whether that was tragic loss, requited love, or epic moments of heroism. At the same time, each of the shows has gone all sappy CW on us at different times, in ways that fans are still complaining about (looking at you, Olicity…). 

The new seasons of each show are already teasing new dramatic arcs. While some of them look genuine and meaningful (Arrow), others already seem a bit too sappy (Supergirl, The Flash) with their existential hangups and romantic woes.

It would be wise for the showrunners to keep an ear to the ground about what plot threads are working and which ones are not, to make sure the bad drama doesn’t become the tagline of each respective season (see again: Arrow season 4). 

Focus on the Journey, Not Reveals

These CW Arrowverse trailers are almost required to tease mystery and big reveals to come, and we certainly got that from the trailers and promos for each show. 

However, seasonal mysteries and reveals are becoming sort of formulaic (sometimes gimmicky) in the Arrowverse, and the payoff is not always worth the wait to get there. In fact, in more recent years fans have grown accustomed to spotting and calling out big reveals way early, so the gimmick is one of diminishing returns.

This year, Arrow will tease who died on Lian Yu; The Flash will tease how Barry was changed by the Speed Force; while Supergirl and Legends are already teasing new villains and world-threatening danger in the works. However, what each show should learn from their respective past struggles is that the journey is what needs to be the focus of each season, not mysteries and big reveals. 

That’s all to say: how the deaths of Lian Yu affect and change Green Arrow’s world, or how the relationships on Team Flash are changed by an evolved Barry, is where the sort of “good drama” comes from in these shows. At this point, fans are already invested enough that half-cooked mysteries and prolonged reveals shouldn’t be major parts of the equation. 

A True Crossing Over

It was cool to see the “Invasion!” crossover event between the Arrowverse shows last season – but even the most loyal fans know that it wasn’t a true crossover. 

Besides the obvious caveat that Supergirl didn’t have a real segment in the “Invasion!” story, there was also the fact that each show mostly stuck to its own corner, with just a few characters or events linking them together. 

With the upcoming 2017 Arrowverse crossover event, fans need a true ‘worlds collide’ mixing, as well as an event-style storyline that is bigger than each respective show it’s a part of. And when it’s over, each show needs to have been significantly affected by its contact with the others. 

New Kinds of Nemeses

The Arrowverse shows have fallen into the same trap as so many other superhero TV series or movies: introducing villains who are little more than dark reflections of the hero. 

The Flash and Arrow have been particularly flagrant perpetrators of this trend, with their multiple ‘dark archers’ and ‘evil speedsters.’ However, there’s been talk of introducing new breeds of foes for the various CW heroes to battle, and hopefully that’s true. 

The Flash is going to be battling the mastermind villain The Thinker (brain vs physique), and Arrow is already teasing a buildup to a season 6 crimeboss like we’ve never seen before. However, Supergirl and Legends seem to be teasing those same types of “dark reflection” villains we have seen before – so hopefully there’s more to them than that. 

Arrowverse Return Dates

Supergirl will premiere on October 9th at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, followed by The Flash in the same timeslot on October 10th. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will follow The Flash this season, airing at 9 p.m. on Tuesdays. Arrow has moved to 9 p.m. on Thursdays.

The as-yet-untitled Arrowverse crossover will take place on November 27th and 28th, with Arrow moving for one week to Monday nights at 9 p.m.

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