‘Supergirl’: Jeremy Jordan Won’t Return as Winn Until Season 5

Supergirl fans were stunned last season when it was announced that Jeremy Jordan, who plays Winn Schott, would be dropping to recurring status. The shift was prompted by Jordan’s return to Broadway, but fans were promised there would still be big things for the character in Season 4. Now, it turns out fans will be waiting a bit longer to find out what those things are.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. Showrunners Robert Rovner and Jessica Queller spoke a bit about the back half of The CW series’ fourth season and Rovner explained that the show won’t be circling back to Winn this season at all. Instead, they’re now shooting for Season 5.

“We love Jeremy Jordan, we love Winn,” Rovner said. “It looked like, in terms of our storytelling, something we’d like to do at the beginning of next season as opposed to this season. We have a lot of stories that coincided with his availability at the end of the play. We don’t want to short shrift Jeremy or the character. So, we think it’s something that’s better served in season 5.”

The play Rovner is referring to is American Son. Written by Christopher Demos-Brown, the play follows a separated interracial couple trying to find their missing 18-year-old son whose empty car was found during a traffic stop. Jordan played Officer Paul Larkin in the Broadway run for the play.

To facilitate Jordan’s departure from Supergirl while leaving the door open for Winn to return, during the Season 3 finale Winn joins the Legion of Superheroes when they return to the 31st century. He does this, taking Brainy’s (Jesse Rath) place on the team as it is revealed that an AI killing virus in the future is endangering Brainy and countless others. It’s revealed that Winn is remembered by history as being a notable programmer and inventor making Winn the most qualified person to stop the virus — and he still had the ability to come back to the present.

However, as Rovner noted, the events in Season 4 simply haven’t been conducive for Winn to return. Brainy has settled in at the DEO as Winn’s replacement while Supergirl has largely been operating in a more solo capacity rather than as part of Team Supergirl this season. This is especially true for the midseason premiere airing Sunday night which will see the Girl of Steel continuing to be National City’s hero despite having cut ties with the DEO over Colonel Haley’s demand that she reveal her secret identity. It’s a situation that isn’t likely to help Supergirl keep her identity under wraps, though, as the official synopsis for the episode reveals that after the heroine responds to a deadly alien attack, Colonel Haley ends up more determined than ever to unmask Supergirl.

Are you disappointed that Winn won’t be making an appearance this season on Supergirl? Let us know in the comments below.

Supergirl airs on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW before episodes of Charmed. The series returns on January 20.