This Week on The CW for the Week of January 15th

The CW's shows came back from midseason hiatus this week, meaning that Supergirl, The Flash, Riverdale, and Arrow returned while Black Lightning made its thunderous debut.

With nearly all of the shows back -- the exception being Legends of Tomorrow, which will return in February due to a unique time slot sharing situation the network is doing with that show and Supergirl -- that means various Easter eggs, themes, and other interesting references that tend to show up across the network's comic book-inspired programming is back, too.

As always, not every theme crosses every show, but there's always little details that give us pause and are worth taking another look at. Here are some of the things you may have missed on The CW shows for the week of January 15th.

What is wrong with that character's face?

Bad makeup and effects was, unfortunately, a theme this week, at least when it came to Supergirl and The Flash. On Supergirl, Brainiac 5 made his debut, popping into Kara Danvers/Supergirl's (Melissa Benoist) head while she tried to recover from her losing battle with Reign in the midseason finale. Unfortunately, while it was cool to see the character appear, that appearance left quite a bit to be desired. The character's makeup was a mess, both in that it was a strange purple-blue shade that is markedly different from the character's comic incarnation and in that it was actually a mess. There were moments when it looked like the makeup was sliding down Brainy's face.

Meanwhile on The Flash, audiences got to see Fallout for the first time, but even though the character has the unfortunate power of irradiating everyone around him, the truly awful thing about the character was the effects that were designed to represent his radioactivity. The glowing green cheeks were weird, but it only got stranger as the character turned completely green. Incidentally, green is the color Brainy was supposed to be. Curious, no?

The cleansing of sins

The Black Hood may be dead (or is he?) on Riverdale, but the ghosts of the masked killer's desire to cleanse Riverdale of its sins remains. It's also a theme that's now carried over to Supergirl. This week, Reign made her master plan for National City known when she smashed into CatCo and demanded they broadcast her message to the city. Turns out the Worldkiller is on a mission to provide "true justice" by cleansing the city of its sins. While we know that Riverdale isn't secretly part of the Arrowverse, and is more likely to be in the world of Black Mirror than on Earth-38, it makes us wonder if there's some secret club of villains where Reign and the Black Hood met and exchanged notes at.

It's also especially interesting that both the Black Hood and Reign see violence as a way to cleanse sins.

New costumes

Another thing that appeared as a mini-theme on the network this week is new costumes. On Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Heroes made their big debut and we finally got to see what the Arrowverse take on the legendary comic book team's outfits would be. As we could have predicted, there was quite a bit of leather and not much to connect them to the often-colorful attire the various heroes in the Legion wear in canon and they didn't really have much of a futuristic vibe one might expect from a team originating in the 31st century.

Meanwhile, even though Black Lightning had his CW debut -- meaning that his costume was all new for viewers -- we actually got to see the character get a new outfit during the pilot. When Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) decides to suit up again as Black Lightning, his friend and mentor Peter Gambi (James Remar) reveals that he's been working on an upgraded suit, one that looks quite a bit different from the one that Black Lightning wore years before.

Supergirl airs Mondays at 8/7c. The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c with Black Lightning following at 9/8c. Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c and Arrow airs Thursdays at 9/8c.