The CW’s DC Era Ends With ‘Superman & Lois’ Finale: Numbers Behind the Enduring Franchise
After a dozen years and more than 800 episodes, the network airs its last comic book-based show.
By
Rick Porter
December 3, 2024 3:34pm
Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch in the 'Superman & Lois' series finale. Colin Bentley/The CW
[This story contains spoilers for the series finale of Superman & Lois.]
The series finale of
Superman & Lois aired Monday night on
The CW. It marked not just the end of the show’s four-season run, but also an entire programming philosophy at the network.
Superman & Lois was the last series based on DC Comics characters to air at the network. It was also the last connection to The CW’s Arrowverse (even if it wasn’t technically part of the main continuity of that franchise), which defined the 2010s for the network and became one of the more successful multi-show franchises in TV history.
The ending of
Superman & Lois, which —
spoiler alert — flashes forward several decades to show the end of its title characters’ (Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch) lives, precludes any continuation of the show elsewhere — as do new regimes at both The CW and DC parent Warner Bros. Discovery, which both have very different approaches than they did during the Arrowverse’s heyday in the mid- and late 2010s.
The CW, as
THR has covered extensively, is mostly out of the homegrown scripted business:
All American — which like nearly all of The CW’s DC shows comes from Greg Berlanti’s Warner Bros. TV-based company — is now the only scripted series left from the network’s pre-Nexstar days. Most of the network’s schedule is now given over to
unscripted and sports programming, and what scripted shows The CW does air are co-productions on series based outside the United States, with budgets that are a fraction of even the relatively inexpensive ones of the past.
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DC — officially, DC Studios — meanwhile, is taking its TV projects to WBD siblings HBO and Max, with bigger budgets, shorter seasons and very different tones than the CW franchise:
The Penguin was essentially a
mob story, and the upcoming
Lanterns is said to have a
True Detective-like vibe, while
Peacemaker (which predates the DC Studios reorganization but is folded into the main timeline) is very much its own, TV-MA (and then some) thing.
With Marvel also siloing all its TV properties on Disney+, it’s not a stretch at all to say that there won’t be another sprawling comic-book franchise on network TV again. The CW’s DC era left a huge imprint on the network; here are some of the numbers behind the shows.
10: The number of series based on DC characters that aired on The CW, beginning with
Arrow in October 2012. All of them came from Warner Bros. TV and what was then called DC Entertainment, and nine —
Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Stargirl, Superman & Lois and
Gotham Knights — were executive produced by Berlanti via his Berlanti Productions. The 10th is 2022’s
Naomi, co-created by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship and produced by DuVernay’s Array Filmworks along with DC and WB.
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46: The combined number seasons of all 10 series.
The Flash (nine seasons) and
Arrow (eight) had the longest runs.
817, 797: The combined episode total from all 10 shows, and those that ran on The CW;
Supergirl‘s first season, which spanned 20 episodes, aired on CBS. The 817 episodes top all but three multishow franchises since 1990 — only
Law & Order (1,363 episodes as of publication time),
JAG/NCIS (1,249) and
CSI (838) have more. NBC’s
Chicago franchise will need to air 131 more episodes — about six 22-episode seasons’ worth of shows — to pass the DC total.
699: Number of episodes among the six core Arrowverse series (
Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning and
Batwoman). Hoechlin and Tulloch appeared in several episodes of those series as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane during crossovers (more on that below), but
Superman & Lois was set in a different part of the DC multiverse.
6: Multi-series crossover events, the biggest of which was based on DC’s seminal “Crisis on Infinite Earths” comic series and spanned five shows. The ambitious event, which aired in December 2019 and January 2020, resulted in season-high viewership for
Arrow, The Flash, Legends and
Supergirl and the second-largest audience for
Batwoman, behind only its series premiere. Several other crossovers were confined to a single show, including two in the latter seasons of
The Flash when characters from ended series reappeared to help Barry Allen (Grant Gustin).
12, 53: Years and days that The CW had a DC series on its roster, dating from the premiere of
Arrow on Oct. 10, 2012, to the ending of
Superman & Lois on Dec. 2.
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i bet if LoT were still going they probably wouldve made a episode B-plot from this
