When The Lightning launched in October 2014—the second project of the CW’s bold attempt to flesh out its own Superhero film universe– The first episode ended with a bold statement: Not only would the series still be running in a decade, it would have grown to the point where it could tackle one of the most iconic stories in DC Comics history. Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Ten years later, we have arrived at that fateful date, April 25, 2024 – and guess what? The Lightning Was somewhat right, apart from a few timing quibbles.
Over the years as The Lightning delved more and more into it time-consuming shenanigans of Speed Force, that infamous premiere star who changed and evolved – who wrote the story, is twisted, sometimes it’s gone, sometimes it’s still happening, and then of course the show actually changed it again when it decided to move its schedule and do it Crisis on Infinite Earths in 2019, when Barry disappeared in the crisis a a full five years earlier than predicted.
But that in and of itself reflected how important that initial bold statement was The Lightning constantly ran towards him and eventually managed to encapsulate him over the course of his lifespan. Arrow launched the CW-DC universe, definitely, giving it the grounding element and soap opera drama that would propel its rise to the small screen’s first superhero universe. But it was The Lightning that took time into the stratosphere: That’s where those responsible really embraced the overpowering element, the esoteric craziness that superhero adaptations still shied away from back then.
That embrace would, in turn, pave the way for more than just stories that deal with all that comic savagery on the small screen — not just stories that, in turn, would have impact Arrow evolving into something far beyond its original conception – but into stories that would later pave the way for an entire universe of shows. Without The Lightning If I had done what it did, there would have been none SupergirlNO Legends of tomorrowNO Black Lightning And Batwoman. There would have been neither the network nor the trust for it The Lightning pull all these series togetherand even more to adapt Crisis on Infinite Earths at all, let alone five years earlier than dreamed.
And yet, in some ways, the show’s prediction still came true. A decade after this premiere, The Lightning is no longerafter it ends in May 2023. The CW-DC Universe as a whole is also no more – every show in that continuity has in recent years died his own deathexcept for the adjacent ones Superman & Loisa series that paradoxically tried to carry on the legacy of the previous CW-DC shows, but actually expressly distances itself from them. And myself The Is now it’s coming to an end. In 2024, the Flash is truly still missing – and there’s something of a crisis at DC, as the company under James Gunn and Peter Safran is slowly reversing its cinematic plans for future television and films in the DC Universe. The lightning The film finally came out last year when the Ezra Miller-led film happened to be added an unpleasant farewell to an era of DC film production had mostly died in the time it had taken to wade through afterwards Years of repetition and delays– long enough The Lightning himself had already done it sneak a crossover with Grant Gustin’s cinematic counterpart on the way.
Then maybe it’ll fit The LightningIt’s the time-consuming way that that first bold prediction paradoxically became both disproven and true in the strange, wild 10 years it took us to get to this point. But perhaps, after all this time, that is the best way to characterize a crisis.
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