After two years and six different series, I finally reached the end of the Arrowverse, a universe of DC television shows that included Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Superman and Lois and Batwoman.

Between the years 2012 and 2024, DC (before the new DCU took over) had a slate of television shows that were very popular and successful. Despite being a fan of DC, it took me some time to get around to watching them, and now I’m on the other side of it, I thought I’d have a little lookback. I also watched each episode in chronological order of its original release (so I’d watch an episode of Arrow, then The Flash, then Supergirl etc.) because I wanted any cameos and crossovers to match up, and hopefully it helped get a better overview of the universe as a whole as it was intended to be experienced.

(WARNING: There will likely be a few spoilers but I’ll try to keep them minimal.)

Arrow (2012-2020)

I remember watching at least the first season of Arrow when it first aired back in 2012. The only other iteration of Oliver Queen, aka the Green Arrow, I had seen was Justin Hartley’s in Smallville, and I quite liked him, so perhaps that’s why I dropped Stephen Amell’s grittier, darker Green Arrow quite quickly. Starting up again in 2023, I was excited to be back in the world of DC and hearing other DC characters getting name dropped until they started actually showing up and getting their own shows. The show eventually becoming the flagship of the universe (hence the name ‘Arrowverse’), and with Ollie’s character arc and growth, it made sense that he would be the one others would look to in times of trouble, particularly in the big cross-over events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Elseworlds. The show got a little crazy with its mixing of future characters with the past/present towards the end, but it bowed out of its namesake universe at just the right time.

The Flash (2014-2023)

This is when things really started to heat up for the Arrowverse. The Flash became the longest-running of the shows, and it really was so much fun. That is, until the final couple of seasons. Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen was excellent throughout, shouldering the responsibility of the show and leading a varied cast of some interesting and some not so interesting characters. Sadly the final couple of seasons dwindled a little until the show kind of killed itself off (Candice Patton, who played Iris West, seemed particularly fed up and emotionless by the end), so it could probably have ended at least two seasons earlier, showing that you can have too much of a good thing (if you don’t know when to let it go). On the whole, this show probably had the best cameos throughout, as when Arrow began to wind down, characters seemed to flock to Central City more in times of, well, crisis, so Barry and his team’s plate was constantly full, right up until some good cameos towards the end.

Supergirl (2015-2021)

Although I am a big Superman fan, I was almost as excited to be getting a Supergirl show. After everything her cousin has done on the big and small screen, it was her time. Melissa Benoist was a wonderful Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, and although the character was a little cringe at time, everything was sourced from the El family traits of kindness and empathy and always striving to do the right thing. It brought in some wider DC characters and eventually introduced a new Superman played by Tyler Hoechlin. It took us out of the realms of Earth that Arrow and The Flash were mostly grounded to and bravely explored themes of immigration, racism, sexuality and inclusion. It also featured Helen Slater, the original 1985 Kara from the Supergirl movie and briefly Teri Hatcher, who was Lois Lane in The New Adventures of Superman in the 1990s, as well as a handful of episodes with Dean Cain, who was the Superman to Hatcher’s Lois, but he was swiftly killed off after his personal political views were revealed to conflict with the show’s. Certainly the right call.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (2016-2022)

Initially this show felt like a spin-off of Arrow that was necessary to have somewhere to put the random characters they had introduced (a couple from The Flash too), and at first it seemed like such a mish-mash of characters (as team-ups in the DC comics often are), but they soon became quite a cohesive bunch. That is, until the show made a huge shift in tone and the characters began to be switched out for newer ones, with few originals remaining. This included the DC character John Constantine played by Matt Ryan, who reprises the character from the television show Constantine, technically retroactively bringing that show under the Arrowverse umbrella. Things do get rather silly by the end, but it can be considered something of a palate cleanser from the darkness and danger of the other shows.

Black Lightning (2018-2021)

Ok, I’ll be honest, I have not watched this one yet, and I didn’t even know about it until Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning, played by Cress Williams, showed up in the Crisis crossover – the series was not officially part of the Arrowverse until then, meaning I’d already missed out on a lot, so I figured I would watch it separately in the future (if it’s available to stream). I found the character to be a breath of fresh air in his appearances and I actually liked that I knew nothing about him – he came in ready to fight and did his thing.

Batwoman (2019-2022)

Introduced in Crisis, Batwoman/Kate Kane, played by Ruby Rose, fit in quite nicely within the universe and especially amongst the female superheroes. It also made sense to have her instead of Batman, as in the comics she kind of took over from Batman after Crisis. I only watched season one however, because I found the actual series to be uninteresting. I thought Rose was an excellent choice for Kate, and I liked that they stayed true to the character’s sexuality, but I thought the main storyline, namely that of Kate’s crazy sister being the big bad, was not strong enough to carry right through to the end. It meant not fully understanding further cameos from Wallis Day, the actress who took over from Rose in season two, but that wasn’t enough to bring me back to Batwoman.

Superman & Lois (2021-2024)

Man… where do I even begin with this show (buckle up, we might be here a while). In case you didn’t know (most people who know me do), I am a huge fan of Superman, from comic books to film and everything in between. Thus, whenever anything new comes out with ‘Superman’ as or in the title, I get simultaneously excited and nervous. Such was the case when Superman/Clark Kent popped up in Supergirl. He was just ok at first – Tyler Hoechlin had a great onscreen presence for the character, and Superman was set up nicely as a generally offscreen guardian for Kara, but he didn’t really make much of an impact. Then, they gave him a show along with Lois Lane, played by Elizabeth Tulloch, in which they have twin sons and are trying to live relatively ‘normally’. Now, initially it was planned to be a full part of the Arrowverse, but due to fucking Covid things had to be filmed differently, so cameos had to be scrapped, making it near pointless to say Superman & Lois was an offical part of it. Instead, it became its own thing in a separate universe, but I still consider it to be part of the same universe, hence why it’s on this list. I didn’t have high expectations for this show – I didn’t know what to expect at all. In fact, I really didn’t expect it to become pretty much my favourite show of all time. It had me laughing, it had me on the edge of my seat, and, perhaps most of all, the last couple of seasons of this criminally short series had me bawling my eyes out, as a particular storyline really hit home. I’m so glad this show exists, and I will be watching it again if I ever recover.

Just like with Constantine in Legends and Black Lightning in the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, other cameos throughout the Arrowverse retroactively brought tons of older DC shows into the Arrowverse fold, or at least acknowledged their existence in separate universes. Shows like Smallville, Lucifer and The Flash from 1990 (with John Wesley Shipp’s consistent appearances as Jay Garrick from 1990 in The Flash 2014 series being a particularly strong connection) became connected, and it was quite exciting to see tons of beloved characters brought together and interacting, many for the first time. While some series maybe went on longer than they should have and some cancelled before their time, on the whole it’s a really enjoyable universe for DC fans. It got me checking out a wider range of characters in the comics and helped me learn so much more about my favourite comic publishing company.

What show am I watching next? Well, two I’ve started before but, just like Arrow, never got around to finishing: Constantine, one of my all-time favourite comic book characters (second only to Superman), and Lucifer, whose 2000-2006 comic run I absolutely loved. They could not be more different as the anti-heroes, but that’s why we love ’em.