With five live-action television series currently airing, the Arrowverse is an established force of superhero fiction. But it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for The CW, and in a new interview, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim tells us about the challenges of developing this world.
In just a couple of days, the biggest comic book event in the history of television will premiere in the form of “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” the five-hour crossover story that will unite every superhero from across the multiverse to save the universe from destruction. Ever since the pilot episode of The Flash premiered in 2014, fans have been waiting for the catastrophic event that would lead to the disappearance of Barry Allen and change the world. Now, we’re finally here and the crossover event promises to be everything we’ve hoped for and more.
None of this would be possible without the years of storytelling and character development that went into these shows, though. In fact, the scale increased so much that making the “Crisis on Earth-X” episodes felt like a climactic end to the idea of crossovers, says executive producer Marc Guggenheim in a new interview with EW.
“It killed all of us. We were feeling the effects of it literally a year after,” he said. “The network had to really, really convince us to do another crossover because after ‘Crisis on Earth-X,’ we were all pretty burned out. We were like, ‘Can we take a break and then come back for Crisis on Infinite Earths?’ And The CW was like, ‘No, no, don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be all four shows. It can only be three hours.’”
While “Crisis on Earth X” was stupendous in scale, last year’s “Elseworlds” served as a prelude to both “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and Batwoman by introducing the Monitor and taking our heroes to Gotham City for the first time.
We still don’t know how the upcoming cataclysm will change the landscape of Arrowverse, and whether we’ll get more crossovers after this one or a two-three year break. But we do know that things will never be the same as Arrow wraps up its last season with an emotional farewell to Oliver Queen, the hero that started it all.
You can catch the midseason finale of Arrow tonight on The CW at 9 pm ET.