Following Supergirl‘s move from CBS to The CW, the network had four superhero TV series on the air. The others were, of course, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow, but a fifth was added tonight in the form of Black Lightning. While that’s certainly exciting, those of you hoping that the titular hero will be seen standing side by side with characters from those other shows are going to be seriously disappointed.
That’s because he won’t be part of the Arrowverse, nor will he be included in any future crossover event. That also means we can probably rule out seeing Black Lightning make a cameo appearance in one of the other CW DC shows. Or at least, that’s what we’d been told. Then the series premiere aired tonight and fans picked up on what seemed like a throwaway line on the surface, but actually hinted that Jefferson Pierce may inhabit the same world as Barry Allen and Oliver Queen.
As Screen Rant tells us, there’s a “news segment about halfway through the pilot episode, in which commentator Roland Martin” says the following:
“That’s a curious question. Why is he a vigilante, but other communities have folks with superpowers and all of a sudden they’re heroes? This shows you how in this country, for nearly 400 years, there’s a double standard when it comes to us.”
Again, we’ve been given the line that the new series will be its own thing for the first season, which will allow it to not worry about the drag of continuity, but this does offer hope that Pierce will join forces with the Arrowverse gang before long. Of course, just because there’s the mention of other heroes existing in this world, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s referring to the likes of Arrow and the Flash, but it certainly leaves the door open for a further reveal down the road, don’t you think?
We certainly hope that’s the case, but unfortunately, star Cress Williams isn’t so sure if crossing over his character with those in the Arrowverse makes sense from a logistical or storytelling point of view:
“It would be hard. The thing is, I don’t know, I don’t see the world where I would want to leave my community to help them, basically, we got our hands full. And I don’t know if they would, they have very macro ‘We gotta save the world’ issues coming to us. And then there’s also the logistical ‘We should go to Atlanta, and we should go to Vancouver.'”
He makes some good points, but it’s hard to see a situation in which Black Lightning never crosses over with the other CW shows. Sure, it may not happen this year, or even the year after that, but we’d be very, very surprised if The CW doesn’t take advantage of the great opportunity they have before them to incorporate yet another hero into the ever-growing Arrowverse, wouldn’t you?