There are many teases and story setups from the DC TV shows making up the Arrowverse that will now never be addressed. The Arrowverse was an amazing creative achievement. Not only did the Arrowverse concept unify every superhero show on The CW network in a shared multiverse, but every live-action adaptation of a DC Comics property in film or television following the Crisis on Infinite Earths event.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in ownership at both The CW and Warner Bros killed the plans for the future of the Arrowverse. The promise of more-frequent crossovers and the introduction of more heroes into the Arrowverse canon went unfulfilled. With the Arrowverse setting effectively over after the final episode of The Flash season 9, it seems unlikely many of the proposed stories and cliffhangers will ever be resolved.
12 No Resolution For Legends of Tomorrow Season 7
Legends of Tomorrow season 7 ended on a major cliffhanger, with the Legends being arrested by an unnamed organization of time police. The final episode also ended with the revelation that Mike, the rogue time agent who led the time police to the Legends, was the hero Booster Gold. Despite a massive fan campaign lobbying DC Studios to give Legends of Tomorrow one more season or a movie on HBO Max to resolve the storyline, it seems unlikely the final fate of the Legends will ever be addressed. Some hope, however, that the Legends might show up in the upcoming Booster Gold show.
11 The Mystery of Dinah Drake
A metahuman cop with a sonic scream recruited to be the second Black Canary in Arrow season 5, Dinah Drake left Star City behind to seek new adventures in the finale of Arrow. Strangely enough, the pilot for Green Arrow and the Canaries (which aired as the penultimate episode of Arrow) revealed that Dinah had been displaced in time to the year 2040, and all records of her existence in the early 21st century were erased. This mystery was set up as one of the major stories of the Green Arrow and the Canaries show, but it went unresolved after The CW declined to pick up the Arrow spinoff.
10 Did Mia Queen Ever Rescue William?
The other major storyline set up by the Green Arrow and the Canaries pilot involved the abduction of Oliver Queen’s son, William Clayton. Oliver’s daughter, Mia Queen, embarked on a two-year hunt for her brother and the people who took him off-camera, with the last report regarding her search coming in the final chapter of The Flash season 8’s Armageddon crossover event. The episode ended with Mia going to seek the help of her mother, Felicity Smoak, in hacking some firewalls that might lead her to William, but the storyline was never concluded.
9 No Stargirl Crossover
Stargirl was fortunate in that its cancelation came while there was still time for the series’ writers to bring the show to a satisfying conclusion. While the final episode of Stargirl resolved all the ongoing storylines, it was not intended to be the end of Courtney Whitmore’s adventures. Both actor Brec Bassinger and executive producer Geoff Johns confirmed that Stargirl season 4 would have involved crossover episodes with the rest of the Arrowverse. While a crossover into Earth-Prime was not discussed, Johns did plan to bring Titans‘ Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) in for an episode, building off the Stargirl cameo in Titans season 4.
8 No Reporter Team-Up Storyline
Many of the Arrowverse’s greatest heroes are reporters. Despite this, there was surprisingly little on-screen interaction between the likes of Kara Danvers, Iris-West Allen, Allegra Garcia, Nia Nal, or Lois Lane. One cut scene from The Flash season 6 suggested Kara and Iris were good friends who shared sources, and a crossover between The Flash and Superman and Lois teaming Iris with Lois was considered at one time. Sadly, none of this came to pass.
7 No Titans Crossover
Set on Earth-9 of the Post-Crisis Arrowverse, Titans is another series that never got an official crossover outside some stock footage during the final chapter of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The possibility of a crossover was set up in the Titans season 4 episode, “Dude, Where’s My Gar?” when Beast Boy discovered how to use his connection to the Red to travel between dimensions. While the possibility of an Earth-Prime crossover was reportedly considered for Titans season 5, it became a moot point once the show was canceled.
6 No Justice U For John Diggle
Justice U was a proposed Arrowverse spinoff that would have placed John “Spartan” Diggle in command of a team of young metahuman heroes. It is unclear whether the proposed pilot was meant to take place on Earth-Prime or in the world of Superman and Lois, as both series feature a John Diggle variant who works for the government agency ARGUS. In either case, it doesn’t matter now that The CW has officially declined to develop the pilot into a full series.
5 Batman’s Fate On Earth-Prime
The Batwoman series was built around the idea that Bruce Wayne mysteriously disappeared from Gotham City in 2015. After Kate Kane officially passed the mantle of Batwoman on to Ryan Wilder at the end of Batwoman season 2, she embarked on a quest to find out what had happened to her cousin. The show dropped the storyline after that, and the question of what happened to Bruce Wayne was never raised again.
4 The Rising Darkness in Constantine
The short-lived 2015 Constantine series was retroactively added into Arrowverse after actor Matt Ryan was cast as warlock John Constantine in Arrow season 4 and went on to join the Legends of Tomorrow. None of Constantine’s subsequent appearances in the Arrowverse ever made mention of the Rising Darkness, which was an undefined evil that John Constantine was working to avert in Constantine. John also never made mention of his allies from the Constantine series, psychic Zed Martin or cursed cab driver Chas Chandler, leaving their final fates unexplained as well.
3 Slade Wilson’s Final Fate
Played by Manu Bennett, Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson was a drastically different character in the Arrowverse than in the comics. A member of the Australian SIS, Slade mentored Oliver Queen while they were both stranded on the island of Lian Yu, but the two became enemies after Slade was driven mad by the regenerative serum called Mirakuru. The two former friends reconciled in Arrow season 5, with Slade helping Oliver to save his family from Prometheus. Slade left the series in Arrow season 6 to seek out sons, but what happened to Slade was never revealed. However, his sons both became criminal mercenaries using the Deathstroke name and costume.
2 XS & New Green Arrow Team-Up
Despite the futures of Arrow and The Flash being extensively mapped out, neither show ever arranged a team-up between the daughters of Green Arrow and The Flash. This seems particularly shocking given that Mia Queen had a cameo in The Flash season 8, traveling to the past at one of the few times Nora West-Allen wasn’t taking a trip back in time to meet her parents when they were younger. The possibility of the two legacy heroes sharing a spin-off set in the future of the Arrowverse was apparently considered after the Green Arrow and the Canaries pilot wasn’t picked up, but the idea fell through.
1 No Proper Justice League Team-Up
Perhaps the greatest failure of the Arrowverse setting was the inability to properly utilize the Justice League concept. The final scene of Crisis on Infinite Earths teased the team’s formation, with The Flash revealing a round table and chairs with the heroes’ logos in a building resembling the Superfriends’ Hall of Justice. While the different series set on Earth-Prime made reference to the team having adventures off-camera, restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for the Arrowvese producers to ever film the epic Justice League team-up they clearly wanted to make.
Key Release Dates
