The CW Renews ‘Arrow’, ‘The Flash’, ‘Supergirl’, ‘Legends of Tomorrow’, and More

This morning at the TCA press tour, The CW officially announced renewals for it’s seven of it’s most popular series including Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Supernatural, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Jane The Virgin. Freshman series No Tomorrow and Frequency, however, did not make the cut.

CW President Mark Pedowitz released a statement:

“Over the past several seasons, The CW has built a schedule of proven performers, from our lineup of DC superheroes, to critically acclaimed comedies, to sci-fi dramas. Early pickups of these seven series now allow our producers to plan ahead for next season, and gives us a solid base to build on for next season, with original scripted series to roll out all year long.”

Renewals for midseason series such as The 100, The Originals, iZombie, and newcomer Riverdale have yet to be announced.

The renewal of Arrow comes as a relief to fans of the series. After struggling with two misfires, both the disappointing season three and the atrocious fourth season, the continuation of the emerald archer’s crusade was uncertain earlier this year. The star of the series, Stephen Amell told EW:

“I do really believe that this season is sort of a throw-down-the-gauntlet year for us, where we’re either going to do what we do and do it well or it’s the last year. If we find that magic formula — which is not magic, it’s just hard work and playing to your strengths — then the show could go on for a really long time.”

Although the fifth season has been a bit of a rollercoaster in terms of quality, it has managed to improve greatly over the fourth season but that isn’t saying much considering just how bad last season was.

The grounded, gritty, street-level crime drama has evolved greatly since it’s introduction back in 2012. From the introduction to superpowers and magic to the spawning of the largest shared television universe in history, Arrow has given The CW it’s most successful endeavors with the mega crossover events featuring the heroes of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow teaming up to face a threat together.

Next year the series will continue to evolve and reinvent itself as the series will drop the flashback component, which will now have caught up with the present day storyline. Back in October executive producer Wendy Mericle told CBR News:

“What’s interesting about Season Five, just having been there from the beginning and knowing Marc (Guggenheim) and Andrew (Kreisberg) and Greg (Berlanti) as well as I do, the show was conceived in many ways as a five-year thing. Those flashbacks will be gone after this season. I think it is going to be a different… not a different show, but it is going to have to be reinvented in Season Six, because we’re closing a chapter for sure.”

The end of the flashbacks will free up some of the budget and allow the producers to focus on telling a great story without worrying how to tie the drama back to Oliver’s time away from Star City. Although the end of the flashbacks doesn’t mean we won’t ever have any again as we have now seen the series most recently flashback to season one in sort of a retcon move to add new layers to Oliver’s first year as a vigilante.

SOURCE: IGN

‘The Flash’: Barry and Cisco Go Back to the Future in Latest Promo

After the consequences of Flashpoint, Barry vowed to himself and his friends he would never change the past again but he never said anything about the future. Now that Barry has seen a glimpse into the future where the so called speed god Savitar killed Iris, he and Team Flash must figure out a way to stop it from happening.

The Flash returns Tuesday, January 24 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

BARRY FIGHTS FOR IRIS — Barry (Grant Gustin) is tormented by his vision of the future where Iris (Candice Patton) is murdered by Savitar. When a criminal named Plunder (guest star Stephen Huszar) shows up in Central City, Barry recalls the villain’s presence in his vision of the future and fears that if he catches Plunder, it will cement Iris’ fate. Confused about Barry’s hesitation to stop Plunder, Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) decides to step in as Kid Flash. Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) offers Julian (Tom Felton) a job.

SOURCE: THE CW (via WGTC)

‘Arrow’: “Who Are You” Extended Preview

Arrow has essentially rendered deaths on the series meaningless as it has found countless ways to bring back characters from the grave since first introducing magic into the series and using the Lazarus pit to resurrect Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) in the third season. Since then we have seen every dead character return in some form or another with the exception whether it be a flashback, hallucination, or dream. But it seems the writers have come up with a new mysterious reason to explain the return of a former series regular.

To close out the first half of season five, Oliver returned to his lair to find Laurel Lance A.K.A. Black Canary (Katie Cassidy) eyeing up her old super suit. At least it looked like her. The new promo for the midseason premiere titled “Who Are You?” teases this Black Canary could either be Black Siren (who was last seen in The Flash’s metahuman prison underneath Star Labs) or someone else entirely.

Arrow returns January 25 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

(via WGTC)

‘The Flash’: “Borrowing Problems From The Future” Trailer

The first trailer for the back half of season 3 of The Flash has arrived. At the beginning of the year, Barry vowed to himself and his friends he would never change the past again but he never said anything about the future. After Barry saw a glimpse into the future where the speed god Savitar killed Iris in the midseason finale, he and Team Flash must figure out a way to stop that future from happening

The Flash returns Tuesday, January 24 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

‘Arrow’: “What We Leave Behind” Clip; Producers Preview

Coming off the heels of the alien invasion by The Dominators, Oliver has been reinvigorated in his crusade to make Star City a better place.

The first half of Arrow season five has been a bit of a rollercoaster in terms of quality. The series has delivered good episodes that seem to be taking the series back to its roots but are then followed by episodes full of implausible plots told with sloppy storytelling reminiscent of the atrocious fourth season. What has been ultimately the most frustrating component of season five is this year’s big bag, Prometheus. The mystery of Prometheus’ true identity is rather dull and leaves Arrow without a compelling narrative. The producers expect us to be interested in the villain without actually giving us a reason to be. The reveal of Evelyn Sharpe (Madison Mclaughlin) as a traitor in Team Arrow’s midst, working in cahoots with Prometheus is the most interesting factor related to his character.

Executive producer Wendy Mericle takes us inside the episode, teasing what essentially sounds like a move to retcon Prometheus into the first season during Oliver’s first year as a vigilante when he was a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. Although the show has not offered any context, it has been teased by the producers that Prometheus is the consequence of choices made by Oliver in the past.

The clip released offers a curious shot featuring a crossed-out photo of Lance. The last we saw he was headed to rehab but could Prometheus have captured him and killed him already? Will tonight’s midseason finale finally reveal the identity of Prometheus?

Arrow airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

PROMETHEUS MAKES A DEADLY MOVE AGAINST OLIVER AND THE TEAM — After Prometheus attacks Curtis (Echo Kellum), Oliver (Stephen Amell) realizes Prometheus knows all of Team Arrow’s secret identities and is planning to come for them one by one. Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) and Detective Malone (guest star Tyler Ritter) discover a clue that links Prometheus to Oliver’s past.

SOURCE: THE CW

‘The Flash’: “The Present” Clip; Producers Preview

The first half of season three has been jam packed with metahumans, a holographic monster, aliens, and even a God and it’s all about to come to a head on tonight’s midseason finale of The Flash.

Executive producer Todd Helbing takes inside the episode that will see Barry (Grant Gustin) seek out all the advice he can get from Jay Garrick (John Wesley Shipp) and even Dr. Alechemy himself, Julian Albert (Tom Felton) in order to stand toe to toe with the self-proclaimed God of speed, Savitar.

The Flash airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

With Alchemy and Savitar still looming threats, Barry is unable to focus on the Christmas holiday, and especially his relationship with Iris. Determined to stop Savitar, Barry goes to Earth-3 to get advice from Jay Garrick (guest star John Wesley Shipp). Wally wants to help Barry fight Savitar and reveals that he’s been training with H.R., which doesn’t go over well with Barry. As Cisco faces his first Christmas without his brother Dante (guest star Nicholas Gonzalez), old wounds are reopened.

SOURCE: THE CW

‘Arrow’ EP Reveals Season 5 Finale Details

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

Coming as no great surprise, executive producer Marc Guggenheim has revealed that the season five finale of Arrow will take the flashbacks all the way up to the moment the show began: when Oliver (Stephen Amell) is rescued from the island of Lian Yu by a group of Chinese fisherman.

When the series began, Oliver returned to Star(ling) City after what we then thought was five years of being in exile after he was shipwrecked on the island. But at the end of season two, the head of A.R.G.U.S., Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), took Oliver to Hong Kong to train him as an assassin. Oliver eventually made his way back to the island for season four but then left again for Russia after defeating Baron Reiter (Jimmy Akingbola).

The series was originally intended to last five years and structured so that in its fifth year, the series finale would deliver its final scene with Oliver being rescued from the island. But the show became a massive hit on The CW, spawning the spinoffs The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl. And even with the last few seasons being rocky, ending the show does not seem to be the plan at this point.

While speaking with TV Line, Guggenheim revealed the plan for how they are going to handle Oliver’s rescue from the island at the end of this season:

“Spoiler alert. That’s going to end up being the Season 5 finale. It was really just a hope at that point [in 2012] that the show would run five years, and we always thought that we would intercut the final moment of the series with the first moment of the series, that it would form one big Moebius strip. There’s still a part of me that wishes we could do that but I wouldn’t want to artificially extend the flashbacks, and I also wouldn’t want to artificially cut the show short. It would’ve been a beautifully elegant thing, and five years ago me would’ve loved it. But things change, and I do think it’ll make the Season 5 finale pretty awesome.”

The flashbacks of the first two seasons were great and told a powerful story of survival and a friendship that was torn apart by Slade Wilson’s (Manu Bennett) love for Shado (Celina Jade). The finale for season two culminated with Oliver dueling with Slade both in the past and present and served to close that chapter of the story. Since then the flashbacks have been rather half-baked as they have stretched out arc’s that should only last a few episodes at best across the entire season. The flashbacks have lacked compelling plots and seem to have no focus whatsoever. They come off like a chore the producers want to be done with.

With the end of the flashbacks in sight, one thing is clear: the writers have botched Oliver’s journey toward becoming a vigilante. Oliver’s time in Hong Kong taught him to be a cold-blooded assassin but his combat skills have not improved since he was trained by Slade Wilson in the first two seasons. Oliver is still just as sloppy and as clumsy as ever. Making his skills and abilities at the opening of season one completely implausible.

SOURCE: TV LINE

‘Arrow’: “Invasion” Clip; Producers Preview

Ahead of tonight’s episode of Arrow, The CW has released a clip from the episode titled “Invasion”. Part three of the four-night crossover is the 100^th episode of the series and features the return of many cast members including Katie Cassidy, John Barrowman, Neal Mcdonough, and Susanna Thompson thanks to The Dominators sidelining Oliver in a dreamlike form of stasis.

The clip has Felicity introducing Cisco to the new members of Team Arrow just before he vibes Oliver’s original bow. In what seems like a major leap requiring a serious suspension of disbelief, the team plans to hack alien tech to figure out exactly where Oliver, Diggle, and Thea are.

Executive producer Wendy Mericle takes us inside the episode which brings us back to the more realistic days of the series in the midst of the shows most fantastical crisis. Die hard fans of the comics are going to lose their shit as they are about to get a taste of what it could have been like for Oliver and Laurel if they had gotten married like their characters were in the comics.

Arrow airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

SOURCE: THE CW

‘The Flash’: “The Present” Extended Preview

Even though we are in the middle of the four-night crossover, The CW still has midseason finales to promote. The first half of season three of The Flash has been good but still a bit uneven with Dr. Alchemy dipping in and out of the story. But after the not so shocking reveal of Julian Albert as Dr. Alechmy along with the arrival of Savitar, it seems the setups are about to come to a head in the midseason finale titled “The Present”.

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/ PT on The CW.

BARRY SEEKS HELP FROM JAY GARRICK — With Alchemy and Savitar still looming threats, Barry (Grant Gustin) is unable to focus on the Christmas holiday, and especially his relationship with Iris (Candice Patton). Determined to stop Savitar, Barry goes to Earth-3 to get advice from Jay Garrick (guest star John Wesley Shipp). Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) wants to help Barry fight Savitar and reveals that he’s been training with H.R. (Tom Cavanagh), which doesn’t go over well with Barry. As Cisco (Carlos Valdes) faces his first Christmas without his brother Dante (guest star Nicholas Gonzalez), old wounds are reopened.

‘The Flash’: “Invasion” Clip; Producers Preview

The four-night crossover event officially began at the end of Supergirl last night Well, sort of… The crossover will feature the heroes of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow coming together to take on the evil alien invaders, The Dominators. The Dominators are an Alien race interested in harnessing the gene that gives metahumans their powers to enhance members of their own species.

Ahead of tonight’s episode of The Flash — which is technically part two of the crossover but really the beginning — The CW has released a clip which has all of the heroes trying to decide just who exactly is in charge as the heroes take on their greatest challenge yet. It’s going to be interesting see the three major teams from their respective shows learn how to work together in effort to save the world.

Executive producer Todd Helbing takes us inside the episode to give us a preview of the formation of the super-team, teasing The Dominators as the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t quite describe them as the creepiest things ever but they are sure are ugly.

The Flash airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

Part three of the four-night crossover will continue tomorrow night on Arrow before concluding Thursday night on Legends of Tomorrow.

SOURCE: THE CW