Fans of the DC Universe were waiting for James Gunn's "Gods and Monsters" announcement. The reveal of the new DC Studios slate came at a closed press event where some of the co-CEO's candid remarks were shocking -- in particular how they reflected on The CW's Arrowverse. The former DC film and TV strategy had many problems, but the Arrowverse was never one of them.
Gunn -- who has never publicly said anything disparaging about a DC project -- seemed to be talking about the lack of a cohesive strategy steering the Warner Bros. ship. "The history of DC...was fucked up," Gunn said of DC's approach per The Hollywood Reporter, explaining that "There is the Arrowverse, there was the [DC Extended Universe], which then split and became the Joss Whedon Justice League at one point and the Snyderverse. At another point, there is Superman & Lois, there is [the] Reevesverse, there are all these different things." He went on to promise that everything in DC's future will be unified. (Except for the Elseworlds stuff that isn't.) But the house that Greg Berlanti built is exempt from that chaos.
Warner Bros. And WarnerMedia Ignored the Arrowverse - Which Is Why It's Good
Gunn joked about his own past DC stories -- specifically, Peacemaker making Bat-Mite DCEU canon. He also said "the former regime" at DC Studios "dicked around" Superman actor Henry Cavill. His ire at the former executives is well-placed. They seemed to actively disdain the CW shows in the beginning, as if they were hurting DC's feature film brand. If they'd simply allowed The Flash and, by extension, Arrow to connect to the DC Universe, it wouldn't have taken a decade for them to release a movie with Barry Allen at the center. Yet if WB had cared as much about the Arrowverse as the films, it would've suffered for the attention.
Warner Bros. micromanaged their DC Universe. Just as the suits pressed Zack Snyder to add some jokes to Justice League, they'd have forced Marc Guggenheim to have Barry kill a couple of guys during sweeps. Left alone, the Berlanti Productions machine quietly produced over 700 hours of DC adventures with clear continuity. On a CW budget, the Arrowverse storytellers put together a Crisis on Infinite Earths event series that embraced every DC show or film ever made. Its scope made Avengers: Endgame seem almost meager.
Kids who discovered the DC Universe between 2012 and 2022 likely fell for the characters they saw on TV. As some aged out of the simple morality melodramas the Arrowverse offered, the DCEU was right there with the angsty edge they were looking for. Gunn's comments are promising if only because they mean he and Peter Safran see the stories DC makes for television as important as the ones on the big screen.
The Arrowverse Was the Only DC Universe That Knew How To Use Its Characters
The DCEU's original sin was whoever's decision it was to rush the introduction of Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League in just the second film. That was already too much; the inexplicable decision to kill Superman before the first team-up hung around the next film's neck like whatever they call an albatross on Kyrpton. Thanks to the Arrowverse, DC fans got Huntress, Deathstroke and other characters that the movies never used properly. They also got some characters that they would never have seen in a feature.
Deep-cut characters like Braniac-5, Ragman and Batwing all showed up in the Arrowverse. The villains and rogues especially sent multiple nerd push notifications to DC Comics readers who never dreamed they'd see a version of The Guardian or Wild Dog in live action. These folks knew their stuff so well that they successfully introduced new characters. The White Canary existed in DC Comics, but Sara Lance was an Arrowverse original. John Diggle, Felicity Smoak and at least 50 percent of Legends of Tomorrow successfully expanded the DC multiverse. And when Supergirl brought Nicole Maines in as Dreamer, a generation of kids grew up in a world where transgender folks are superheroes. The Arrowverse is good.
Gunn surely wasn't trying to denigrate the work of the hundreds of artists and crew who carried the DC torch most successfully for a decade. Rather, he seemed to be deriding the close-minded thinking that dared to even suggest that DC's TV series were somehow less than the films. While the Arrowverse on The CW is nearly over, James Gunn and Peter Safran respect TV as much as film -- which is a positive sign for fans who've invested so much in this impressive shared universe.
The swan song of the Arrowverse begins when The Flash premieres Feb. 8 at 8:00 p.m. on The CW.