Rob Price
In 2013 I started watching a show called Arrow. I didn’t actually start watching it when it first premiered which was odd, because I was a Green Arrow fan from my comic book days. I think I was reticent because the lead didn’t match what I had in mind as Green Arrow. But one weekend, I put it on early in the morning, and thanks to On Demand, I got hooked. Several hours later I had binge-watched nearly the entire first season and highly anticipated the coming episodes. It soon would become one of my all time favorite shows. Eventually other heroes were added and new shows came out, and before we knew it, producer Greg Berlanti had created a whole new mythos commonly referred to as “The Arrowverse.” And for years I would religiously watch each episode of every show. But something happened and all of a sudden I no longer had the same interest or drive to watch these characters I had grown to love, and many of my friends also begin to fall away, some from just individual shows, and others from the entire Arrowverse. And it seems that the CW seems on the brink of letting all the productions go.
- The first thing and probably the most noteworthy of reasons I lost interest is a simple one, the sheer number of things I want to watch is too vast for the time I have set aside to watch them. I have many different interests and watch several different genres and for a while there were just so many shows running simultaneously that I fell behind and was never to really catch up.
- With the upcoming popularity of streaming services where a shows season has a more customs schedule, the length of a season and its availability also come into play. Many series are opting for a shorter season that consist of six to thirteen episodes, sometimes more, sometimes less. There were times where I felt that the Arrowverse were stretching a storyline over far too many episodes and if you missed one it was difficult to get caught up in time. With shorter, more compact seasons, the ability to binge an entire season in a weekend becomes an option. The CW network was also not super consistent with the schedules. A show would be on for a couple weeks, off a couple weeks, come back for six episodes and then go off for months. Or at least that is how it seemed.
- A lesser but valid reason is the general storyline that some of the shows took. The Arrowverse mainly worked on the format of “self-contained episodes with a central story thread that weaved through out the entire season;” unfortunately, if you didn’t like the central plot that season, it became less enjoyable to watch the show. That happened to me specifically with Supergirl and a bit with Flash.
- And finally, character changes or season tones. Sometimes a favorite character leaves the show, or the actual tone of the show changes. I loved the first season of Stargirl, but a couple of episodes into the second season and it just didn’t have the same upbeat tone that the first season had. And it was that upbeat feeling that I really liked.
I cannot claim the Arrowverse is dead, as I am not a forensic anthropologist. I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV and I know there are still three series still going and possibly a fourth one starting, but for me and a lot of my friends, the Arrowverse has lost that magic something that kept us riveted to the TV. It doesn’t mean the shows are bad and it also doesn’t mean that we won’t try watching them in the future. I fully intend on some point to get caught up on everything, but the shows lost their priority in my life and many others and often that signals, like a big bat in the sky, the end.
My standard disclaimer applies I am one person, and these are only my opinions. Reviewers have very little power because everything we say is subjective, you may agree or disagree with all or part of what I say. Nothing I write should ever make you feel bad or “less than” for continuing to be a fan of anything and in return I ask the same of you. Never make anyone feel bad for liking something or not liking something. Art speaks to us all in different ways. Be respectful of that!