Supergirl Meeting The Flash Is A Game-Changer For DC

What happens when the Flash meets Supergirl? Chances are that some major crime gets fought, but there's something even more likely: fans watching the meeting at home will lose their minds with excitement. The crossover between CBS's Supergirl and the CW's The Flash has fans of both shows pumped about the future of DC Films' television and film endeavors. Here's why.

In recent years, Marvel's been pretty clearly beating DC in the live action game. Sure, Arrow and its related shows are popular, but numbers-wise they just can't compete with the Avengers film franchise. Marvel gained a lot of buzz by successfully creating an interconnected movie universe, where stories can hop from one film to another. DC's desperately been trying to play catch up, and so far, they haven't succeeded. Man of Steel just wasn't as popular as Iron Man, and Batman v Superman has to make a billion dollars to hit Marvel Studios standards. But, by introducing its television multiverse, DC's finally achieved something more complex and interesting than Marvel. With this crossover, DC is able to connect characters across different TV networks, and they've even set up a way to include their movies. This isn't like Agents of SHIELD, which exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but always feels like an afterthought. Arrow doesn't have to change because of something the movies do, but it can incorporate the events if it wants to. This won't be like Agent Coulson, who's definitely alive but is somehow never mentioned by his friends the Avengers.

Back when Supergirl was first announced, fans wanted to know if the show would be part of the same universe as The Flash and Arrow. Since the shows lived on separate networks, the answer seemed to be "no." Even worse, the news eventually broke that Supergirl would never crossover with the other shows. Her show would exist in its own in a completely separate universe. Obviously,this ended up not being true. Interestingly, early reports claimed that Superman would never appear in Supergirl. How much longer until this proves untrue too? Sure, Superman's appeared in a quick and blurry cameo, but fans want to actually see him. By teaming up with The Flash, the show demonstrates that these "never going to happen" statements might not be set in stone. Maybe we'll get appearances from other members of the DC Comics Universe before too long...

The concept of multiple realities opens up some interesting possibilities. Since these characters are all based on comics, it can be hard to bring some concepts to life. And no character makes it from the page to the screen unchanged. But DC just created the perfect out. If they make another crappy Green Lantern film, they can just go "nah, that took place in another universe" and ignore the movie. They can keep what works and then retry anything that doesn't. If Aquaman is super lame in Batman v Superman, which would not be shocking, that's not the end of the world. They can just try a version that's a tattooed bodybuilder and see if that works (it probably would).

DC has a long and impressive history when it comes to TV shows. They've been so successful in this area that it's kind of surprising that they keep trying to make movies. The kind of not-good Batman Forever was released while the critically lauded Batman: The Animated Series was still being produced. Clearly, the company just knows TV better. If two shows that are currently on competing networks can crossover, than that means anything could be fair game. That means that the DC Animated Universe could finally come back to life. The live action shows could potentially bring in characters from cartoons like Batman Beyond. Even though it had its flaws, Smallville was still a pretty good show. Unfortunately, we never got to see Tom Welling really become Superman. Instead, we were left with a few blurry shots and a glimpse of him ripping his shirt open. Here's this amazing opportunity to right that wrong. Even The Super Friends could show up! Now that would be a team up no one saw coming.

This crossover also creates the very real potential for an amazing adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The biggest complaint everyone's been making about the live-action DC properties is that they all exist in separate worlds. Ever since Marvel changed the game, fans want everything to be connected, and DC's strategy seemed like they were stuck in old fashioned thinking. In reality, DC has created a situation very similar to their comic books back before the mid-80s. There were a bunch of different realities, and certain heroes lived with other heroes, and it was just as complicated. There were even multiple versions of the same characters who existed on different Earths. DC finally condensed all of their properties into one reality with the event Crisis on Infinite Earths, a storyline that combined the best parts of each reality into one, connected world. Early episodes of The Flash dropped hints about a future crisis, so is DC setting up a multimedia adaptation of this story? Are they going to actually outdo Marvel and create an event that combines their movie and TV properties into one, mega-production? The pieces are all in place for it, they just have to have the guts to pull the trigger.