Opening Remarks
So... it's been a pretty long time since I've been motivated to write anything about the Arrowverse. After all these years, I think my interest has finally waned for good. "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and the end of Arrow came at a good time, I guess, since they really felt like a natural getting-off point for my journey through the Arrowverse. I wonder if a lot of viewers had the same experience... it's enough to make me question the business sense of the way "Crisis" was handled. I'm sure they got a lot of viewers to tune in just for the spectacle of it, but I doubt that many of them were compelled to start watching any of the shows beyond that. I'd wager that "Crisis" lost the Arrowverse more viewers than it gained it in the end.
In fact, a lot of the Arrowverse's recent "business" decisions have left me scratching my head. While I can appreciate Katherine McNamara's potential as a leading woman, the whole concept behind Green Arrow and the Canaries made no sense from the start. Why create a new TV show whose only possible appeal would be to the rapidly declining Arrow viewer-base? There's no way any non-Arrow viewers would ever be interested in that show, because it's setting and concept were so strongly tied to Arrow. And even if the idea was to create "Arrow-lite" and basically find a way to continue Arrow without Stephen Amell, why choose Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavy as the carry-over inclusions? They were hardly the most beloved parts of Arrow in the first place... I don't know. It's just very bizarre. If I might be a backseat TV-producer for a moment, wouldn't making a Diggle Green Lantern show make way more sense?? That character has way more love from the existing Arrowverse fans (even ones who stopped watching 5+ years ago), plus the John Stewart character has tons of mainstream recognition that would bring in a new non-Arrow audience. Ugh, whatever.
Then there's Batwoman, which I really tried to like but had to stop watching about halfway through season 1. It was just so damn dark and depressing. And once it got to watching people cut each other's faces off, I had to ask myself why I was putting myself through this punishment. Then there was the whole hoopla of Ruby Rose's quitting, which I have to believe really hurt the perception of the show. For me though, the bait-and-switch they pulled by teasing all the Batman rogues during "Elseworlds" just to not use any of them in Batwoman really felt like the biggest kick in the balls. Even just tonally, the presentation the Arkham Asylum stuff in "Elseworlds" really sold me on Batwoman more than anything else. I guess I was stupid to think that the show would have any resemblance to that. My preference toward cheerier entertainment was never going to be compatible with the creative direction of Batwoman.
As for Superman & Lois, I've decided to give it a pass. Kinda like Batwoman, the promos I've seen just seem so darn depressing. You'd especially expect anything about Superman to be uplifting and warm, but they seem to have taken the Snyder approach instead. A few years ago, I surely would have given the show a chance just the same, but at this point in my Arrowverse journey, it's quite frankly just not worth it anymore. All that being said, I'll surely make a point to watch the episode where Diggle shows up as Green Lantern (ditto for Batwoman, btw).
Of course, there's still The Flash, which I have finally, finally decided to give up on. I sorta quit once already after the trainwreck that was season 4, but the stuff I read about the start to season 5 managed to pull me back in. And overall, season 5 was truly better than the show had been in a while before that. Since then, the show's quality has remained what I would call "watchable" (meaning that it's not actually upsetting to watch it, just very meh). But without the synergy of caring about the Arrowverse overall, "watchable" is just not good enough for me any more. It's not worth the time.
That leaves Legends, which I probably will actually continue watching! Legends is still pretty fun and it has become so isolated from the other shows that it's really no problem at all to watch it in a vacuum. Still, though, I feel the show declining in quality every year, so we may be near a tipping point where I even give up on this old favorite.
Now that I think about it, there's probably another factor subconsciously influencing my attitude toward the Arrowverse: Disney+. Compared to the Marvel stuff that's going to be pumping out from Disney+, the Arrowverse shows compare really unfavorably. For almost 10 years now, they've had the market cornered on interconnected superhero universes for television, but now that Disney's caught up, they really can't compete with Marvel head-on like this. And frankly, the stream of Marvel and Star Wars shows that are scheduled for Disney+ are looking like pretty much enough TV for me these days.
So there it is. For all my Arrowverse love and passion (which I still do harbor, btw), I have to admit that I finally have outgrown these shows. But that's not even what I originally started this post to talk about! I found some old files on my computer relating to the Arrowverse and figured I might as well post them. So without further rambling...
The Timelines
A while back, I made some timelines of the membership histories of Team Arrow and the Legends. After a quick update to include the most recent year, I figured I may as well post them here.
I used Wikipedia's EasyTimeline renderer to make this happen. It's a pretty nifty little tool if you want to take a look.
It's pretty hard to objectively define what constitutes "joining" or "quitting" a team in many cases, so I just used my best judgment here. If you're wondering why I haven't done Team Flash, it's because that show plays it very nonchalant about who actually is or isn't on the team. Especially in recent reasons, there are like a dozen people who come and go from STAR Labs willy-nilly--who's to say which ones are actually members of Team Flash.
Closing Remarks
Well, I logged on just to post a couple images and ended up writing a diatribe on the state of the Arrowverse. I guess I'm glad I got all that down, though. Honestly, it's kinda tough for me to let go and admit that I'm just not enjoying the Arrowverse anymore. It helps a little to organize my feelings by putting it all into words.
Also, I totally may still have things to post here in the future. I'm still a huge sucker for the parts of the Arrowverse I have seen to date (especially Arrow), and I there may yet be tidbits of interesting info I come across. One day, if I'm really, really, really, really, really bored and have nothing at all better to do, I may even revisit my "atlas" project.
For now, though, I'm pretty happy and even a little proud of the stuff I have posted here. Obviously, no one but me has ever read it, but that's never bothered me. And it's not even so much about the content as the writing, weirdly enough. Maybe I'll have to find something else to write about. I enjoy it a lot.
I hope you enjoyed, too! (...whoever you are)
Phillip
Phillip
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