When you have four powerhouse superhero shows on your roster — and potentially a fifth on the way with Black Lightning — crossover events aren’t just an event, they’re a way of life.
So it’s no surprise that the folks at The CW are gearing up for another epic crossover event. But since it’s been an annual occurrence since its inception three years ago, we’re not even going to question if it’s a possibility more like when it’s happening.
While this season’s mega crossover event — the biggest to date spanning the course of The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow — was touted as a four-way crossover event, it didn’t really include the Supergirl hour. Unless you count the final 30 seconds that set the stage for the rest to come.
But that’s something that the executive producers plan to fix for next season’s event.
“Next year, we’re hoping to do a true four-way crossover,” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told EW.com. “The great thing about our dear friends at the CW and Mark Pedowitz picking the shows up as early as they did has allowed us to start building the schedules for next season.”
While filming these crossover episodes, these shows continue filming their individual episodes, which can make things difficult.
“One of the big things we learned from two years ago, which made the crossovers this year slightly easier, was building in shut-down days, where shows just went dark,” Kreisberg said. “The single hardest factor in doing the crossovers is actors’ availability because the shows keep going on. You’re basically juggling four shows worth of schedules.”
“The thing that we didn’t really plan on — because we weren’t aware that we were going to switch Supergirl from CBS to CW and it was really going to be part of it — that was the one show that didn’t have built-in shut-down days, so all the other ones did,” Kreisberg continued. “Melissa [Benoist] ended up being heavily in Flash and then in Arrow, so Supergirl was the one we needed to shut down the most and it was the one that we didn’t have any opportunity to. Now that we’ve gotten the early pickup and we’ve started designing the seasons, we’re building in those dark days, and actually more dark days on Supergirl than the other shows, to make it a little easier.”
But given the time allotment — with plenty of advance — and preparation underway, something tells us that won’t be a problem.
Now the important question: Can the producers find a way to top last year’s amazing crossover event?
Supergirl airs Mondays at 8pm; The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8pm; Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9pm; and Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8pm on The CW.
