The Arrowverse is officially over. It technically ended with The Flash last year, but Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch as Superman & Lois were a leftover from all of that, even if the network said that their characters weren't connected to the Arrowverse. So now, with the end of Superman & Lois, it's over. It mostly sucked, but that hasn't diminished my love for this strange, exciting era of the CW.

It all started with Arrow in 2012, and would be followed by The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Batwoman. Gotham Knights and Naomi weren't connected, but it still showed that the network was trying to experiment. Superman & Lois, finally, was connected until it wasn't. And most of it kind of sucked, but I'm entirely okay with that.

What a weird experiment!

We probably have the MCU to thank for the Arrowverse existing. With the success of Arrow, the CW network greenlit The Flash. And then the Arrowverse exploded in size and complexity. For a brief moment in 2019, all six primary Arrowverse shows were all on the air at the same time. Somewhere between 2012 and now, network television began to die off. It was probably even earlier than 2012, but it wasn't as obvious then as it is now. The stuff still on television is mostly for older audiences who don't "get" streaming. But the Arrowverse was formally aimed at a younger audience of teenagers and young adults--people who could see themselves in the characters on those shows.

Connecting it all together was an even stranger part of it. Once we had an assembly of shows, the network was doing crossovers. The early crossovers were simple; Flash vs. Arrow, Flash meets Supergirl, and so on. But then Invasion! put the characters of most of the current shows together in one place and gave us a complex story spread across three different shows.

The MCU was already rolling along, with Marvel's Avengers debuting just six months before Arrow, so there's no question about where the idea came from. But even with 34 films in the MCU now, the Arrowverse had a major advantage for weaving the different characters' worlds together, and that was weekly episodes. 699 episodes across 37 seasons of television for the primary Arrowverse. Characters could appear for one or two episodes from another show and then disappear. Felicity Smoak could drop in on The Flash, Canary could drop in to Star City to visit her ex and his band of vigilantes. And it didn't have to be a major thing--it just was a part of the whole.

At least a full half of those episodes are forgettable at best, and quite bad at worst.

Every show had at least one good season.

But each show hit the exact right note at least once. For Arrow, it was Season 2, which pitted Ollie against his old friend Slade, who appeared in full Deathstroke regalia. We've seen a handful of live-action Deathstroke versions by this point, including Esai Morales on Titans, Joe Manganiello in Zack Snyder's Justice League, and Manu Bennett on Arrow. Of these, Bennett's version was my favorite. His costume looked great, and he got enough time to develop into an interesting, complex character, both during and past this season.

For The Flash it was the opening season. They went full comic book, making the daring move to bring a villain with a ridiculous name to the forefront: Reverse-Flash. Supergirl found a way in Season 4 to give its heroine a problem that not only could she not punch, but that punching would only make it worse thanks to Agent Liberty and Lex Luthor, played by the excellent Sam Witwer and Jon Cryer respectively. Black Lightning Season 3 explored what it might look like for a superhero to face a military occupation in an American town on their own. DC's Legends of Tomorrow made up for a truly terrible first season with six truly fun, strange, and inventive seasons to follow--it's secretly the best core Arrowverse show.

Superman & Lois stands head and shoulders above even DC's Legends of Tomorrow, bringing us perhaps the best-written live-action Superman yet. The series format gave the writers time to get into Clark's head and see what makes him tick, while also having him fend off things like a Kryptonian takeover, and the merging of two worlds. They didn't short shrift the villains, either. Even while combining Bizarro Superman and Doomsday into one character, they made it make sense for the show and feel like an authentic deepening of both characters. Something that should've felt totally wrong became one of the best parts of the show.

And yet, the Arrowverse sucked.

As a fan of DC characters, of the Arrowverse, and of superhero TV shows, I feel confident saying that the Arrowverse sucked.

Other seasons aside from the ones outlined above were okay at best. But they got worse. Season 4 of Arrow pitted him against Damien Darhk, a powerful magician who was just too big in scale for a guy with a bow to fight. Supergirl Season 5 had some of the worst CGI I've ever seen on top of being a confusing and bizarre season of TV. Batwoman had good ideas, but the tumult with Ruby Rose and the recasting with a new character instead of just a new actor complicated things so much that it never got its footing. The Flash had that great first season, but followed it with what amounted to "Barry screwed up the timeline again" for the next eight seasons.

And that's okay.

In terms of sheer runtime, the Arrowverse is more okay and bad, than it is actually good.

But here's the thing. So are comic books. There are some truly incredible comics, some incredible storylines, and runs by specific writers. Kingdom Come, All-Star Superman, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: The Long Halloween, Watchmen, The Saga of Swamp Thing--these are all excellent. But even without calling out specific storylines, there are tons of runs that are at best forgettable.

The Arrowverse is the closest we'll ever come to replicating comics with all the lumps and scrapes. Comics are a monthly production intended to run on for as long as possible; hard deadlines are built into it, and quality often suffers as a result because they have to just get something out, and hopefully have it be different from what came before. Inspired writers and talented artists can lift the monthlies above that and make classic runs, but it's still a monthly slog.

TV is the same way in basically every respect. They're working on tight deadlines and budgets to make something that feels authentic and hooks the audience, often flying by the seat of their pants. Worse yet, they're subject to things like the actor behind an important or beloved character stepping away, getting sick, or turning out to be an unemployable creep.

They're both about a bunch of passionate people working overtime to make an idea they had work. If comic book movies are the stadium show events, the Arrowverse was a scrappy indie band on tour. We got to watch the characters and shows develop in real-time, and see the writers experiment with those characters to figure out what worked for each of them. We got to see Oliver Queen evolve from a vengeful young man on a death march to someone who left behind a powerful, positive legacy that touched many people. Barry had to learn to stop trying to fix everything himself, and to share the responsibility with others. Superman forced Kal-El to tangle with the hurt that comes from maintaining a secret identity and let him acclimate to life as a mortal man instead of an immortal god.

These things don't work in a movie--they only work in long-form storytelling like a comic or television series. The television format has its downfalls, but I wouldn't trade the Arrowverse for anything. It was like comic books were coming to life in a way they never had before, and it was truly a once in a lifetime thing. It wasn't just one show, it was a half dozen shows. All trying to do their own things and keeping their connections to each other alive. We're never going to see its like again, especially not in the streaming age we live in now, where every show has to be massively and immediately successful or be canned after just a season and with no time to grow. For 11 years, we were lucky to be comic book fans and to bear witness to a strange, uneven, but ultimately unique project like the Arrowverse.