The television program, Arrow, seemed to open up to a wider universe with the introduction of Barry Allen in “The Scientist” (2013). Grant Gustin then spun off into his own series in 2014. We also have a side note in the Fox show Gotham which told the years when James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) made the city safe while the young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) grew up to become Batman. Then, in Arrow, there was Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer who became the Atom. Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) was revived and became the White Canary. The team of Professor Martin Stein (Victor Garber) and Jefferson Jackson (Franz Drameh) became Firestorm in The Flash. The same year brought Kendra Saunders (Ciara Renee) who was Hawkgirl. They were joined by the former Flash villains, Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) and Heatwave (Dominic Purcell) to form the Legends of Tomorrow. This was all in 2015. Flash also encountered Jay Garrick, the Flash, of Earth-2, in “Flash of Two Worlds” (2015). There was also Melissa Benoist as Supergirl. Flash crossed over to her show with the episode “Worlds Finest” (2016) and we learned he can from Earth-1. Supergirl exists on Earth-38.
We also had the shows crossing over in Invasion!. In 2017, all of the shows crossed over in Crisis on Earth-X. It was hinted at with a newspaper headline from 2024 that Flash disappears during the Crisis and “Red skies vanish”, which points to the comic book storyline, Crisis at Infinite Earths. The Berlanti shows, produced for Warner Bros. Television, seem to following the comic books. The anomaly was another universe with the DC Extended Universe with the films starting with Man of Steel (2013) which led to Justice League (2017). Tyler Hoechlin was introduced as Superman in “The Adventures of Supergirl” (2016) episode of Supergirl. We also saw the Ezra Miller version of Barry Allen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) which I call Beavis. Krypton is the series on the SyFy cable network that started in 2018. It told the back story of Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), the ancestor of Superman. There is also the Titans and Doom Patrol series on the DC Universe streaming service. Viewers understand that the television and movie universes are separate and don’t cross over. No hope there for DC Comics characters.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe of course started with Iron Man (2008) and we saw all of the heroes together in The Avengers (2012). In 2013, we had Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which featured Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) from the MCU films. Still, the series was not cohesive with the events of the film universe. There seemed to be more of a connection with the Agent Carter (2015-2016) series. The show was created by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely who are the screenwriters for Avengers: Infinity War (2017) and four other films (out of 20 films total) in the MCU! Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) was of course introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). There were hints of the MCU with the premiere of Daredevil in 2016 on Netflix. The show featured Charlie Cox in the lead role. This ultimately lead to all of the Netflix Marvel heroes uniting in Defenders (2017).
Sony’s Spider-Man crossed over to the MCU with Captain America: Civil War (2016) and then Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017). Still, it seems that the television universes are separate from each other and also the film MCU. They are all Marvel Comics heroes, but it seems like the characters stay in their own groups of television and movies. There seems little chance that they will all show up in the next Avengers movie. So is there any hope of crossing over television and movie superhero universes? X-Men (2000) was another Marvel Comics' property in this case released by 20th Century Fox. It was a black leather jacket version of the team of mutant super heroes. The film did introduce Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. The X-Men films seemed to sputter out with the third movie with a new director. Wolverine was so popular a character he spun off into his own films starting with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).
The film did introduce Deadpool who of course spun off in his own film in 2016. For films, we also have New Mutants which was the title connected to the X-Men comic book. In 2017, Legion debuted on the FX cable network, it starred Dan Stevens as David Haller. He was the son of Charles Xavier which ties into the X-Men movies. Then, there was The Gifted which begun to air on the Fox network in 2017. It dealt with the aftermath of the end of the X-Men and the mutant survivors. The show has Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, and Lauren Shuler Donner as executive producers. Simon Kinberg is the director and producer of Dark Phoenix. So the same creative teams are on the television show and the movie. This makes it the best chance of a cross over between television and movie universes. The event that ended the X-Men could be what happens in Dark Phoenix. We might see mutants like Polaris (Emma Dumont) and Thunderbird (Blair Redford) appearing in cameos in Dark Phoenix. If so, they will be able to accomplish something no comic book universe has accomplished.
#TheTitans, #TheAvengers, #TheGifted, #DarkPhoenix
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