9 Problems Nobody Wants To Admit About The Arrowverse

You have failed this fandom.

by Ewan Paterson
Arrow Oliver
The CW

Although DC TV continues to grow in confidence with each passing year, owing to the raft of programming that the company now has on the CW, it's fair to say that the road to success hasn't always been paved with the smoothest of routes in mind.

Today, the Arrowverse manages to frustrate as much as it entertains, and while Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl all have their fair share of vociferous fans, it's plain for all to see that things have been going wrong time for some time now. Crises of identity, melodrama and finance have all reared their heads across the CW's coalition of comic book content, and while brief flurries of brilliance tend to paper over the cracks, things soon revert to type, and crush our hopes and dreams accordingly.

The norm, in this instance, just isn't good enough. And while calls to see the Arrowverse be recognised by the DCEU are valiant, there's little to set it apart - qualitatively speaking - from Warner Bros'. big-screen universe.

That may be a bitter pill for some fans to swallow, but irrespective of the good the CW has done for DC (Supergirl certainly continues to amaze), it's been five years since Arrow debuted and we're still yet to see signs of improvement.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.