DC TV Shows Are Crushing DC Universe Movies In One Big Way

In one incredibly important area, DC TV shows like Gotham Knights and Superman & Lois are beating out DC's newer movies by a wide margin.

TV shows set in the DC Universe are far ahead of the movies in one crucial area. Naturally, film is considered to be the most important medium for DC. However, that’s not to say that DC’s movies are superior to its shows in every way.

In recent years, DC has offered a multitude of TV shows centered on a wide range of characters from its library. At this point, only a few are still running, with shows like Arrow and The Flash recently wrapping up after several years of being on the air. Several more, on the other hand, were cut short due to low viewership. Shows like Batwoman and Stargirl, for instance, never made it past their third seasons. Arguably DC TV’s biggest failure in recent memory was Gotham Knights, which was unsurprisingly canceled by The CW before its first season could even finish airing.

Due to these struggles, it’s easy to overlook some of the many strengths these shows have, with one of its biggest being its better villains. Case in point is Michael Cudlitz’s Lex Luthor. Superman & Lois refreshing take on Superman’s archrival, but it didn’t go as far as to reinvent the character. Rather, Superman & Lois brought new layers to the villain without hurting the essence of the character. By revealing that an inaccurate story published by Lois Lane helped put Lex in prison for a crime he didn’t commit for 17 years, Superman & Lois succeeded in giving the character a working motivation for his schemes in the series.

Curiously, Lex wasn’t the only Superman villain who made a grand entrance in the Superman & Lois season 3 finale. After several episodes of teasing the resurrection of Bizarro, the series dropped a huge surprise when Lex Luthor morphed him into Doomsday. Turning Bizarro into Doomsday was a massive deviation from both characters’ comic roots, but having Doomsday rise from the mutilated body of a Superman doppelganger was an interesting twist on Doomsday’s Kryptonian origin and ability to grow stronger from death.

Similar to how Superman & Lois fully brought in Lex and Doomsday toward the end of season 3 and instantly made them massive threats, Gotham Knights provided Two-Face with an extraordinary introduction of his own. After spending multiple episodes gradually developing the idealistic Harvey Dent, the series completed his transformation into his comic book counterpart in epic fashion. What Gotham Knights was able to do with Misha Collins playing the character for a full season created a nuanced interpretation of one of the Caped Crusader’s most iconic enemies.

In contrast to Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights, DC movies have been comparably less successful in introducing noteworthy villains. Black Adam’s Sabbac was a force to be reckoned with, but other than a tremendous amount of power, there wasn’t much that stood out about the character. The same also applies to Kalypso in Shazam! Fury of the Gods. There’s also Dark Flash, a character who didn’t stand revealed as the true villain of The Flash until the end of the movie, thus hindering the film’s ability to make him a truly compelling antagonist.

Boasting poorly-developed and forgettable villains holds back DC’s movies, as evidenced by the box office performances and critical reception of all three DC releases. A better villain may not have single-handedly saved any of the movies, but certainly could have been boons to their stories, as they’d made it easier for viewers to get deeply invested in the overarching plot and the conflict between the hero and their respective villain.

As DC moves forward into a new era with James Gunn at the helm, its upcoming projects could take a page from the playbook of DC’s shows. Part of what made Doomsday, Lex Luthor, and Two-Face work so well for Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights is how they took their time building up to these characters and wove them carefully into their narratives. Doomsday, for instance, didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, considering that Bizarro was initially teased as Superman & Lois’ Doomsday in season 2 to begin with.

In the case of Lex Luthor, the series didn’t show him until the last few episodes, but laid the groundwork for him - and his hatred for Clark and Lois - by laying out his history with the characters and Bruno Mannheim long before his official introduction. Lex Luthor having a reason to hate the heroes before he even showed up helped build excitement for their inevitable confrontation. The ways in which DC’s shows make their villains more than plot devices, while also centering on personal connections between them and their heroes, provide a perfect blueprint for the DC Universe’s future.