The Decline and Fall of the Arrowverse?

The Arrowverse was, once upon a time, a unique phenomenon in TV land, an extraordinary sprawl of interconnected television series' putting a truly unprecedented amount of DC Comics-based content on the air.

A decade on it is looking rather weary. The flagship show Arrow is gone, of course, while Legends of Tomorrow and Batgirl have been canceled, and most of the rest are in trouble.

Much of the comment about the matter points to specific missteps on the part of the shows' writers--like an underwhelming follow-up to the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" arc, or (alleged) political backlash for some offense or other to this or that part of the audience (too "woke," not "woke" enough, etc., etc., ad infinitum and ad nauseam). Yet other factors seem worth mentioning, not least the fact that this whole TV universe has been intensively mined for a decade now--a problem the greater because of the inherent limitations of the format. (I remember watching even earlier seasons of Arrow I found myself thinking of just how many, many, many times we had seen all this done before.)

There is, too, the matter of the general decline of broadcast television, with the margin perhaps especially slight for a relatively junior, relatively youth-oriented network (as against that "old folks"-coddling ratings champion, CBS), and its particularly heavy investment in a form of content with a necessarily finite audience (like a collection of arc-oriented, intricately interconnected superhero shows). The difficulty of holding that audience would seem all the greater with the competition in this very area on the rise, not least in streaming--viewers here now having a superabundance of other small-screen superhero content to enjoy (with the Marvel Cinematic Universe increasingly on TV as well), and from what I can tell, others producing plenty of other DC Comics Universe content that is newer, fresher, more varied, and for those who go for that sort of thing, more "adult" (with the new HBO Max streaming service trumpeting the fact in its promotions).

In short, the Arrowverse made a splash, but the world has since moved on as what was novel became commonplace, and has come to be delivered to the consumer via different, freer media. That being the case it may be that the Arrowverse will be wrapped up, with perhaps certain legacies transferred elsewhere--or reinvented altogether.