The CW has released the first trailer for the Arrow season five finale, featuring the return of Deathstroke, Nyssa al Ghul, and Captain Boomerang:
“The battle between Oliver and Adrian Chase (Josh Segarra) culminates in a final epic battle on Lian Yu. After recent events, Oliver decides to recruit a group of unlikely allies – Slade (guest star Manu Bennett), Nyssa (guest star Katrina Law), Merlyn (John Barrowman) and Digger Harkness (guest star Nick. E. Tarabay) – to defeat Chase. However, Chase has his own army – Black Siren (guest star Katie Cassidy), Evelyn Sharp (guest star Madison McLaughlin) and Talia al Ghul (guest star Lexa Doig) – and the forces collide in an explosive season finale.”
The Hollywood Reporter have announced that Cress Williams (Prison Break, Hart of Dixie) has been cast as Jackson Pierce/Black Lightning in the upcoming The CW series from Greg Berlanti (producer on the network’s Arrow, Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow) and The Game and Being Mary Jane‘s Mara Brock and Salim Akil.
This is not Williams first trip into the DC Universe, he once played Baron Sunday in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman:
The CW has released an extended trailer for the mid-season premiere of Arrow entitled “Who Are You?”
Worried that Prometheus is right and he is truly a killer at heart, Oliver looks for any ray of hope and finds it in what seems to be the miraculous return of Laurel Lance (guest star Katie Cassidy). However, Felicity, still reeling from Detective Malone’s murder, is bent on revenge – she wants to stop Prometheus at any cost. While in prison, Diggle fights for his life.
The CW has released all four episode descriptions for the upcoming Invasion crossover betweenSupergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
Titled “Medusa,” the Supergirl episode that kicks things off on Monday, November 28th 2016 is described as follows:
“Eliza (guest star Helen Slater) comes to town to celebrate Thanksgiving with her daughters. Alex (Chyler Leigh) decides it’s time to come out to her mother; Kara (Melisa Benoist) is shocked when Eliza suggests Mon-El (Chris Wood) has feelings for her, and Winn (Jeremy Jordan) and James (Mehcad Brooks) consider telling Kara the truth about the Guardian. Meanwhile, CADMUS unleashes a virus that instantly kills any alien in the vicinity so Kara enlists an unexpected ally – Lena Luthor (Katie McGrath). The epic superhero crossover kicks off tonight when Barry Allen (guest star Grant Gustin) and Cisco Ramon (guest star Carlos Valdes) seek Kara’s help with an alien invasion on their Earth.”
Titled “Invasion!” The Flash episode that follows on Tuesday, November 29th 2016 is described as:
“When aliens called the Dominators attack Central City, Barry (Grant Gustin) speeds over to Star City to ask the Green Arrow (guest star Stephen Amell) for help in stopping them. Realizing the battle against the Dominators is bigger than they thought, they track down the Legends of Tomorrow, and Barry and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) create a breach to bring back a secret weapon – Supergirl (guest star Melissa Benoist). Once all of the super friends are assembled, they come up with a plan to attack but a shocking secret related to Flashpoint is revealed and suddenly no one is sure who they can trust. Meanwhile, Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) wants to join the battle against the aliens but Iris (Candice Patton) tells him he’s not ready.”
Also titled “Invasion!” the Arrow episode on Wednesday, November 30th 2016 is described as:
“Oliver (Stephen Amell) wakes up to a life where he never got on The Queen’s Gambit. Robert (guest star Jamey Sheridan) and Moira Queen (guest star Susanna Thompson) are alive and well. Laurel (guest star Katie Cassidy) is his loving fiancée and their wedding is imminent. Everything seems perfect, but Oliver starts to notice small imperfections that make him question this new reality. Meanwhile, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) and the recruits take on a new threat with help from The Flash (guest star Grant Gustin) and Supergirl (guest star Melissa Benoist).”
Finally, the DC’s Legends of Tomorrow episode that concludes it all on December 1st 2016 is titled “Invasion!,” and is described as:
“After learning the Dominators’ plan for the world, the Legends must work together with The Flash (guest star Grant Gustin), Supergirl (guest star Melissa Benoist) and Green Arrow (guest star Stephen Amell) to kill them once and for all. Meanwhile, Stein (Victor Garber) figures out, with the help of others, how the team can terminate the Dominators, but is distracted by the aberration he realizes he created in 1987. Brandon Routh, Franz Drameh, Dominic Purcell, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Nick Zano and Caity Lotz also star.”
The Invasion crossover event will feature the likes of Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, Melissa Benoist as Kara/Supergirl, Grant Gustin as Barry Allen/The Flash, plus Caity Lotz as Sara Lance/White Canary, Nick Zano as Nate Heywood/Steel, Maisie Richardson- Sellers as Amaya Jiwe/Vixen, Dominic Purcell as Mick Rory/Heat Wave, Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer/Atom, David Ramsey as John Diggle, Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon, Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak, and the return of Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance.
When I found out a new time travel show was coming out I was part excited and part scared. With all the shows like Doctor Who, The Time Tunnel, Life on Mars, 7 Days, Quantum Leap, The Girl From Tomorrow, Goodnight, Sweetheart and Sliders there have also been some stinkers and some shows that never got to finish what they started. Was this new show worth investing in? What cliché would be involved this time? Would it last a season? Will the network interfere? Looking further I found it was being created by Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Revoltion) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield, The Chicago Code, Last Resort) so there was some hope.
As the show opens, our villain Garcia Flynn (Goran Višnjić – ER, Elektra, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is leading a a siege into some sort of scientific facility owned by a man names Connor Mason (Paterson Joseph – Peep Show, Neverwhere, You, Me and the Apocalypse). His group then enter a machine and it vanishes – Flynn is going back and changing history; he begins by stopping the Hindenburg from exploding – which on paper sounds like a good deed but it turns out he only saved it so he could blow it up on its return journey when it would contain historically important figures like John D. Rockefeller Jr. who would start the forerunner of the UN, the League of Nations.
We then meet Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer from Cowboys & Aliens, The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia, Oz the Great and Powerful , Mad Men) who is apparently the greatest history teacher in history. She discovers she may not get tenure despite her mother Carol (Susanna Thompson – Arrow, NCIS, Once and Again, Star Trek: Voyager) building the department and then stomps off home to her sister Amy (Bailey Noble – True Blood) and her mother who is terminally ill.
Lucy is then called in by the government because well…… she is the best history teacher in history or perhaps maybe another reason we are yet to know and is partnered with Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan from the US Army Delta Force (Matt Lanter – 90210, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Disaster Movie, Sorority Row, Vampires Suck and The Roommate). Lucy and Logan are joined by Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett – The Hurt Locker, Better Off Ted, Zombie Murder Explosion Die!, Gentlemen Lobsters) a coder for Connor Mason’s time travel program who will “fly” the backup prototype machine, known as the “lifeboat” on their mission to follow Flynn back to New Jersey, May 6 1937.
Whilst Lucy and Logan are the main heroes, it is Rufus who steals the episode. His line about being a black man and no part of America’s history being a good place for him to be adds a dimension to time travel shows that has rarely been explored. Hopefully this will continue in further episodes. One important rule for the series is also set out by Rufus – time travellers cannot meet themselves – a rule I’m sure will be tested in future episodes.
So our heroes travel back to stop Flynn’s plans to change history and whilst I will not spoil it all here, they pack a lot into one episode. One notable is not uncomfortable scene takes place in a New Jersey bar in 1937 where Rufus is not welcome because of his skin colour, all whilst Billie Holliday blasts out of the jukebox. Not nice to see at all but very brave to show on a network TV show.
Once the mission is complete our heroes travel back to the present. Now before the mission, Agent Denise Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey – House of Cards, Sleepy Hollow, Mr Robot) warns Lucy that the team must change nothing but when Lucy arrives back home her mother is in the kitchen cooking dinner no longer terminally ill and her sister Amy does not exists at all!
As I mentioned Timeless packs a lot into one episode, I have barely scratched the surface here but it definitely has potential to become a big player in the cult TV arena. There are so many threads that have been set out in the pilot episode that I’m sure will lead to big payoffs as the show progresses. This is a show that is great coming out the gates and I hope it continues to gain momentum. It is fun, intriguing and occasionally shocking and something you need to set to record in your TV planners.
DC Entertainment and The CW have announced that the four-part CW superhero crossover of Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will feature alien invaders The Dominators.
Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim stated “This year, for our mega ‘Arrowverse’ crossover, we’re taking inspiration from a DC crossover from the late 1980’s known as Invasion! We’re using cutting edge prosthetics and computer effects to achieve a feature film-quality look which is faithful to Invasion!”
The Dominators were initially introduced into DC Comics as villains in the 30th century of the Legion of Super-Heroes, they appeared in the 20th century in the company-wide crossover Invasion!, in which they were the primary world behind the Alien Alliance that attacked Earth. Their primary motivation for this was their concern at the genetic potential of humanity, as evidenced by the large number of super-powered beings on the Earth of the DC Universe, also known as the metagene. When the Invasion started to crumble, one Dominator created a ‘gene-bomb’ and detonated it in Earth’s atmosphere that would affect many heroes and villains that possess the metagene.
After the Invasion, a nameless Dominator played a significant role in the comic book one shot Blasters. This comic features heroes created by Dominator testing; they had wished to examine just how humans tended to gain superpowers. This testing involved running humans through a murderous obstacle course on the partly correct theory that the stress would active their ‘meta-genes’ and cause superpowers. The ‘Blasters’, which included former JLA mascot Snapper Carr, are the ones who did gain powers.
In events chronicled in Legion Annual v4 #2, Valor discovered plans for a second invasion of Earth, and thousands of humans held in genetic experimentation tanks. He led a lengthy campaign to liberate them, aided by some of the Dominators (the Diamond Caste) who opposed the policies of their ruling caste. After freeing them, Valor helped settle these modified humans on various worlds which eventually became many of the homeworlds of members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, such as Bismoll, Cargg, Braal, etc.
Several Dominators were left on Earth for years and appeared in various comics (usually briefly). One Dominator would come under the control of the Queen Bee, presently the ruler of Bialya (Justice League Europe #4). Though this alien does not survive for long, its technology would cause trouble for the Justice League and the Global Guardians. Others appeared in Captain Atom #52 (the Dominator became a farmer), in the Outsiders #44, in Iron Heights prison in Flash, a mutated Dominator with potent psionic abilities would battle members of the Green Lantern Corps, including Guy Gardner in Green Lantern Corps #7 – 9, and most recently in Superman #668.
Currently, the Dominator homeworld was under siege by the massive horde of Starro the Conqueror. The Dominators at first put up an admirable defense of their planet, however the tide soon turned against the Dominators when Starro himself entered the fray. In the end, the Dominator homeworld fell to Starro and its entire population were converted into Starro’s mindslaves, with the exception of a single Dominator Fleet Admiral who had enough individuality to realize the planet was doomed and fled, and is currently a member of Vril Dox’s R.E.B.E.L.S. seeking to defeat Starro.
Stephen Amell is currently all over Twitter posting teasers to Arrow‘s 100 episode.
From what he has posted it would seem Grant Gustin is in as The Flash, Victor Garber as Martin Stein, Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance, Franz Drameh as Jefferson Jackson, Melissa Benoist as Supergirl, and in some form or other Deathstroke The Terminator!
The CW has released an extended promo for Arrow Season 5, featuring some bits of all-new footage from the new season. Also the official synopsis for the first episode has been released for the episode, titled Legacy:
“After Laurel’s death and the departures of both Diggle and Thea from Team Arrow, Oliver takes to the streets solo to protect Star City’s citizens as the Green Arrow. With Felicity guiding him from the bunker, Oliver is forced to deal with a city that has become overrun with both criminals and a slew of new (and painfully inexperienced) vigilantes. Watching Oliver try to balance his jobs as both the mayor and also the protector of Star City, Felicity suggests he form a new team, but Oliver resists. However, when a deadly new criminal, Tobias Church (guest star Chad L. Coleman), enters the picture, Oliver realizes the best thing for the city might be a new team of superheroes. Meanwhile, the flashbacks take us to Russia where Oliver faces off against the Bratva.”
FOX have announced that they have made a pilot production commitment for DC superhero Black Lightning. It will be DC’s Greg Berlanti (producer of Arrow, Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow) working alongside Mara Brock (The Game, Being Mary Jane)and Salim Akil who will be developing the series. This marks the third collaboration between DC Entertainment and FOX with both Gotham and Lucifer preceding it.
Black Lightning, created by Tony Isabella and Trevor Von Eeden, made his first appearance in 1977’s Black Lightning #1. Beneath the mask of Black Lightning is Jefferson Pierce, a former Olympian, who was secretly born with the ability to create and manipulate electromagnetic fields. Although he had abandoned his hometown in Metropolis’ Suicide Slum after the murder of his father, Pierce returns there with his wife and daughter, taking a job as a high school principal. It is after losing one of his students to the gang violence that threatens the city that Pierce decides to take advantage of his powers by becoming a superhero.
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