Now that it's really part of the Arrowverse, Black Lightning is getting a spin-off

By Sam Barsanti | November 12, 2020 | 8:40pm

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Now that it's really part of the Arrowverse, Black Lightning is getting a spin-off

Black Lightning Photo: Mark Hill/The CW

It may feel like it happened a million years ago, but last December’s Crisis On Infinite Earths event on The CW officially made Black Lightning part of the Arrowverse alongside Arrow and The Flash, despite previous claims that it was set in a completely unrelated superhero word. Crisis revealed that it took place in a different reality, like Supergirl did at the time, but the crossover miniseries ended with the Black Lightning characters merging with the newly rebooted Arrowverse reality—meaning Cress Williams’ eponymous super-vigilante is how hanging out on the same Earth as Barry Allen and Batwoman. Now, as a proper “welcome to the club” gift to Black Lightning, The CW is letting the series in on one of the great joys of the Arrowverse: spin-offs!

According to Deadline, The CW is developing a Black Lightning spin-off about Jordan Calloway’s Painkiller, the cybernetically enhanced ex-boyfriend of Black Lightning’s daughter Jennifer, who became a super-powered murder machine and worked for the evil Tobias Whale and the similarly bad Agent Odell. The spin-off, which will be set up with a backdoor pilot in the next season of Black Lightning, will be about him leaving his violent past and Freeland City behind to start a new life, with a new cast of supporting characters who don’t know that he’s a former murder machine—at least until some kind of superhero action pops up.