Yeah, I'm pretty sure if the other shows had continued, it would have been solidly set on Earth Prime (the main post Crisis Earth) or if it still wasn't we would have regular gotten crossovers between it and the Earth Prime shows. The name Arrowverse refers to everything in it's multiverse, not just the shows set on Earth 1 and then Earth Prime after the Crisis.
I'm not sure there's much point in splitting multiversal hairs when considering the CWDC series in general, especially after "Crisis" made them all explicitly part of a larger whole. Are Stargirl and Gotham Knights somehow fundamentally distinct from the other shows? Not from where I'm sitting.
Yes, S&L is explicitly part of the Arrow/CW multiverse, since John Henry & Natalie Irons's Earth was destroyed by the antimatter wave in the Crisis. We know for a fact that it was initially meant to be set on Earth Prime; the producers have said that they only made the decision to retcon it into a separate Earth during season 2, which is why season 1 featured a John Diggle appearance that alluded to his ongoing Green Lantern-tease arc in his guest appearances on other shows that year. It wasn't until the season 2 finale that it was made explicit to the audience, through dialogue establishing that Superman was the only superhero on his Earth. Before then, it was only implied by the lack of any mention of Supergirl/Kara or any other Arrowverse heroes. The producers in season 1 were open to a Supergirl mention or appearance, but every time they thought about including one, they decided it would just be a distraction from their own story. And after more than a year of effectively ignoring the other shows (except in the Diggle episode), they finally began to realize they should just make a clean break and let the show be in its own independent continuity. Of course they are, since they're set in separate continuities with separate interpretations of their shared characters and concepts. Yes, Crisis on Infinite Earths established in passing that Stargirl was the new "Earth-2" in the Arrow multiverse, but there was never an actual crossover between its characters and the Arrowverse characters, unless you want to believe its version of Jay Garrick was somehow the same one from Earth-3 during his multiversal travels. The only other show that had a direct crossover with Stargirl was Titans, which isn't in the Arrowverse (except in the sense that all DC live-action continuities are implicitly in the same multiverse now). And Gotham Knights may have been from the same production company as the Arrowverse shows, but it was a completely self-contained show, not lasting long enough for any kind of multiversal shenanigans. A fictional multiverse is not something that has an actual existence transcending the series themselves. It's merely a storytelling conceit within certain stories. If the stories themselves contain no mention of alternate universes, then they aren't "part" of any multiverse, they're just self-contained stories, the same as most stories.
Excellent point. As for your rebuttal of my Stargirl/Gotham Knights comment, I wasn't referring so much to their place within any fictional universe(s), but to the idea that there's a point in treating them as otherwise fundamentally distinct from all the other shows based on DC comics, produced by Greg Berlanti, and aired on The CW during the same timeframe. IOW, I'm not claiming they're narratively part of the same thing, just saying it makes little sense to act like the Arrowverse shows, Stargirl, and Gotham Knights weren't all similar products of the same sausage factory.
Eh, I would distinguish Titans a bit, since it didn't air on The CW. That resulted in a pretty distinct atmosphere, particularly with all the "fucks," hyperviolence, occasional nudity, etc. Personally, I'd put it in a separate "Max originals" category of live-action DC shows, along with Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, etc.
Yes, but alongside glimpses of other shows that never had actual crossovers, like Titans, Doom Patrol, and Swamp Thing. If the characters don't actually meet and interact, if there isn't an actual story that connects them, then it's nothing more than an Easter egg. At the time Crisis was made, there were no doubt plans to arrange a crossover between Stargirl and the other shows. But COVID happened and made it much more challenging for different casts and crews to interact safely, which put the kibosh on a lot of crossover plans. And Stargirl was cancelled prematurely, with a lot of the Arrowverse following suit. So no crossover ever actually happened. I fail to see how that matters. Berlanti Productions also made All American, All American: Homecoming, The Tomorrow People, Riverdale, Katy Keene, Kung Fu, and plenty of non-DC and non-CW shows. It's a big company. Production companies are a matter of business and real-world logistics. Shared universes are a matter of internal narrative. They're apples and oranges.
That's fine. Again, the crux of what I'm saying has nothing to do with "shared universes." But it's not a point worth explaining further.
If so, then you seem to have changed the subject midway through your earlier post (emphasis added): If you're going to respond to an ongoing conversation about defining a multiverse by talking about the multiverse, then shift gears to making an unrelated point about production companies, please indicate the shift when it occurs so we don't lose track.
Not sure anybody else lost track. Commander Troi seemed to keep up just fine. But this is now arguing to win, not arguing to understand, so I'm did.
..a Supergirl who does not exist in the S&L world (including her Olsen, et al.). It was as tossed about as a scene in Black Lightning where someone was reading a comic book with the Slater Supergirl movie physical media ad on the back cover, but at the time, there was no actual Supergirl in that TV series' world. All pointing to the idea that to the BL world, SG was a fictional, comic book character with a movie adaptation.
At this point, thanks to Crisis on Infinite Earths and The Flash movie, I just assume that every live action DC adaptation is part of the same Multiverse. And now that I write that I guess I should just call it the DC Live Action Multiverse, rather than the Arrowverse since it now goes way beyond the shows directly connected to Arrow.
Yes, that was indeed the clear import and intent of "CoIE," whether a given TV series or movie was specifically shown or not. The Flash film ran (sorry) with the same concept.
Characters from parallel universes often go through the same or similar adventures as their counterparts. It has happened before, it will happen again.
Except the Flash movie's version of the multiverse works differently from the Arrowverse version, with the whole thing of going back in time causing a crossover to a parallel past and future. For all that these stories pretend there's a single multiverse unifying everything, the reality is that they're all still separate works of fiction from different creators who use the multiverse idea differently and don't bother to stay consistent with one another. This has, of course, happened before. The Smallville "season 11" comics did their own version of Crisis on Infinite Earths that depicted the Monitor, Anti-Monitor, etc. in a manner incompatible with how the Arrowverse portrayed them, even though Arrowverse Crisis purported that Smallville was part of its multiverse. And two different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, the 2003 and 2012 ones, both did multiverse specials that established the 1987 animated series and the original comics as part of their multiverses, but they depicted them in contradictory ways, so they were really two separate interpretations of the conceit of a multiverse, rather than an actual unifying multiverse. Ultimately a multiverse is just a plot device within a story, not something that actually transcends stories and has an independent existence. So just because different works employ the conceit of having a multiverse in common doesn't mean they actually do fit together in practice. Fortunately, of all Diggle's episodes in that loose arc, the S&L one has the most cursory reference to it, nothing but a throwaway reference to "glowing boxes." It's easy enough to ignore that line or assume it's a reference to something else.
Or, Occam's razor, it was the same universe until it was changed the next season. Intent also goes a long way here.