Arrowverse Recap: The Story So Far & Every Ending Explained (2026)

Updated October 21, 2026 · 10 titles · spoilers for everything below

The Arrowverse is a shared universe of DC series that began with Arrow in 2012, when Oliver Queen came home from five years stranded on an island and started fighting crime with a bow. It grew to include the Flash, Supergirl, the time-travelling Legends, Black Lightning, Batwoman and others on separate Earths, joined by yearly crossovers until Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which Oliver dies and the worlds merge into Earth-Prime. Superman & Lois, the last series, ends with Clark and Lois growing old in Smallville and their sons carrying on.

Recapped: 10
Watch time saved: 540 hours
Latest: 2021

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No. 01 · 2012 · Series

Arrow recap

In season 1, Oliver Queen returns to Starling City after five years presumed dead on the island of Lian Yu and hunts the corrupt people named in his late father's notebook as a hooded vigilante, joined by bodyguard John Diggle and IT expert Felicity Smoak. Malcolm Merlyn, the father of Oliver's best friend Tommy, sets off an earthquake device in the Glades, and Tommy dies. Flashbacks across the seasons fill in Oliver's missing years. In season 2, Oliver calls himself the Arrow, and Slade Wilson, his friend from the island, returns as Deathstroke with an army made super-strong by a serum called Mirakuru; he kills Oliver's mother, Moira. Sara Lance returns as the Canary. In season 3, Sara is murdered, and Oliver faces Ra's al Ghul of the League of Assassins, who wants him as his heir; Laurel Lance becomes the Black Canary. In season 4, as the Green Arrow, Oliver fights Damien Darhk, a magic user who kills Laurel and plans to destroy the world, and runs for mayor. In season 5, Mayor Queen trains new recruits and is hunted by Prometheus, Adrian Chase, whose father Oliver killed. In season 6, Oliver raises his son William, the team splits, and the crime lord Ricardo Diaz takes over the city; Oliver is exposed as the Green Arrow and goes to prison. In season 7, he gets out, meets his half-sister Emiko, and flash-forwards to 2040 follow his grown children, William and Mia. In season 8, Oliver works for the Monitor to prepare for the Crisis, which destroys the multiverse.

How Arrow ends

The series ends with Oliver's funeral. In Crisis on Infinite Earths, Oliver sacrifices himself, becomes the Spectre and restarts the universe as Earth-Prime, where many of his loved ones are alive again. In the finale, his family and friends gather to remember him, and the Monitor takes Felicity to an afterlife where Oliver is waiting for her. Mia continues as the Green Arrow.

No. 02 · 2014 · Series

The Flash recap

In season 1, Barry Allen, a Central City crime scene investigator, is struck by lightning when the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator explodes and gains super speed. With Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow and Harrison Wells, he fights other metahumans and searches for the man in yellow who killed his mother. Wells turns out to be Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, a speedster from the future. In season 2, breaches open to Earth-2, and the evil speedster Zoom steals speed and kills Barry's father, Henry; Barry beats him, then goes back in time to save his mother, creating Flashpoint. In season 3, the damage from Flashpoint creates new problems, Caitlin becomes Killer Frost, and the speed god Savitar, a time copy of Barry, threatens to kill Iris West. In season 4, Barry and Iris marry, and the Thinker, Clifford DeVoe, plans to make humanity dumber. In season 5, their daughter Nora arrives from the future to help fight Cicada, a killer of metahumans, and is erased from time. In season 6, Barry prepares for the Crisis and then fights Mirror Master. In season 7, Barry rebuilds the Speed Force and faces new forces of nature. In season 8, Despero and Reverse-Flash bring Armageddon, and Frost dies. In season 9, Barry fights the Red Death, an alternate Batwoman, and finally Cobalt Blue, Eddie Thawne, who resurrects Eobard and other evil speedsters.

How The Flash ends

The series ends with Barry talking Eddie Thawne down in the Negative Speed Force and getting back to Iris as she gives birth to their daughter, Nora. Khione returns Caitlin's body to her, Joe and Cecile get engaged, and Barry uses a lightning bolt to create new speedsters, including Avery Ho and Jess Chambers, while carrying on as the Flash.

No. 03 · 2014 · Series · optional

Constantine recap

This is a single season that aired on NBC. John Constantine, an English exorcist and con man, is haunted by a failed exorcism in Newcastle that damned a girl named Astra to Hell and his own soul with her. The angel Manny tells him a rising darkness is thinning the barrier between Hell and Earth, and offers him a chance at redemption by fighting it. With his oldest friend Chas Chandler, who keeps coming back from death, and Zed Martin, a psychic artist, John travels across the United States in an old truck, using a scrying map to find supernatural threats: demons, ghosts and cursed objects. The Brujeria, a cult of witch doctors, turns out to be connected to the darkness. Papa Midnite, a voodoo priest, puts a bounty on John.

How Constantine ends

In the last episode, John, Zed and detective Jim Corrigan rescue kidnapped girls from a satanist, and Papa Midnite is arrested. Manny frees Midnite, cancelling the bounty, and is revealed to be the boss of the Brujeria. NBC cancelled the show, and John moved into the Arrowverse in Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, joining the Legends as a regular.

No. 04 · 2015 · Series · optional

Vixen recap

This is an animated web series in two short seasons. In season 1, Mari McCabe, a young woman in Detroit raised by foster parents, uses the Tantu Totem, a necklace that lets her channel the abilities of any animal. Thugs come after the totem, and the Flash and Green Arrow arrive after S.T.A.R. Labs detects her powers. Professor Macalester, who has been helping her learn about her past, is secretly working for Kuasa, Mari's older sister, who takes the totem and brings Mari to their destroyed home village in Zambezi. The totem's spirits tell Mari she is its true owner, and she defeats Kuasa and returns to Detroit as Vixen. In season 2, Mari learns of the five Zambezi totems. A former general, Benatu Eshu, who raided her village, steals the fire totem, and Mari works with Kuasa to stop him.

How Vixen ends

Eshu kills Kuasa, and Mari defeats him underwater and destroys the fire totem with a summoning of animal spirits. She then joins Green Arrow, the Flash, Black Canary and the Atom in Coast City to face a new threat. Legends of Tomorrow later changes this history, so Mari and Kuasa share the Vixen mantle.

No. 05 · 2015 · Series

Supergirl recap

In season 1, Kara Danvers, Superman's cousin, who arrived on Earth decades late after being stuck in the Phantom Zone, works as an assistant to media mogul Cat Grant in National City. She reveals her powers saving a plane carrying her adoptive sister Alex, an agent of the DEO, an agency run by Hank Henshaw, who is really the Martian J'onn J'onzz. Kara fights escaped prisoners from the Kryptonian prison Fort Rozz, including her aunt Astra. In season 2, she befriends Lena Luthor and falls for Mon-El, a prince from Daxam, and the Daxamite queen Rhea invades; Kara has to send Mon-El away. In season 3, Kara fights Reign, a Kryptonian worldkiller hidden inside Samantha Arias, and Mon-El returns from the future married to Imra. In season 4, an anti-alien movement led by Agent Liberty is secretly backed by Lex Luthor, who also unleashes a Kara clone, Red Daughter. Lena shoots Lex and learns that Kara is Supergirl. In season 5, Lena turns against Kara and tries to control minds with technology, the Crisis merges Kara's Earth with others, and a new Lex is a hero in the public eye. Kara and Lena reconcile. In season 6, Lex sends Kara to the Phantom Zone, where she finds her father, Zor-El. After her return, Lex works with Nyxly, an imp from the Fifth Dimension who collects seven totems to take revenge on her father. Lex kills the reporter William Dey.

How Supergirl ends

The series ends with Lex and Nyxly dragged into the Phantom Zone by its own creatures after people around the world stand up to them. Weeks later, Alex marries Kelly, Brainy stays in the present with Nia, and Cat Grant buys back CatCo and offers Kara the job of editor-in-chief. Cat and Lena persuade Kara to take it and stop living two separate lives.

No. 06 · 2016 · Series

DC's Legends of Tomorrow recap

In season 1, Rip Hunter, a Time Master from the future, gathers a team of misfits, including Sara Lance (White Canary), Ray Palmer (the Atom), the two halves of Firestorm, the thieves Leonard Snart and Mick Rory, and Hawkgirl and Hawkman, to stop the immortal Vandal Savage. Snart dies destroying the Time Masters' base, and the team kills Savage. In season 2, Sara becomes captain of the time ship Waverider, and the team fights the Legion of Doom, made up of Eobard Thawne, Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn, over the Spear of Destiny, which can rewrite reality. In season 3, the team cleans up anachronisms they caused and faces the demon Mallus; Martin Stein dies. In season 4, John Constantine joins as they hunt magical creatures escaped from Hell and the demon Neron. In season 5, they fight the Fates and souls released from Hell, including the Encores. In season 6, Sara is abducted by aliens and the team hunts extraterrestrials scattered through history. In season 7, a second Waverider destroys the first, stranding the team in 1925, and they look for the inventor Gwyn Davies while Bishop builds robot copies of them.

How DC's Legends of Tomorrow ends

The series ends on a cliffhanger. In the last episode, Sara is pregnant, the Legends defeat the AI Gideon, and Nate gives up his powers. Then Mike, a Time Police agent, steals the Waverider, and when he returns with it, he and the Legends are arrested by the Time Police. The CW cancelled the show before it could resolve the arrest.

No. 07 · 2017 · Series · optional

Freedom Fighters: The Ray recap

This is an animated web series in two short seasons. In season 1, on Earth-X, a world where the Nazis won the Second World War, the Freedom Fighters lose a battle to the New Reichsmen, Overgirl, Blitzkrieg and Black Arrow, and the Ray of Earth-X escapes through a breach to Earth-1. There he finds his double, Ray Terrill, a fair housing worker, passes his light powers and the cortex of the android Red Tornado to him, and dies. Ray, still hiding that he is gay from his parents, tests his powers with a coworker and takes the name the Ray. The season ends with Ray drugged before a date. In season 2, his captors turn out to be Cisco, Mister Terrific, Green Arrow and the Flash, who train him, and Ray comes out to his parents. Overgirl steals the cortex.

How Freedom Fighters: The Ray ends

Ray is sent to Earth-X to warn the resistance that the Nazis have found their base. The Freedom Fighters defeat and capture the Reichsmen and learn where the Reich chancellor is, leading into the live-action crossover Crisis on Earth-X, where Ray fights alongside the Arrowverse heroes.

No. 08 · 2018 · Series · optional

Black Lightning recap

In season 1, Jefferson Pierce, a high school principal in Freeland who once fought crime as Black Lightning, returns to it after a gang tied to Tobias Whale, an albino crime lord, kidnaps his daughters. His older daughter Anissa gets powers and becomes Thunder, and his younger daughter Jennifer starts developing electric abilities. His friend and mentor Peter Gambi builds his suit. Jefferson learns that a government agency, the A.S.A., experimented on Freeland's children with a drug that created metahumans. In season 2, Jennifer takes the name Lightning, Jefferson's ex-wife Lynn studies metahuman children held in stasis pods, and Tobias is defeated and imprisoned. In season 3, the A.S.A. takes over Freeland under martial law and plans to weaponise metahumans, and the country of Markovia invades; Inspector Henderson, Jefferson's friend, dies. In season 4, Tobias poses as a philanthropist and runs for mayor while working on a device to remove metahuman powers, and Jennifer is replaced by an impostor from the ionosphere.

How Black Lightning ends

The series ends with Tobias Whale dead. Jefferson, buried alive and powered up by crystals, confronts Tobias in his tower and electrocutes him. The real Jennifer returns and defeats her impostor, and Gambi and Anissa destroy the power-removing device. Jefferson plans to hand the mantle to Thunder, Lightning and Wylde and to remarry Lynn.

No. 09 · 2019 · Series

Batwoman recap

In season 1, Batman has vanished from Gotham, and Kate Kane, Bruce Wayne's cousin, finds his secret base and becomes Batwoman with help from Luke Fox and her stepsister Mary Hamilton. Her father Jacob runs the Crows, a private security force, against the Wonderland Gang, led by the killer Alice. Alice is Kate's twin sister, Beth, thought dead since a car crash in their childhood. In season 2, Kate seems to die in a plane crash, and Ryan Wilder, a homeless former prisoner, finds the suit and becomes the new Batwoman. Black Mask holds Kate and alters her memories so she believes she is his daughter Circe; Ryan and Alice free her, and Kate leaves Gotham to search for Bruce. In season 3, Ryan and Luke track stolen trophies from Batman's old enemies, Ryan learns her birth mother is the businesswoman Jada Jet and meets her half brother Marquis, and Mary is taken over by a Poison Ivy plant.

How Batwoman ends

The series ends with Gotham saved. Renee Montoya helps restore Poison Ivy, who leaves for the island of Coryana with her, and Batwoman uses the Joker's buzzer to restore Marquis, while the Joker acid he planned to drop on the city explodes harmlessly. The CW cancelled the show after season 3.

No. 10 · 2021 · Series

Superman & Lois recap

In season 1, Clark Kent and Lois Lane move from Metropolis to the Kent farm in Smallville with their teenage twins, Jonathan and Jordan, after Clark's mother dies; Jordan has powers. They reconnect with Clark's old friend Lana Lang and her family. A stranger from another Earth, John Henry Irons, arrives, and Morgan Edge, really Clark's Kryptonian half brother Tal-Rho, plans to fill human bodies with Kryptonian minds. In season 2, Superman has painful visions that lead to Bizarro, his double from an inverse world, while Lois investigates the cult leader Ally Allston, who wants to merge her world with its mirror. Lois's sister Lucy falls under Ally's spell. In season 3, Lois is diagnosed with breast cancer as Superman fights the crime boss Bruno Mannheim. Lex Luthor is freed from prison and plans revenge on Superman and Lois using a resurrected Bizarro. In season 4, that creature, now Doomsday, kills Superman, who is brought back to life. Lois's father, Sam Lane, dies, Lois beats the cancer, and Lex moves to Smallville to torment the Kents, eventually reviving Doomsday.

How Superman & Lois ends

In the finale, Superman and the twins stop Doomsday and Superman carries him toward the sun, then defeats Lex on camera, and Lex is sent to prison for life. A flash-forward covers the next three decades: Lana marries John Henry, the boys grow up, marry and protect the world, and Lois eventually dies of cancer. Clark later dies of heart failure and reunites with Lois.

Common questions

What is the Arrowverse story so far?

Where did Arrowverse leave off?

Superman & Lois (2021) is the latest. In the finale, Superman and the twins stop Doomsday and Superman carries him toward the sun, then defeats Lex on camera, and Lex is sent to prison for life. A flash-forward covers the next three decades: Lana marries John Henry, the boys grow up, marry and protect the world, and Lois eventually dies of cancer. Clark later dies of heart failure and reunites with Lois.

Arrowverse recap: the story so far