All might not be well for the heroes of The CW’s Arrowverse. While Oliver Queen is getting a proper send-off with Arrow now airing a shortened final season that will work as something of an epilogue, and hype is sky high for the crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” that excitement isn’t spreading to all corners of the shared universe, it seems, as both Supergirl and Batwoman are currently flailing in the ratings.
Supergirl, originally a CBS production, has been one of the bigger success stories on the network, having ratings on par, and sometimes even surpassing, The Flash, which is generally considered to be the darling of the TV corner of DC. But that’s no longer the case, as this past Sunday’s episode only managed a 0.2 rating, which is equal to about 900,000 viewers. This is certainly a far cry from highs the show once experienced.
Batwoman, on the other hand, is faring better, but not by much, with that show’s most recent episode pulling in a 0.3 rating and 1.23 million viewers. While there seemed to be a lot of initial enthusiasm for the Gotham-set series, that’s not translating currently.
There are obviously a lot of factors at play here and it could simply be a case of market over-saturation, as The CW currently has 6 DC shows on the air, and several more in development. That’s a lot of content to ask fans to keep up with, and it could be that these are the first shows to suffer the negative effects of that.
Conversely, it could be a quality issue. Supergirl was tagged with having subpar seasons recently (in particular, season 3) and Batwoman isn’t setting the critical sphere on fire by any means. The tepid audience responses to these shows could be the result of the lower acclaim these series are receiving compared to their compatriots.
At the same time though, people watch television in different ways nowadays. Both of the shows will likely see big jumps when delayed viewing is taken into account. There are also those who watch the series via an online provider, like The CW’s own free streaming service, and that isn’t considered when calculating the ratings. Also, Supergirl is always a big performer for Netflix. So, just because the ratings appear low now, that doesn’t necessarily signal a death knell for either of these shows just yet.