Which Superhero or Villain Deserves Their Own TV Show?

On TV, as in movies, superheroes are dominating the screen, and plans for new shows seem to be announced on the regular, even as older shows are shuttered. If you were an executive, which property and person would you greenlight this very moment?

We’ve hit a golden age of television, where both traditional networks and digital streaming services are eager to create compelling new content. It’s a strange moment—Neflix has now officially canceled all of its Marvel offerings, while plans for Marvel shows on Disney+’s stream are just beginning to ramp up.

Though we have to bid goodbye to the likes of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, and The Punisher, Marvel fans still have Agents of SHIELD and Runaways, and the announced/rumored MCU series offerings will multiply. If the first Disney+ series efforts are successful, it’s hard to believe that Disney and Marvel would stop mining their considerable vein of MCU characters. So far we’re likely to see Loki, Scarlet Witch and Vision, and Bucky and Falcon, and the rumors of other possible series keep coming.

DC has carved out an impressive live-action niche for itself in TV land, with Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Krypton, Titans, and Doom Patrol; plans for future series like Batwoman are in the works. That broad lineup shows just how hungry audiences remain for superheroic content. We haven’t even begun to talk about other series drawn from the pages of comic books, like Umbrella Academy, Deadly Class, the upcoming Watchmen (but why?), The Walking Dead, Wynonna Earp, The Tick, and many more.

There’s an incredible amount of superpowered content already unspooling onscreen. But surely there are some well-deserved comic runs and characters that we’d still delight in seeing receive shows of their own? I think that there’s a lot of room out there for more villain-centric and antihero series, and there are countless other superheroes who haven’t had their day in the sun.

I’ll go first, with one of my all-time favorites. Hey, CW, since you’re doing so well with your current slate, why not add Lex Luthor, and as the ultimate bonus, recast dynamic Smallville scene-stealer Michael Rosenbaum as Lex? The crossovers with Supergirl write themselves, and we could have a political-intrigue drama with an unethical President Luthor, which seems timely.

Who’d be first on your network’s programming?

(image: The CW)

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