Arrowverse has undergone another major recasting, but the situation with Black Lightning is different from Batwoman‘s Kate Kane. Last year was a bit of a shake-up for The CW’s DC TV franchise. Following Arrow coming to an end and a game-changing 5-part crossover, Batwoman season 1 ended with a twist many did not see coming. After having portrayed Kate Kane for a year, Ruby Rose announced she was exiting the series after only one season. This was the first time a lead star in any of the Arrowverse shows had stepped down from portraying the main character while the show continued. A few months later, Black Lightning was announced to be coming to an end after four seasons.

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Despite having just joined the Arrowverse after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the show was heading into its final season. However, one of the Black Lightning stars came out revealing that they had planned on leaving the show even if season 4 wasn’t the final one. China Anne McClain, who has played the teenage superhero Jennifer Pierce a.k.a. Lightning, came out in a social media video that she was moving on. The actress did stress that she had only signed on for a limited amount of episodes for Black Lightning‘s final season, meaning she wouldn’t be in all 13 of them. While it was easy to suspect that maybe Jennifer would be absent in the middle of the season and return for the remaining run of episodes, Black Lightning pulled a bigger twist than expected.

In Black Lightning season 4, episode 5, “The Book of Ruin: Chapter One: Picking Up the Pieces”, Jefferson Pierce and his family deal with the aftermath of Jennifer’s body having exploded into photons. While the episode concluded with Jennifer’s body being restored, the viewers were left with a big shock as the characters didn’t recognize the girl who came out of the machine. Even though Jennifer recognized everyone, it was no longer McClain in the part as Laura Kariuki was now the new face for Lightning. But some might wonder why they recast Jennifer, but not Kate on Batwoman. It’s because it’s two completely different situations between the two Arrowverse shows. Batwoman had Rose leave after its first season, meaning this was still early on. It would have been another story if this had happened during the third or fourth season when the show would have been further into its run.

But with The CW having renewed Batwoman for a second season, Rose’s exit, which happened during the global pandemic, left the creators with a choice that would make more sense now than maybe later. Instead of recasting Kate, Ryan Wilder was created with Javicia Leslie cast as the new lead for Batwoman. In Black Lightning’s case, Jennifer was a character who had now been established for four seasons. While the Pierce-family series is ending, the Black Lightning mythology will possibly live on through Painkiller, focusing on Jordan Calloway’s Khalil Payne. The reason to recast Jennifer makes sense since showrunner Salim Akil have stated in an interview with SYFY Wire that if the spinoff goes to series, fans should expect to see both Lightning and Nafessa Williams’s Thunder.

With McClain having already made the decision to leave Black Lightning, this gave The CW and Painkiller’s creative team a heads up. If they want to keep using Jennifer in the Arrowverse, especially as she and Khalil have history, it makes sense to recast the part. To do it in the middle of the season gives Black Lightning a chance to let viewers get used to Kariuki’s Jennifer, including in the Painkiller backdoor pilot. Batwoman creating Ryan gave the Bat-centric drama a chance to reinvent itself early in the run by having a hero that can represent how truly difficult it is to live in Gotham City. So while Black Lightning is the second latest Arrowverse show to have a big cast change, it’s still a different situation than it was for Batwoman.

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Andy Behbakht
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Andy is a senior writer at Screen Rant as he has covered the world of entertainment journalism since 2010, including superhero/comic book media. In addition to his work as a reporter, Andy co-hosts The Flash Podcast while running and producing the entire DC TV Podcasts network. He is also the founder/editor-in-chief of The Marvel Report since Fall 2015. Andy has previously written for sites such as FanSided, KSiteTV, TV Fanatic, It’s Just Movies, Heroic Hollywood, TV Overmind, and more.

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