Joss Whedon has a lot to answer for… Ever since Buffy broke new ground with the brilliant ‘Once More With Feeling’, adding a musical episode to a show is always a possibility. And, I guess, when you have 2 ex-Glee stars as your leads, it makes some sense.
The plan is to have crossover episodes on Flash and Supergirl which will, for the most part, use existing songs, although they are talking about possibly composing a new tunes for each show. Apparently there is already a lot of singing and dancing on set, as a lot of the cast across the DC shows have musical backgrounds, such as Jesse L. Martin, who got to air his vocals during last season. CW/DC top man Greg Berlanti, has said he’d like to bring some of the cast from the other DC shows across for the musical numbers… I suspect you’d have to tie up and lock John Barrowman up in a basement to stop him being involved!
The musical episodes announcement came as part of their TCA panel, where they also revealed that Chris Wood, who played Kai on The Vampire Diaries, and Jake Riley on Containment will be playing Mon-El on Supergirl. There have been a few different versions of this DC character over the years, but he’s usually closely tied to the Legion of Super-Heroes. He is a Daxamite, who have similar powers on Earth to Kryptonians, with the main difference being a weakness to lead rather than Kryptonite.
Also on Supergirl, it was announced that Sharon Leal (Hellcasts, Dreamgirls) will be playing Miss Martian aka M’gann M’orzz.
Over on Flash, they announced that one of the ‘big bads’ for the upcoming season will be a speedster called Savitar. According to the DC comic book bio, he was a pilot who’s plane was struck by lightning which gave him super speed. He’s studied the speedforce and gained “new powers that no other living speedster has mastered”. They also mentioned in a recent interview that there would be another non-speedster major villain this season too.
On Legends Of Tomorrow, it was announced that Lance Henriksen, probably best know for his iconic role as Bishop in Aliens, will be playing JSA’s Obsidian.
The last major bit of news was that 80’s icon and Expendables star Dolph Lundgren will be showing up on Arrow during this year’s flashback sequences, which are set in Russia.
All the DC shows should be returning to Sky 1 in the Autumn.