Although DC Comics has many shows on the air this fall, most of them aren’t connected with each other. While Arrow and The Flash are building their own universe, Gotham and Constantine are off doing their own thing on Fox and NBC, and there are currently no plans to cross over with the CW shows... well, intentionally cross over. Recently, several astute fans were watching the second episode of Gotham and noticed a peculiar logo on one of Gotham City’s buildings: a green Q. In fact, this is the same logo used for Queen Consolidated, the company created by Oliver Queen’s family on Arrow. When they noticed this, some fans wondered if this meant Gotham and Arrow take place in the same universe, and this was the subtle way the shows were telling us.
Sadly, DC enthusiasts, it was nothing that sneaky. While talking to MTV, Gotham producer Danny Cannon stated that putting the logo in the Gotham City skyline was just a giant, weird fluke.
“I gotta tell you, it was completely unintentional. Somebody spotted it in the cutting room, but we move so fast, we were like, ‘that’s cool, leave it in! don’t talk about it!’ We were stealing – the visual effects guys were stealing neon letters from other places, and that was one that worked. But it was unintentional.”
Since Gotham takes place in the past (a weird, anachronistic past), fans may have originally thought the series was establishing that Queen Consolidated was around however many years ago, but this was simply a case of stealing a cool looking ‘Q’ for a Gotham City building. To be fair, there are many obstacles that prevent Gotham from crossing over with Arrow. Mostly it’s the time difference, but both shows already have different versions of the same villain. Last year, the Arrow episode ‘Broken Dolls’ featured The Dollmaker, a serial killer who murders young women by pouring a “flexible polymer” down their throats and afterwards posing and dressing them up like dolls. Gotham’s own Dollmaker was mentioned in the episode “Selina Kyle” as the head of a child trafficking ring. Unless being the Dollmaker is a generational thing, these are clearly different interpretations of a minor DC villain.
However, crossing over isn’t entirely an impossibility. Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim previously said it would be fun to do “Crisis on Infinite Networks,” a play on Crisis on Infinite Earths, the 1980s crossover that saw DC characters from multiple universes joining forces to defeat the reality-threatening Anti-Monitor. However, while Cannon acknowledged that fans would like to see a TV crossover, he also said that probably wouldn’t happen on Gotham due to its “very different tone.”
So while fans are able to get their fill of superhero TV connectivity on Arrow and The Flash (for now), don’t expect Gotham to join in on the fun. If it helps, though, you can always imagine Gotham’s future Batman teaming up with that universe’s Justice League. Now, about a crossover with Constantine...
