The CW has officially given its annual mass renewal, this time picking up 10 shows for next season. The shows given the pass to 2018-19 include Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, The Flash, Black Lightning, Dynasty, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, Supernatural, and Riverdale.
“As The CW expands to a six-night, Sunday through Friday schedule next season, we are proud to have such a deep bench of great returning series for 2018-19. By picking these ten series up for next season, we have a terrific selection of programming to choose from when we set our fall schedule in May, with more still to come,” said CW president Mark Pedowitz. “And I’m especially happy that we’ll continue to work with the incredibly talented casts, producers, and writers who create the series our fans are so passionate about.”
The fates of Valor, Life Sentence, The 100, and iZombie will be determined closer to May upfronts, though it seems likely that The CW will only renew a maximum of two of these. With multiple actors from Valor taking pilots and Life Sentence getting pushed to Fridays at 9:00, it’ll likely come down to whether The CW wants one, both, or none of The 100 (which premieres later this month) and iZombie. Considering that 70 episodes seems to be the benchmark for CW shows that make it to season two, iZombie should crawl across the finish line, while The 100 is set to hit 70 by the end of this season.
Helping the cases of all CW shows this year is the network’s plans to expand its schedule to Sundays beginning this fall, which, along with its newfound embrace of smaller episode orders, should give it plenty of room to work with. The CW currently has 10 pilots in development to go along with these 10 renewals, including reboots of Roswell and Charmed and spinoffs of Supernatural and The Originals.
