The End of an Actual Era: A Eulogy for the CW as We Know It

Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to attend today’s ceremony. We are gathered to celebrate the long and storied life of one of our constant companions in the media landscape: the CW over the last two decades. 

Of course, the CW has gone by many monikers and provided a veritable treasure trove of content throughout its time. Some of the older audience members will recall a time of the WB and UPN that existed as competitors before eventually merging into the CW that we know today after several exchanges of iconic franchises such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville. And in many ways, those two franchises were emblematic of what the CW would commonly be known by. 

Buffy, the source of Slayers and Modern Fandom arguably.

The Tumblr historians, the sects of post-2000 fandom, have a particular conception of the union of the two networks into the CW looked like. Said conception will likely confuse future anthropologists, and that’s the one I would like to talk about. And so, we begin this eulogy by discussing perhaps the most iconic franchise of the CW which originally started on the WB: Supernatural.

Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel

Clocking in at 327 episodes over 15 seasons, Supernatural holds the distinction of being the longest running live-action fantasy series in the US. This is a baffling fact given that this show had a very clearly defined myth arc that ran from Season 1 to Season 5….