DC Fandome: Explore the Multiverse

Second first, same as the first.

Last month DC comics held its large, first-ever digital event: DC Fandome. This digital event was meant as a replacement for the cancelled San Diego Comic-con, a way for DC to share its major announcements with its fans over two days. Well, that was the plan anyway. You see, DC had gone a little overboard with all of its panels. I can't quickly find an exact number, but trust me, there were originally going to be a lot of panels in this short time. Form the big movies stuff, to the TV shows, to the comics etc, there was just too much stuff going on. Having an encore of each panel certainly helped, but didn't fix this problem at all.

That's why only 3 days before the event was to start, DC announced that they were going to split DC Fandome into two parts. On August 22nd part 1 would go on as planned, but only the panels of the 'Hall of Heroes' AKA the big movie and games once alongside a small selection of others would be held over 24 hours. The rest of the event was moved to September 12th as its own thing: DC Fandome: Explore the Multiverse. They also decided that unlike part 1, all of the panels would become available to you at the very start of the event, ala Netflix, and you would be able to stream them to your heart's content for the next 24 hours. A smart decision. Attending every single panel in the original format would have been impossible. Plus: letting us fans actually pick when and which order to watch them goes a long way in making the experience that much more convenient. No more connection issues causing you too much something!

Just like as I did when I talked about part 1 last month, this post won't be an entire recap of the event. No, what I want to talk about is my own experience with DC Fandome: Explore the Multiverse. To tell you what I thought about the event and what I thought about the panels I 'attended'. So, this is how it will go: this post will get divide the entire event up in the different panels I watched with my final thoughts on the whole event at the very end. Some of the panels I have a lot to say on, some of them not, but I'm going to cover all of them either way. 

Without further ado, let's dive in!

Lucifer

Let's start with the panel I accidentally watched first. What do I mean with accidentally? Well, I'll tell you right now! In my timezone, the event ran, from Saturday 7PM to Sunday 7PM. My plan was to just let it rest on Saturday as last time I had some serious connection issues in those first few hours and start watching on Sunday when (hopefully) there would less traffic on the server. I did do my preparations on Saturday though. Go over the panels again, make a list of priorities etc. etc. It was around 18:45 and I figured: 'Why not take a quick look at the site, get a lay of the land?' and I did. 

I saw all of the different 'universes' of panels, clicked on one to see the list and clicked on another, the Lucifer one, to see if they might have some neat descriptions. To my surprise, the panel automatically started playing even though the whole thing wasn't meant to start for another 10 minutes! I didn't want to Jinx it and just let it play, quickly grabbing my notepad. I mean, I am a big fan of the show, as you may or may not have noticed, so I was excited about it!

So, what was the Lucifer panel all about? Well, instead of an overview or something like that the panel basically focused on the upcoming musical episode. They showed a clip from the episode giving us a little peek in how it's going to work as well as the director and the two showrunners of the show talking about it the production of it. The most important details, that I want to talk about at least, is that the musical episode has a twist to it. 

The showrunners talked about how they wanted to do the musical episode for a reason. They didn't tell what that reason turned out to be, but judging by the fact that when everybody burst out into song at a crime scene (including the deceased) Lucifer is immediately like: 'what the f*** is going on'? I'm pretty sure it's something God-related. That's pretty much it for the panel. There was some talk about season 6, how they initially wanted to say 'No' the offer but quickly came up with a story that they felt needed to be told and also a gag reel. All in all, not an essential panel but a fun one nonetheless, if only for the music clip and the gag reel.

Young Justice

Let's move on to the panel I was looking forward to the most: the Young Justice one. One of my favourite animated shows ever and also that seems unable to stop toying with emotions! With DC Universe getting completely gutted during the large lay-offs only a month ago the show's future was once again left in the balance. In an interview, Jim Lee stated they it was expected that every DC Universe show would move over to HBO Max but no solid confirmation of this was given. As such, I had only one real expectation for the panel. An answer to the show's future. Would it stream on HBO Max or not? And, with a little bit of luck, not a single world on season 4 being its lasts. That the show wasn't cancelled after the upcoming season and that a season 5 would thus still be something that could happen. Did it meet this expectation? Well sort of.

Most of the panel was an audio play, a signature when it comes to Young Justice panels, after which there was a small Q&A. The big take-away from that was the new season will be called 'Phantoms', it's insinuated that Rocket gets a bigger focus and that the pandemic has affected the production but it's all still on track. Oh, and judging from the audio play, the time jump between Phantoms and Outsiders appears to be 2-3 years.

Overall, I'd say that it was a fun panel. Not a whole lot when it comes to new info, but the audio play was a lot of fun (if you're into that sort of thing) and the small snippets we got were nice. No word on HBO MAX, probably because this was recorded before all of that happened, but there were no mentions of Phantoms being the last season so I'm all good!

Update (19-09-2020)

It has been confirmed that DC Universe will transition to a comic only service, renamed DC Universe Infinite, while all of the original shows, including Young Justice: Phantoms, will transition over to HBO Max.

The official logo for Young Justice season 4: Phantoms. They changed the colour from red to green for this one, wonder if that has any meaning behind it?

The Arrowverse

All right, now for a little 'quick-fire'! As you might have already guessed, I enjoy the CW superhero shows thoroughly. As such, I made it a point to attend every single one of their panels. The Flash already had it's in part 1, so I skipped that one, but the rest are all up in part 2. As I think talking about every single one of them separately will make this post much longer then anyone would care to read, I've decided to put them all together under one banner and just give a few pointers on each.

First up, my favourite Arrowverse show: Legends of Tomorrow! After a blooper reel, some shenanigans with the cast and talk about season 5 we got some season 6 snippets. The Zari and Behrad sibling bond will get some more attention early on in the season, Astra and Constantine will be 'living together' and we'll see that play out and Sara's abduction by aliens. Also: we got some info about the new Legend this season. The character had an encounter with aliens as a child and is very much not a lovable goofball as most of the other cast. There's going to be some conflict there is what they mean. The panel ended with a game of true or false that I, admittedly, skipped. These panels are long folks, gotta give me the time to watch them all folks!

After that, the show that is going to very different in season 2 then it was in season 1: Batwoman. With Ruby Rose out and Javicia Leslie in, the question on everybody's mind how season 2 would shape up. First though the cast and part of the crew discussed season 1. Lots of talk about family dynamics and how the cast experiences. About 10 minutes in Javicia Leslie showed up in the panel talking about the journey to becoming the first black Batwoman. How's she exited to be this role model for so many black and LGBT people out there. Getting to know her was a big part of the panel. At around the halfway point, the discussion about season 2 began. A big question will be around what happened to Kate, who will have disappeared, and the rise of the new Batwoman. A person who was neglected by the system and has been fighting it all her life.

Judging from the discussion from the cast, the theme of the family will keep being the focus of the show, as well as a sense of community and the question of destiny. Not too much other bits of information beyond that though, other then the character of Safiyah coming tho the show and that the new Batwoman suit will evolve throughout the season. For anyone interested to see it, youŕ going to have to wait a while longer on it.

After that was the new show on the block: Superman & Lois. In the panel were DC Comics representative Jim Lee, as well as the showrunner of the show Todd Helbing and Superman and Lois themselves, Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch The panel is mostly about the premise of the show and what sets it apart from previous Superman endeavours. Clark and Lois have a family in this series and that will be the focus. Balancing their already very demanding lives, Superman and star reporter, with the challenges of parenthood all mixed in with the standard superhero heroics.

Aside from that, there's the standard experience of the cast about their experience regarding the show, events etc. Also: Jim lee teaches the cast how to draw the Superman shield which was both unexpected and pretty neat to see (and draw along with).

Lastly, it was Black Lightning's turn. I have ever only watched the pilot episode but it felt weird watching all of the other Arrowverse except this one. The entire panel had a 90's theme to it (don't ask me why) including a 90's quiz. The cast talks about their childhood heroes, both fictional and real-life, and the situation of the world with the pandemic and BLM. Pretty heavy stuff. There was some talk about the upcoming season but not much really. The bulk of the panel really was the cast talking with each other about their experiences and the current situation of the world.

The Arrowverse panels all had a very similar structure. Talk with the cast, a clip or reel here or there and some fun activity. They were a bit too long though and had some other problems, but I’ll get back to that later. Overall, I did enjoy them though if not because it was fun to see the people behind the camera for once.

Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons

The last panel on my list was the Deathstroke: Knights and Dragons. I kept up with the entire story, from the animated shorts to the actual movie and was interested to know if they would talk about this production history, how it went from a series to a movie. I also did a review on the movie a while back, which is currently my most popular post, so for that alone, I wanted to cover this panel! The panel wasn't as much hype the movie up or throw the option of a sequel out there or anything but more or less a discussion about making the movie and animation as a whole. Not anything I would really dissect here, other then it was originally meant to be a movie before getting turned into a series, only to get the switch back to the movie format sometime during production. However, that wasn't to say that I found the panel boring. I actually quite liked this peek behind the curtains and unlike some of the other panels, it kept my attention throughout.

Surprisingly, Deathstroke himself wasn't a part of the panel. Or maybe not, ''wink wink'. 

I'd say that part 2 of DC Fandome was, just like part 1, a success but was definitely the weaker of the two. It had a lot going for it, there were more panels including those of part 1, you could watch them at your own leisure and had more variety. However, as it wasn't live you didn't get the same feeling of community as part 1 and with so much content on there, it was difficult to pick out what you like and some basically got buried. I also found that panels, the once I watch at least, went on too long. Long cast discussions, games, quizzes, things that aren't bad at any rate but I feel would have been much better with a live audience and without that, it just doesn't feel quite right.

...........

DC Fandome: Explore the Multiverse didn't feel as grand as part 1, but it wasn't a bad experience by any stretch of the imagination. They improved on some aspects, had a lot more content and it was all a lot more convenient. I enjoyed it, and I hope so did you! On to the next one, am I right!