The CW is a network filled with teen dramas, genre shows, and prime time soaps. As a result, there’s many a red herring, plot twist, and cliffhanger to be found in the network’s shows. Not every story that the writers develop makes it for the long term though.
Sometimes, it might be the case of writers introducing a character to the show, but the actor portraying the character books a different job. The character can either be given a graceful exit, or simply vanish from the story with no explanation.
Other times, the character might get dropped simply because they didn’t hit with the audience, or because the story went in a different direction. Whatever the reason, a disappearing character can also mean an abandoned storyline.
One of the biggest reasons why storylines appear to be abandoned on a CW series, though, is because the writers were still figuring out just what the show would be.
Many small storylines from the first season of a series get dropped in favor of a larger arc. A pilot episode of a series may include characters or places that are never seen again, and an early conflict might not be important after years of development in a writers room.
With long running series like Smallville, Gossip Girl, Arrow, and more, the CW has plenty of shows guilty of abandoning storylines and allowing fans to forget them completely.
Here, we’re taking a look at some of them with the 17 Abandoned CW Storylines That Only True Fans Remember.
Arrow: Suicide Squad
Arrow doesn’t just stick to villains of the week or people trying to take Oliver’s city right out from under him. It’s also brought in the secret government organization ARGUS, and the Suicide Squad with it.
Made of villains conscripted into service in exchange for lighter sentencing, the Suicide Squad gets sent on the missions that call for expendable help.
When the series wrote out ARGUS leader Amanda Waller, though, no more was heard about the Suicide Squad members locked under her care. Lyla, wife of John Diggle, and a government operative, took over the organization, but never put the Squad to work.
Behind the scenes, word is that the series could no longer use the Suicide Squad because of the big screen adaptation from Warner Bros. It’s unlikely that this particular story point will ever be resolved.
Supergirl: Kara Made A Promise
In season one of Supergirl, before the show made the move to the CW, Kara found herself at odds with a young woman who didn’t really want to be a villain dubbed Bizarro. Since the move to the CW, she’s been all but forgotten.
Bizarro was a young woman whose brain was so damaged that she couldn’t survive on her own. Businessman and scientist Maxwell Lord used her as an experiment.
He brainwashed her to make her hate Supergirl so that she could be used against the hero. Upon defeating the young woman, Kara spoke with her at the headquarters of the DEO.
Kara promised to help her, even while she’s comatose, since the DEO was forced to sedate her. Since then, there’s been no indication of just how the government organization -- or Kara -- is helping her.
Supernatural: The Antichrist Is Out There
Though others referred to Sam as the Antichrist more than once, Supernatural introduced a different character to take on the title in season five. A little boy who was the child of a human and a demon held immense power.
The little boy, Jesse Turner, was able to make anything happen with just a thought. Though Castiel wanted to destroy him, Sam was unwilling to harm a child, and explained the situation to him instead, allowing Jesse to choose to be good. The Winchesters were going to train him and help him go into hiding, but that didn’t happen.
Instead, Jesse left a note apologizing for the things he did, returned his small town to the way it was before he unleashed his magic, and vanished. The episode implied he chose to be good, but no one even attempted to find him.
Gossip Girl: Chuck's Mom Lives
Gossip Girl had a lot of crazy storylines over the years. The series didn’t, however, drop as many plot lines as you might think. One very big one went away as the writers fleshed out Chuck’s backstory.
Over the years, writers revealed that Chuck’s mother passed away, but then later, she wasn’t gone at all because someone else was his mother... or was she? It was all very confusing for fans. The story was made even more confusing for those who remembered the pilot episode.
When Chuck and Nate discussed the possibility of Nate getting intimate with Blair for the first time, Chuck told him that he’d swiped some of his mom’s substances for the occasion.
At the time, his mother was still very much alive and living with Chuck and his father. Not long after, the story went that she died in childbirth, cutting Chuck’s relationship with his mother out completely.
Arrow: Vanishing Friends And Family
The Arrowverse has a nasty habit of introducing a character and then never bringing them back. The flagship series is the worst culprit of this particular type of abandoned storyline.
Oliver and Thea’s stepfather Walter disappeared on screen, as a result of the actor’s busy schedule, but he did get a chance to resurface in the comics based on the show. On the other hand, people important to the lives of the Lance sisters all but vanished.
Sin, who was the surrogate sister to Sara Lance, dropped off the face of the Earth with no explanation, and fans still want to know where she is.
Likewise, Wildcat, a vigilante active before Oliver took up the mask, spent a lot of time training Laurel to take up the Canary cause. There was even a hint of romance before he got beat up and completely disappeared from the story.
Audience members would like a little closure.
Supernatural: Adam Remains Trapped
It was a very big deal for fans when Supernatural revealed that Sam and Dean weren’t the only Winchesters out there. Little brother Adam remains trapped in Hell, though, despite the show’s focus on the importance of family.
During the storyline that reflected the idea of there always being one good and one bad brother, Dean was supposed to be the vessel for an angel. Sam, on the other hand, was the vessel for the devil. Though Sam ended up housing Lucifer, Dean refused to let Michael in. Adam became Michael’s vessel instead.
Sam sealed the four of them inside Lucifer’s cage in Hell while Dean remained behind. Their angel ally Castiel then resurrected Sam. That’s all well and good, but he left Adam behind in Hell, and though he’s been mentioned a time or two, no effort has been made to save him.
The Vampire Diaries: Damon Controls The Weather
Depending on the vampire lore used in pop culture, members of the undead can have all sorts of different abilities beyond immortality. The Vampire Diaries introduced quite a few, but one didn’t stick around.
In addition to vampires having super speed and strength, as well as the ability to compel others to do their bidding, apparently, they could also control the weather early on in the show.
The first few episodes of The Vampire Diaries in particular saw Damon Salvatore use fog rolling in to really give Elena Gilbert the creeps. There was also a crow that watched her every move.
To be fair, the fog and the crows were used heavily in the novels that provided the source material for the series. It’s entirely likely that it was meant as an homage to the books, but then the writers for the show moved on to their own story ideas.
The 100: Macallan
When The 100 returned for season three, it premiered with a small bit of stunt casting. Singer Shawn Mendes made his acting debut in the first episode of season three as a young man named Macallan.
Macallan appeared for a pair of short scenes. After initially attempting to steal a bracelet from Raven, she agrees to give it to him in exchange for him performing a song. Macallan, of course, agrees, but his performance rubs Jasper the wrong way, who then picks a fight with him.
Macallan is presumably one of the 100 teens sent to Earth when the series began, but he’s never mentioned before his singing trade, and he hasn’t been seen since.
This is likely due to the singer’s busy schedule, but a mention of whether or not he’s one of the survivors of rising radiation levels at the end of season four would appease fans.
Smallville: Zatanna And Her Magical Search
Though the show was known more for aliens and weird meteorite powers than it was for magic, that didn’t mean magic didn’t exist in Smallville’s world. The magic just didn’t often make an appearance.
One way the show’s writers brought magic to the series was by introducing the comic book character Zatanna. As the daughter or a magician and a magic user in her own right, Zatanna was originally introduced as an antagonist. She became an ally and began a quest to find all of the items cursed by her own father.
Set up to recur, but only appearing in a handful of episodes, there wasn’t a whole lot of time devoted to Zatanna. In fact, she just disappeared, like many of Clark Kent’s allies over the years. Her story did move forward in the comic book created after the show ended. There, she became a sometimes government agent.
Riverdale: Jason And Cheryl’s Relationship
If a TV viewer wants plenty of drama, scandal, and outlandish storytelling these days, Riverdale is a good place to turn. One of the most scandalous storyline appeared to involve Jason and Cheryl Blossom, though it never truly went anywhere.
With the disappearance of Jason Blossom kicking off the series, plenty of attention was paid to the very close relationship between Jason and his sister. Flashback scenes of Jason and Cheryl were even filmed to imply romance rather than a sibling relationship. It made fans believe a big reveal was on the way for the two of them.
That reveal never came, though. Instead, Jason had a relationship with Polly Cooper and mentions of Jason and Cheryl being close began to get brushed off. It was an odd story set up that never really paid off.
Supernatural: The Leviathans
Meant to be a hugely powerful foe for the Winchester brothers, the Leviathans debuted on Supernatural in season seven. After their initial storyline, though, they just faded away.
Supernatural determined that Leviathans were created by God before he created angels. Their appetites made them dangerous. In fact, Castiel referred to them as “the piranha that would eat the whole aquarium” because they’d even destroy and consume angels.
Able to shapeshift into any host, they were accidentally released from Purgatory by Castiel and attempted to conquer the planet.
Supposedly, it was going to take an alliance between human hunters, angels, and demons to defeat them. Instead, all it took was the main characters destroying their leader for the rest of the Leviathans to give up the fight.
Now, the creatures are scattered all over the planet with no word on how they’re surviving or whether hunters are still after them.
Gossip Girl: No One Goes To Class
All teenagers, even fictional ones, grow up. In the case of Gossip Girl, that meant they went from causing trouble at their expensive private high school to causing trouble at elite universities -- at least for a few episodes.
When the Gossip Girl crowd moved on to higher education, there were a few episodes devoted to classroom conflicts, and then, suddenly, no one was ever in class.
There was a single arc devoted to Dan and Blair fighting over the same internship to satisfy the audience curiosity of how the upper East Siders handled college life. Other than that, everyone was too embroiled in the latest scandal to think about something as trivial as school. How did anyone even graduate?
This isn’t unique to Gossip Girl, though. Nearly every series making the move to college (90210 and The Vampire Diaries come to mind) gives up on pretending the characters attend class.
Smallville: Amanda Waller
Arrow wasn’t the first time the DC Comic character Amanda Waller appeared in live action. That honor actually went to Smallville. Like Arrow, though, Waller was also written out of Smallville very suddenly.
Amanda Waller was supposed to be the mastermind behind the “Checkmate” storyline on Smallville, manipulating events from the shadows. However, as it turned out, there was someone else manipulating her. The reveal came as Zod entered the picture and a confrontation left her inside a collapsed building.
The series never made it clear whether Amanda Waller perished in the confrontation or just disappeared into the ether. Knowing the character’s slippery ways in any incarnation, it seems more likely that she survived, but the series never came back around to her in the subsequent seasons.
Jane the Virgin: Michael’s Brother
In the early episodes of Jane the Virgin, the writers introduced Michael’s brother as the opposite of Jane’s long time love interest. As the family bad boy, he came into the show asking his brother for money, threatening to expose his secrets, and dating Jane’s best friend.
Teased as a threat to Jane and Michael’s relationship with his promise to reveal Michael’s past to her, he only appeared in four episodes. Following those four episodes, in which his girlfriend got him a job at the hotel, he simply vanished.
It was a surprise to audience members who expected him to be an antagonist for the show since such a big deal was made between Jane and her friend Lina about him being in their lives.
It’s possible that he fell by the wayside with the introduction of so many other characters (Jane’s father, her stepsisters, etc) at the same time.
The Flash: Thawne’s Plans For Blackout
The Flash burned through a lot of comic book rogues in a very short amount of time. Some have become recurring characters in the Arrowverse, but others disappeared after a single appearance. Blackout was one of the latter.
Farooq Gibran found himself with the ability to absorb and release electricity thanks the incident with the particle accelerator that also created the Flash. When he and the Flash went head to head, Blackout absorbed the energy produced by the Flash -- and as a result, Flash temporarily lost his abilities.
Despite his strength, Blackout only had the single episode. It was his own power that got the better of him as he overloaded.
After his demise, though, Eobard Thawne took a sample of his blood, deeming it useful, though the series never revealed how.
Gossip Girl: Rufus and Lily’s Love Child
Despite all the teen romances on the series, Rufus and Lily might have been the real It couple of Gossip Girl. They were star-crossed before their children's’ paths intersected, and their previous relationship resulted in a son.
Seasons two and three saw a handful of episodes featuring a young man named Scott whose family didn’t want him to have contact with Rufus or Lily. The reveal came that Scott was actually their son, and the people who adopted him were terrified that he would be taken.
Scott didn’t stop trying to get a glimpse at his would-be family, though, and his arc culminated with him showing up at Rufus and Lily’s wedding, but then deciding not to tell them the truth.
They found out anyway, put their wedding on pause so that he could be a part of it, and told him he could visit them any time. He never did.
The 100: Animal Mutations
There was a lot of talk about the radiation levels of Earth in the post apocalyptic series The 100 when it first premiered. Radiation and its effects were the entire reason why 100 kids were sent to the planet from a space colony in the first place.
When the 100 first arrived on Earth, they expected a hostile environment that would burn them as soon as they touched the ground. Instead, they found a seeming paradise with a few hostile inhabitants. Some of those inhabitants weren’t human beings though.
Instead, there were glowing insects, two-headed deers, and one giant monster in the water. Following the first season of the series though, the effects of radiation on wildlife seem to vanish. All the animals encountered became relatively normal.
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Are there other storylines you wish your favorite CW series would bring back? Or maybe there are some you’re glad were dropped? Let us know in the comments!