Super shake-up at The CW: Supergirl returns in March, Superman & Lois gets surprise hiatus

Fresh off its buzzy launch and early renewal for a second season, The CW’s Superman & Lois is going on a surprise hiatus next month — and Supergirl is making an early return for its sixth and final season.

The network announced Supergirl will debut its new season on Tuesday, March 30, taking over Superman & Lois’ timeslot on the schedule. As for Superman & Lois, it will be going on a two-month hiatus due to a COVID-related production interruption that occurred during the filming of the first season. Basically, it sounds like production won’t be able to catch up with the air schedule, so Supergirl is getting called into duty a bit earlier than originally planned.

The sixth season of Supergirl will air new episodes until Superman & Lois returns to the schedule on Tuesday, May 18 to finish airing out its first season. Supergirl will then go on hiatus until later in the summer, when it will return to finish up its final season. 

Obviously, it’s not an ideal change for fans, as both shows will essentially be taking likely messy narrative breaks in the middle of their seasons. But it certainly beats the alternative, which would be to simply hit re-runs for a month or two until the schedules can get ironed out. But in the world of COVID-related delays, this is just part of life for the moment, and Superman & Lois is far from the only show affected by shutdowns and delays over the past year.

When Superman & Lois does return, it’ll continue on one of the most interesting takes on the Superman mythos in a long while, as the series is hitting the sweet spot between the Zack Snyder-esque take on the character, some Flash-esque superhero action, and small town family stories that would be more at home in a series like Friday Night Lights.

As for Supergirl, fans are getting an early look at the show’s final season (which was originally scheduled for an unspecified date later in the summer), which looks to wrap up Kara’s story with a few more adventures before the show flies off into the sunset for good.