Could Television Be the Medium for Female Super Heroes?

I started to get into the super hero genre last year after seeing my first episode of the CW’s Arrow. It’s become a personal favorite despite some of the flaws I addressed here. After binge watching Arrow over the summer I bought myself a ticket on the comic book hero bandwagon and hopped on. In the fall, I expanded my viewership to Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which remains my current obsession. I’m also not ashamed to say that I watched all nine Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in the span of one week, after all what else was I going to do during finals week?

Given my newfound love for classic super heroes (and super spies) and old love for the medium of television, it goes without saying that I am thrilled at the expanding super hero market on the small screen. During the upcoming TV season, three new shows pertaining to the worlds of our favorite classic super heroes will premiere on major networks: Fox’s Gotham, the CW’s Flash, and ABC’s Agent Carter. Gotham is set in Batman’s hometown and takes place before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, telling to story of two male police detectives. Flash is a more traditional take on the super hero genre centering around Barry Allen aka Flash. It looks like it will be comparable to Arrow in this way; Flash is in fact a spinoff of that show. Finally, Agent Carter surrounds the life of Agent Peggy Carter, Captain America’s love interest, after World War II and is set to premiere in January. It’s likely to give us more background on SHIELD in the organization’s early days.

Of course, Agent Carter stands out among the other super hero genre shows not only because of it’s late premiere, but because of it’s female lead. Out of the five genre shows that will grace our television screens next season, Agent Carter is the only one that can make this claim. While SHIELD has a strong ensemble cast that is equally male and female, it would be easy to argue that the lead is Agent Phil Coulson, not surprisingly a man.

My regular readers might expect that I’m dismayed at the lack of female leads in these upcoming shows. And they would be right. But I’m also hopeful that television will prove to be a friendlier medium for female super heroes and comic book characters than film has. I often lament the lack of a Black Widow movie or a Wonder Woman feature film. I’m genuinely hopeful that Agent Carter will do well and that all super hero and comic book genre shows will continue to do well on television. Ideally it will clear a path for more female lead characters in such shows and perhaps will provide that final push for studio execs to invest in a movie about one of our favorite female heroines.

Any female super hero or super spy faces a tough battle to mount this spectacular challenge. Geek-ery, especially the world of comics, remains a very male pursuit, or so the powers that be would have you think. While the number of female fans is ever expanding, content that caters to them is not expanding at the same rate. There are more female super hero and comic book fans, but not that many more female characters and female fans often express discomfort in fan spaces like comic book stores, online forums, and conventions. The offensive “fake geek girl” meme remains a problem as does sexual harassment. Until the comic book and super hero fan base fully embraces female fans, it seems unlikely that it will embrace female heroes. Furthermore, movie and television executives are still reticent to producing female-centric films and shows because of the age-old believe that movies about women just don’t do as well despite the recent success of movies like Maleficent, The Fault in Our Stars, and Frozen and television shows like Girls and Broad City. The archaic idea will hopefully wane in the face of stars like Melissa McCarthy and Angelina Jolie who are opening box offices at much higher numbers than Tom Cruise currently is.

Between the relentless march of female progress at the box office, and at the Emmys, and the expanding genre of super hero television shows, female super heroes may still have their day. Maybe it will be on television, or perhaps television will spur movement on the film front. Either way, I can only hope that one day I’ll be able to tell people Black Widow is my favorite super hero or super spy without being asked who she is.