Gotham Knights Co-Creator Gives Final Send-Off to The CW Series and Its ‘Underdog’ Team

Gotham Knights co-creator Natalie Abrams has offered a few final words on the “oddball underdog” show after it aired its final ever episode this week.

Night of the Owls, the 13th and final episode of Gotham Knights, aired on The CW on June 27, marking the end of the series after just one season. The same night, Abrams, who developed the show with Chad Fiveash and James Stoteraux, took a moment to mourn the loss of the series.

“Gotham Knights is coming to an end,” Abrams shared in a heartfelt Twitter post alongside a thread of behind-the-scenes photos. “It’s taken a while to accept this fact, to grieve the loss of something so unique and ethereal as this first project. From the moment I pitched Greg Berlanti the two sentences that would become this oddball underdog of a show, it no longer belonged to me. It belonged to every single member of this incomparable family comprised of our writers, our actors and our crew.”

A few words on the end of #CWGothamKnights… pic.twitter.com/TXqbsNu29z

— Natalie Abrams (@NatalieAbrams) June 27, 2023

Abrams extended her sincerest gratitude to the entire team that worked on Gotham Knights and the creativity they all poured into the project as she reflected on their long journey to get the superhero series to the screen and what they set out to achieve with the show.

“If I’ve learned one thing from co-creating a TV show, it’s that magic like this doesn’t happen often,” she added further on in the lengthy note. “Lightning in a bottle, as they say. To get a pitch picked up to script, and THEN picked up to film a pilot, AND then picked up to series… wait, AND THEN actually air episodes? Next to impossible in this new era. We were lucky. We were the underdog at every turn. Like the Knights themselves, we fought like hell to produce the show we set out to make.

“We wanted to tell stories that mattered, with characters that looked like the world around us,” she continued. “We wanted to show people from all walks of life that they, too, can be a hero. We wanted to depict authentic and positive LGBTQIA+ representation, tackle the brutal realities of addition, and weave the overwhelming pressure of familial legacy throughout the season. We wanted to show that this next generation of heroes will not sit on the sidelines and let this world fall apart on their watch. No, they will fight until their last breath to leave this world even a tiny bit better than they came into it.”

News of Gotham Knights’ cancellation arrived two weeks before the finale, as The CW made some final decisions regarding its 2023-2024 TV season. The network’s planned programming makeover includes a rollback of its superhero shows as they’ve apparently “had their time”.

However, some people don’t think they have had enough time. Misha Collins, who plays Harvey Dent on Gotham Knights, recently lamented not having longer to explore his villain arc further, saying he is “incredibly bummed” about the cancellation of the DC superhero show.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.