How Batwoman and Supergirl Just Barely Finished Their Early Finales

It took super feats of editing and some Bat-tastic luck for The CW‘s Supergirl and Batwoman to pull off their early “season finales,” airing this Sunday night.

When all was said and done, Supergirl came up one episode short of Season 5’s 20-episode run, while Batwoman left two episodes on the table. But even those ersatz finales barely came together in time, given where each show was when the coronavirus pandemic paused production in mid-March.

To wind up with one more episode than most other CW series wrapping this winter/spring, “We honestly just got a little bit lucky,” Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries tells TVLine. “Our last day [of filming before the shutdown] was the Alice/Mouse storyline, and I was like, ‘As long as we get this in the can, we have an episode.’ Because it’s an important storyline.”

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All told, “We ended up dropping only one day of shooting,” Dries shares. “I would have loved to have had those scenes in there, but at the end of the day we had a really solid episode.” [Editor’s note: And how!]

Sunday-night companion Supergirl, meanwhile, had filmed only some of its planned finale when production shut down. But rather than save that footage for next season (which we now know won’t air until Spring 2021), the show found ways to weave parts of it into Episode 19.

“[T]hey’re going to use some of that footage, but they’re writing a whole bunch of new stuff around it…,” Jon Cryer, who plays Lex Luthor, recently told PeopleTV.

Some of that “new stuff” comes in the form of simply dialogue, recorded remotely from quarantined actors’ homes. Melissa Benoist told TVLine on April 30, “I did some ADR [automated dialogue replacement] in my closet just the other day, actually. I recorded lines over Skype with our sound mixer.” (As such, said crew member “got a ‘sneak peek’ at all the clothes hanging in my closet,” Benoist noted with a chuckle.)

As Chyler Leigh, who plays Alex, told TVGuide.com, “There was a lot of creativity that had to go into editing and putting [Episode 19] together, because I still had two full days of filming to do.” Even so, the faux-nale fans are getting “definitely will be a big cliffhanger,” Leigh said. “This one definitely leaves you going, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. What happened?'” (With reporting by Andy Swift)

Want scoop on any of the above shows? Email [email protected] and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.