From its launch in 2006, The CW has been the home of many television series. born from the merger of The WB and UPN, the network was, at one point, the home of some very iconic series, spanning just about every genre you can imagine. The network gave life to some of the most successful comic book series on television to date as well as one of the most beloved series in recent history with Supernatural.
However, while The CW has been the home to some great shows and series that pushed boundaries, not ever show on the network was a winner. There are plenty of shows that aired on The CW during its glory years that didn’t live up to expectation and were just not great. Here are seven of the CW’s worst shows — including some you probably totally forgot about.
7) Cult
Cult might be one of the weirdest — and worst — shows on The CW. Airing for just one season in 2013, Cult starred Matthew Davis as a journalist blogger named Jeff who investigates a serious of mysterious disappearances connected to a popular in-universe television series called “Cult”. The series also starred Jessica Lucas, Alona Tal, and Robert Knepper.
Cult had a kind of convoluted development history which probably didn’t help it out. It was initially planned as a show for The WB and would have starred Matt Bomer, but then The WB became The CW when merged with UPN and that version of the show was shelved. Nearly a decade later, the show resurfaced, this time with Davis as the lead. And trying to explain the show is complicated. It tries to be a puzzle that gives little nods to itself throughout, but it doesn’t really gel very well. It was hard to follow and was cancelled pretty quickly.
6) Katy Keene
Developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Katy Keene was a spin-off of the wildly popular Riverdale. Set five years after Riverdale, the series followed a group of aspiring young artists trying to make it in New York City. The series starred Lucy Hale as the titular aspiring fashion designer Katy Keene, along with Ashleigh Murray, Camille Hyde, Jonny Beauchamp, Julia Chan, Lucien Laviscount, Zane Holtz, and Katherine LaNasa. It was cancelled after just one season.
Admittedly, Katy Keene did well with critics but the show never really found its audience. It was also tonally just weird when compared to Riverdale. While Riverdale was dark and a bit twisty, Katy Keene was overly eager and almost a little too retro-wholesome. The various characters didn’t seem much like people who would actually interact with one another, and some of the storylines just felt deeply manufactured. It had its charm and looked like it was gaining some momentum at the end — and had a heck of a cliffhanger that it concluded on — but it just didn’t work out.
5) Tom Swift
A spin-off from The CW’s Nancy Drew series, Tom Swift starred Tian Richards as the titular character, a young billionaire inventor whose life is turned upside down after the disappearance of his father thrusts him into mysterious conspiracies as he tries to figure out the truth. The series also starred Marquise Vilson, Albert Mwangi, April Parker Jones, and Ashleigh Murray.
The series didn’t really win anyone over. Critics felt like the series lacked imagination and didn’t get off on the right foot and audiences particularly disliked it, with some even calling it a badly written mix of Iron Man and Dynasty. The show never found an audience and was cancelled after just one season.
4) The Messengers
No one will ever say that The CW didn’t have some ambitious series and The Messengers is one of them. The series debuted in 2014 and followed a group of five strangers who died in a shock wave created by a mysterious object that fell to Earth but miraculously came back to life moments later. The disparate group find themselves drawn together by biblical prophecy and discover that they now have supernatural powers and could be the only hope to stop the Rapture. The series starred Shantel VanSanten, J.D. Pardo, Joel Courtney, John Fletcher, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Jessika Van, and Winston Duke.
The show had potential but suffered from a mix of bad storytelling and uneven cast performances. The show just couldn’t live up to the epic nature of the premise and was cancelled after just 3 episodes, though the network went ahead and aired the full first (and only season).
3) Gotham Knights
Gotham Knights is the unique series that registers as one of the worst The CW put out, but also a series that in retrospect may have actually been better than it was given credit for at the time and just never got a chance to fully find its footing. Something of a unique take on the overall Batman family, the series followed Turner Hayes, the adopted son of Bruce Wayne who ends up forming an alliance with runaways Harper and Cullen Row and criminal Duela when they’re framed for Bruce Wayne’s murder. They’re joined by Turner’s classmate Stephanie Brown and Carrie Kelley, the latter of which turns out to be Batman’s sidekick, Robin.
The show took some big swings, creating its own unique take on Gotham City and the overall Batman lore. The series also delved into the Court of Owls and genuinely challenged a lot of the more familiar elements of DC Comics adaptations. However, critics hated the series and audiences couldn’t really get past the use of an original character (Turner) or the lack of Batman and just as it started to really get interesting and started to come together, the series was cancelled.
2) Dynasty
A reboot of the 1980s primetime soap opera of the same name, The CW’s Dynasty somehow ended up getting four seasons, making it the only show on this list to survive its first season because it did well enough with audiences, but that doesn’t make it good. The series was cheesy and full of melodrama and it completely lacked any of the charm the original Dynasty had and even when the series tried to be over the top, it mostly just ended up flat and lifeless. It somehow didn’t even manage to be a guilty pleasure or even as sexy as the original.
1) Life Sentence
Starring Lucy Hale, Life Sentence followed Stella Abbott, a young woman who finds out that her terminal cancer has been cured and now, she has to figure out how to actually live her life and deal with all the choices she made when she was “living like she was dying”. She also has to face how her illness has impacted her family while her family also has to deal with the things they did and neglected when they thought Stella was dying.
In terms of a premise, it’s actually a pretty interesting one but instead of leaning into the difficult questions and serious subject matter, Life Sentence tried to be too wholesome and too lighthearted. It felt extremely shallow and, perhaps worst of all, tried to tap into the vibes that shows from the then-defunct The WB had and not only failed, but failed spectacularly. It was cancelled about halfway through its first and only season.
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