The CW is planning to expand its line-up of superhero dramas with a Black Lightning spin-off centered on Jordan Calloway's Painkiller. The potential project will launch with a backdoor pilot scheduled to air during the fourth season of Black Lightning.
Calloway made his first appearance as Khalil Payne/Painkiller in the first season of Black Lightning as a recurring guest before being promoted to series regular starting with the show's sophomore year. While Payne had been a successful high school track star and the love interest of Jennifer Pierce, Black Lightning's daughter, his life is devastated by a stray bullet that leaves him paralyzed. Local crime boss Tobias Whale then offers to provide Payne a surgery that will allow him to walk again, while also bestowing him with super-strength and poisonous blood, in exchange for his services as a loyal henchman. When the partnership crumbles, a secret government organization known as the ASA brainwashes Payne into becoming a killing machine known as Painkiller, but his programming is reversed when Jennifer and the Pierce family reach out to him.
Black Lightning series creator Salim Akil will write and direct the backdoor pilot for the spin-off, which will air as the seventh episode of Black Lightning season 4. Calloway will reprise his role as Painkiller for the new series, which will explore the guilt he feels over his actions as Whale's underling and the ASA's weapon during his time in Freeland City. "After attempting to bury the darker, devastatingly lethal Painkiller part of his persona, Khalil has distanced himself away from everyone he knows and loves in a new city, Akashic Valley, in order to find peace…but peace never comes easy for men with pasts like Khalil Payne and Painkiller," reads the official logline for the project. "As his violent, destructive history crashes his idyllic new beginning, Khalil is thrusted back into action with a new mission – bring justice where he once gave out punishment – but to do that, he will first have to deal with and harness his darker side, Painkiller."
The Painkiller series is being developed nearly one year after The CW's flagship superhero series Arrow concluded and just as the network prepares to bid farewell to Supergirl after its sixth season. Should the spin-off come to fruition, it would join the upcoming series Superman and Lois as one of the newest shows to join the network's line-up of DC television shows. As of now, The CW's returning DC shows include The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Stargirl, the latter previously being an original series for DC Universe.
The airing of a backdoor pilot does not necessarily mean a series is guaranteed. The final season of Arrow included an episode meant to serve as a pilot for a Green Arrow and the Canaries spin-off, though nothing has come of that project at this point.
Of course, plans can always change when it comes to Arrowverse. After all, Black Lightning was originally intended to exist within its own universe before the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover retroactively established the series as part of the new Arrowverse continuity.
Black Lightning season 4 premieres on The CW on February 8th, 2021.
Source: The Wrap