Black Lightning casting: Cress Williams of Hart of Dixie to potentially join Arrow, Flash, universe

The Black Lightning casting process had to be a fairly intensive one, and in all honesty we’d expect for it to be. If you really want this show to eventually join a roster that includes Arrow, The Flash, and many of the other superhero shows, then you need to make sure that you have the right person in the part.

For the sake of this article, this person may be Cress Williams. Sources confirm that the former Hart of Dixie star (he played Lavon Hayes, the eventual Mayor of Bluebell, on the CW series) is poised to star on the show. This would serve as a pretty big departure for him. On the other show, Lavon was a very playful, fun-loving former football star who was getting involved in politics and hoping to make the tiny Alabama town the best place that it possibly could. On this show, he would be a former superhero with lightning powers who finds a way to get himself back in the thick of the action.

The casting choice is a little surprising, but at the same time, we found ourselves equally shocked at the announcement that Grant Gustin would be Barry Allen or that Melissa Benoist would be Supergirl. Both of them ended up actually being great in the parts. Clearly, there’s something that the folks at the network and in the casting department have figured out, and we are very much inclined to trust them with a good bit of their ideas.

Whether or not this show is picked up is a very different story, given that you must remember that there are several different factors that weigh into the show’s future. For one, you’ve got the fact that there are already four other superhero projects on the network. The only reason to have hope in this one making it is because of the failures of many new CW series this year to really catch steam and build up towards anything.