Skip to content
TVTitles

The CW opening titles

The CW accounts for 36 shows here, running from 1998 to the present, and 39 opening title sequences between them.

Drama leads with eleven, then sci-fi with ten.

One rebuilt its titles mid-run: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, with four distinct sequences.

36 shows · 39 sequences · oldest first

14 of these moved between networks during their run and appear under each one.

Still from the opening titles of Whose Line Is It Anyway?1 sequence

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

1998–ABC / The CWComedy

Improv games where the points don't matter, opened by a scramble of the cast in freeze-frame.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Gilmore Girls1 sequence

Gilmore Girls

2000–2007The WB / The CWDrama

Carole King's 'Where You Lead' rewritten as a mother-and-daughter duet, over a small Connecticut town in every season at once.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Reba1 sequence

Reba

2001–2007The WB / The CWComedy

Reba McEntire as a Houston mother holding a divorce together, with a theme she sings herself.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Smallville1 sequence

Smallville

2001–2011The WB / The CWSci-Fi

Remy Zero's 'Save Me' over a cast that changed almost completely across ten years, with the credits rebuilt around each departure.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of All of Us1 sequence

All of Us

2003–2007UPN / The CWComedy

A blended family sitcom produced by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, out of their own circumstances.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of America's Next Top Model1 sequence

America's Next Top Model

2003–2018UPN / The CWDocumentary

The format that ran for twenty-four cycles and rebuilt its titles for most of them.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of One Tree Hill1 sequence

One Tree Hill

2003–2012The WB / The CWDrama

Gavin DeGraw's 'I Don't Want to Be' over a small North Carolina town, re-cut every season until the show dropped the sequence entirely.

  • Seasons 1–4
Still from the opening titles of Veronica Mars1 sequence

Veronica Mars

2004–2019UPN / The CW / HuluCrime

The Dandy Warhols over surveillance photographs and a Californian beach town that is much worse than it looks.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Everybody Hates Chris1 sequence

Everybody Hates Chris

2005–2009UPN / The CWComedy

Chris Rock narrating his own Bed-Stuy adolescence, opened by the family on the stoop.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Supernatural1 sequence

Supernatural

2005–2020The WB / The CWHorror

Fifteen years without an opening title sequence, and fifteen distinct title cards instead — a few seconds of the show's name, restyled from scratch every season to match what that year was about. The shortest main titles on this site, and the ones that changed the most.

  • Seasons 1–15
Still from the opening titles of 902101 sequence

90210

2008–2013The CWDrama

Beverly Hills, 90210 restarted for a new decade, keeping the postcode and the zip-code typography.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight1 sequence

Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight

2008–2009The CWSci-Fi

Kamen Rider Ryuki rebuilt for American Saturday mornings, and the only Kamen Rider to win an Emmy.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Spectacular Spider-Man1 sequence

The Spectacular Spider-Man

2008–2009The CW / Disney XDAnimation

Web-line geometry and a surf-rock horn chart, widely held to be the best Spider-Man adaptation in any medium.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Vampire Diaries1 sequence

The Vampire Diaries

2009–2017The CWHorror

A short title card: the name in gold serif lettering rising over a fogbound road at night, then alone on black.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Life Unexpected1 sequence

Life Unexpected

2010–2011The CWDrama

A girl in foster care who finds both her birth parents and asks them to take her back.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Nikita1 sequence

Nikita

2010–2013The CWDrama

The third screen version of the Besson film, after the 1997 series this catalogue holds as La Femme Nikita.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Hart of Dixie1 sequence

Hart of Dixie

2011–2015The CWDrama

A New York surgeon who inherits half a general practice in Alabama and finds she cannot leave it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Penn & Teller: Fool Us1 sequence

Penn & Teller: Fool Us

2011–ITV / The CWDocumentary

Magicians performing one trick each for two men who will say afterwards whether they worked out how it was done.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Arrow1 sequence

Arrow

2012–2020The CWDrama

A narrated premise delivered every week in the first person, which the entire subsequent CW superhero slate copied verbatim.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Reign1 sequence

Reign

2013–2017The CWDrama

Mary, Queen of Scots at the French court, with a deliberately anachronistic soundtrack.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Originals1 sequence

The Originals

2013–2018The CWHorror

The Vampire Diaries spinoff, moving the family to New Orleans and giving them a title sequence the parent show never had.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Jane the Virgin1 sequence

Jane the Virgin

2014–2019The CWComedy

A telenovela about a woman inside a telenovela, opened in the form it is parodying and loving at once.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The 1001 sequence

The 100

2014–2020The CWSci-Fi

A card and a sting for most of its run, expanding into a full sequence only at the end.

  • Season 7
Still from the opening titles of The Flash1 sequence

The Flash

2014–2023The CWSci-Fi

The same narrated formula as Arrow, delivered faster — which is at least appropriate.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend4 sequences

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

2015–2019The CWComedy

A musical comedy that threw away its theme song every year and wrote a new one, each arguing with the last about whether the word in the title is fair.

  • Season 1
  • Season 2
  • Season 3
  • and 1 more
Still from the opening titles of Supergirl1 sequence

Supergirl

2015–2021CBS / The CWSci-Fi

The narrated-premise formula again, this time with a first-person introduction that ran for six seasons.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Frequency1 sequence

Frequency

2016–2017The CWSci-Fi

A ham radio that reaches the operator's dead father twenty years earlier, from the 2000 film.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Legends of Tomorrow1 sequence

Legends of Tomorrow

2016–2022The CWSci-Fi

Thirteen seconds, by a show that worked out earlier than its siblings that the narrated premise was a joke worth dropping.

  • Season 5
Still from the opening titles of Riverdale1 sequence

Riverdale

2017–2023The CWDrama

Archie comics restaged as neon-lit noir, with the town's diner shot like a crime scene.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of All American1 sequence

All American

2018–2025The CWDrama

A South Los Angeles footballer recruited to a Beverly Hills school, from Spencer Paysinger's life.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Black Lightning1 sequence

Black Lightning

2018–2021The CWSci-Fi

A retired hero returning to the work as a school principal in his fifties.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Legacies1 sequence

Legacies

2018–2022The CWHorror

The third series in the Vampire Diaries line, set at a boarding school for the supernatural.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Batwoman1 sequence

Batwoman

2019–2022The CWSci-Fi

Gotham without Batman, with the cowl passing twice across three seasons.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Nancy Drew1 sequence

Nancy Drew

2019–2023The CWCrime

The teenage detective relocated to a haunted Maine town.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Stargirl1 sequence

Stargirl

2020–2022DC Universe / The CWSci-Fi

The Justice Society rebuilt by a teenager in small-town Nebraska.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Walker1 sequence

Walker

2021–2024The CWDrama

Walker, Texas Ranger remade for the CW with the ranger's family moved into the foreground.

  • Season 1