In 2013, Arrow released an episode titled “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” The penultimate episode of the show’s first season, it was named after Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 album (and song) of the same name. For a lot of people, that wasn’t much of a surprise. But when the second season had two separate episodes — “The Promise” and “Streets of Fire” — that shared titles with Springsteen songs, it felt a little more obvious that it was by design.
“Streets of Fire” was also released on Darkness on the Edge of Town, while “The Promise” was written for that record, but not commercially released until Springsteen’s box set Tracks in 1999 (even then, it was technically the “bonus track” on 18 Tracks, an abbreviated version of the box set released later). Maybe more significantly, “Streets of Fire” was the second-to-last episode of the season, synching up with the timing of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and establishing a pattern Arrow would follow until its final season.
Arrow was created by Marc Guggenheim and Greg Berlanti, and Guggenheim confirmed on Twitter fairly early on that the penultimate episodes of every season would be named after a Springsteen song (“The Promise,” apparently, was a happy coincidence). This held true until the final season — which we’ll get to in a moment. Given Guggenheim’s well-documented love for classic rock singer-songwriters (especially Springsteen’s label mate Billy Joel), the connection made some kind of sense.
Then, in 2019, another Greg Berlanti/DC Comics production took it to the next level.
Swamp Thing debuted on the DC Universe app in May of that year, and when the episode titles were released, fans noticed that almost all of them were named after Springsteen songs. Of the ten episodes of Swamp Thing, seven were named after Springsteen songs — and of the remaining three, one was “Pilot” (the default name for most TV premieres) and another was “The Anatomy Lesson” (a name lifted directly from the Swamp Thing comic it was adapting). The odd man out was “He Speaks,” the series’ third episode.
(And, yes, both Swamp Thing and Arrow used “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”)
With Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in theaters today and the release of “Electric Nebraska,” the Holy Grail of hardcore Springsteen nerds, hitting record stores and streaming platforms, we figured it was as good a time as any to look back at The Boss’s trip through the Berlantiverse.
“Darkness on the Edge of Town,” the title track on Springsteen’s 1978 album, marked his first use in the “Berlantiverse,” and is the only song to be used in both Arrow and Swamp Thing titles. Never released as a single, it has nevertheless been a staple of Springsteen live shows since it was written, and Rolling Stone named it number 8 in their list of the 100 best Springsteen songs.
“The Promise” is kind of a cheat; as noted above, Guggenheim himself admitted that it wasn’t the inspiration for the episode title. Still, it’s thematically consistent. The song didn’t get released for years, supposedly because it’s all about Springsteen’s “breakup” with his first manager, Mike Appel. The two had an acrimonious split following the success of 1975’s Born to Run, and contractual disputes led to Springsteen delaying the Darkness on the Edge of Town album until he was sure he was clear of that relationship.
Given that “The Promise” is used in an acidic way on Arrow, in an episode dealing with betrayal and menace between the once-inseparable Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett), it feels like there’s connective tissue there that’s difficult to ignore.
“Streets of Fire,” another song off Darkness on the Edge of Town, marks the second season’s “official” Springsteen song. The track actually inspired the title of a 1984 movie from filmmaker Walter Hill, which fought hard to get the rights to use it on the soundtrack. Ultimately, Springsteen granted permission, but supposedly rescinded it when he heard they planned to re-record the song rather than using his version. The studio’s version, according to an issue of Film Comment at the time, is that they replaced the song because it was “a downer.”
“This is Your Sword” is, maybe, the most literal use of a Springsteen song, since it was used during the Season 3 Ra’s al Ghul storyline on Arrow, which was… Well, pretty sword-heavy in general.
The song itself is one of the less well-known Springsteen tunes to make this list, appearing on 2014’s High Hopes just about a year before Arrow used the title in 2015.
“Code of Silence” might be another accidental one, since it wasn’t the penultimate episode, but we’re going to count it, just like we did with “The Promise” and one more title upcoming. The song — co-written with Joe Grushecky — is rarely performed, and when Springsteen does play it, it’s almost always at “special event” shows like appearances at the Soldiers & Sailor’s Memorial Hall. Its two official releases are as a “bonus track” on The Essential Bruce Springsteen, and as a standard release on a 2006 album by Gruschecky.
“Lost in the Flood” is the earliest Springsteen album that makes the list, having appeared on his 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. The bleak, operatic song certainly feels like it should be on an Arrow soundtrack, with its visuals about cops, veterans, and other lost souls fighting in the streets certainly a match for the show’s big end-of-season bust-ups.
“Missing” is another surprising choice, which was likely driven more by its connection to the Arrow story at the time than the actual tune itself. Originally recorded for the soundtrack to The Crossing Guard, Springsteen didn’t release it on one of his own albums until about a decade later when he put it on The Essential Bruce Springsteen as a bonus track.
Sean Penn, who directed The Crossing Guard, also wrote and directed the 1991 film The Indian Runner. That movie, which starred a very young Viggo Mortensen as the black-sheep brother of a morally-upstanding small-town sheriff, was based on the song “Highway Patrolman,” from Springsteen’s Nebraska album.
In Sean Penn: His Life and Times, Penn admitted that the movie only got made because, before he ever got famous, he was dating Springsteen’s sister. One night while drunk and listening to Nebraska (as was the style at the time), Penn called Bruce and pressed him for permission to turn “Highway Patrolman” into a movie — something Springsteen okayed without hesitation. Penn assumed Bruce thought it would never happen, but eight years later he asked Springsteen to read his script.
“The Ties That Bind,” from 1980’s The River, is thematically perfect for the season six episode, which deals with threats to Team Arrow’s friends and family. “Living Proof” is a bit looser. The season seven episode had a lot of big moments for Mia, which is likely why they used the title “Living Proof.” The 1992 song, from the album Lucky Town, was about the birth of Springsteen’s first child.
“Leap of Faith” might not be an intentional Springsteen reference — it’s the third episode of season eight, and is a common phrase, after all. Still, the show’s eighth and final season is the only time the penultimate episode wasn’t named for a Springsteen song, so it’s difficult not to look at the episode that (coincidentally?) shares a title with one and comment on it.
“Livin’ in the Future” was the working title for the penultimate episode of the series, which was officially titled Green Arrow and the Canaries, the name of a planned-and-scrapped spinoff. Asked about the title on Twitter, Guggenheim commented, “Unfortunately, the studio required us to officially title the episode after the planned spinoff, thus demonstrating no respect for tradition. Therefore, I would appreciate it if we could all just agree that the REAL title of 809 is ‘Livin’ In the Future.’ Thank you all.”
“Livin’ in the Future,” a song from Springsteen’s 2007 album Magic, was a fun pull for the episode, which literally takes place in a version of the future, in which Oliver’s adult daughter Mia leads a team of Canaries to take the fight for justice in Star City into the next generation.
So…that wraps Arrow‘s ties — or at least the ones we noticed. What about Swamp Thing?
Well, one fun piece of trivia in light of today’s timing: Swamp Thing features the debut of a song from Nebraska on the list. The making of Springsteen’s bleak folk-rock masterpiece is the basis for Warren Zanes’s book Deliver Me From Nowhere — which in turn inspired today’s movie.
“Worlds Apart,” which has a spiritual bent in Swamp Thing due to the presence of Madame Xanadu and her magic, is named for a song from Springsteen’s 2002 album The Rising. The song, which features Pakistani singer Asif Ali Khan, is about a pair of lovers from different cultures. Released in the context of the September 11 terror attacks and featuring a rare “world music” flavor for Springsteen, the song sticks out as a creative departure for him. And the misbegotten lovers theme is a big one in Swamp Thing, too.
“Darkness on the Edge of Town” returns here. Not a ton more to say about this one, although the MTV Plugged version of the song is the one that made this writer fall in love with Springsteen’s music, and led more or less directly to you reading this.
“Drive All Night” is a moody song, and a moody title. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the Swamp Thing episode narratively, but thematically it works, and the spare, bleak arrangements of the Nebraska album are a perfect fit for the gothic horror feel Swamp Thing is going for.
“The Price You Pay,” named for a song on 1980’s The River, deals (as the title might suggest) with a reckoning, since it’s the episode where Matt confesses to Lucilia that he killed Alec Holland. Again, the desperate-but-hopeful losers of Springsteen’s songwriting universe make perfect sense in the context of Swamp Thing.
With “Brilliant Disguise,” Swamp Thing borrows the doomed romances and longing of Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love album. Of course, it also fits on just a basic title level, since Swamp Thing is a show full of people who are hiding their true selves in ways both physical and metaphorical.
Abby Arcane could embody the song title “Long Walk Home” pretty much at any time throughout the series. The song, released on Magic, is a rumination on how far America has to live up to its promise. Released at the tail end of the George W. Bush administration, Springsteen treated the song like a rallying cry — and it’s back in his setlists again now, as a protest against Donald Trump. Of course, like most of Springsteen’s “political” songs, it’s framed in a very character-driven way, and that allows you to apply the “long walk home” of the song to Abby’s own feelings of distance, alienation, and longing for her home and what it means.
“Loose Ends” is an interesting one to end on. It’s likely named that way because it’s got a lot of literal loose ends in the story that won’t be resolved due to the end of the show. Since the filmmakers presumably knew the likelihood of returning was slim (the show was cancelled for reasons unrelated to the show’s quality or ratings), they may have scoured Springsteen’s titles for a sufficiently tongue-in-cheek one to use.
The story of a relationship that has turned toxic and a couple’s desperation to find what made them fall in love in the first place, “Loose Ends” was recorded in 1979 but never released until 1998’s Tracks, a box set full of unreleased and rare recordings. The song has only been performed a few dozen times, and never since 2016.
…And that’s it! Swamp Thing goes out with some loose ends to tie up, Arrow‘s heroes find themselves living in the future, and Springsteen’s adventures through the DC Universe draw to a close (at least for now).
Of course, you might remember that Springsteen’s “Badlands” ran over the closing credits of Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. That song, which…
…wait, where are you going?
We’ve curated a playlist of these songs for you on YouTube, if you want to scroll through.
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