Comic-Con '14: 8 TV Panels to Get Fans Buzzing

After the success of Arrow, The CW is turning its attention to one of DC Comics' most beloved heroes—Barry Allen, a.k.a. the Flash, played by Glee's Grant Gustin. ''It's always been a favorite character of mine,'' says exec producer Greg Berlanti of the crime-scene investigator who's given superspeed after being struck by lightning. Debuting on Oct. 7, season 1 follows Barry as he adapts to his new abilities while searching for answers to the death of his mother. And look for the worlds of The Flash and Arrow to collide: The pilot features a climactic chat between Allen and Stephen Amell's Oliver Queen. Explains Berlanti, ''One of the joys for those of us who read these books as a kid are moments like this where the characters interact and work together.'' —Tim Stack

Unlike previous seasons that have picked up several months later, season 5 of Dead, which returns to AMC in October, will take us back to Terminus soon after the events that led to Rick (Andrew Lincoln), Daryl (Norman Reedus) & Co. being trapped in train car A. And while there have been clues leading many to believe that their captors at Terminus are cannibals, exec producer Robert Kirkman insists there are still some surprises in store. ''There's a lot of big revelations that haven't really come out that I think people are going to be pretty startled by,'' says Kirkman. ''There's a couple of other revelations that people might've gotten a little bit of a lead on. We'll definitely be defining those in some cool ways, and confirming some theories and shooting down others, which is very exciting.'' Also exciting is the addition of The Wire star Seth Gilliam, who may or may not be playing a priest from the comic book named Father Gabriel. ''He's playing a character that's very integral to the future of The Walking Dead,'' teases Kirkman. ''Who he is is possibly a very large hint to where the story is going to go, if you've read the comic-book series.'' Amen. —Dalton Ross

Read more on The Walking Dead's fifth season, get a grisly glimpse of Daryl's fate and learn Reedus' fears for his character, then check out our exclusive First Looks at season 5's key art as well as Carol, Judith, and Rick.

Take a chaotic 1970s New York, add a gothic layer of heightened comic-book style, mix up all the cars, architecture, and props so you can't quite peg the time period, and then you have something close to Fox's version of Gotham City on this Batman-free Batman prequel series. ''The lead of the show is the city, and it's falling apart and corrupt,'' explains director-exec producer Danny Cannon (Nikita). ''The genesis is, What would a criminal do if he thought he could get away with pretty much anything?'' Gotham, which debuts Sept. 22, introduces nascent villains such as the Penguin (here a lowly henchman who holds his trademark umbrella to keep his boss dry in the rain) and the Riddler (a socially awkward police forensic tech) and details their rise to power. Standing in opposition: Det. James Gordon (Ben McKenzie), lacking Batman's gadgets and saddled with a partner (Donal Logue) whose motivations are unclear. ''[Gordon] is strong and smart and tough,'' McKenzie says, ''but he's going to make wrong decisions and trust the wrong people.'' —James Hibberd

Read James' interview with The Penguin himself, Robin Lord Taylor, and check out what creator Bruno Heller spilled at TCA.

When you think of big-budget adventure series, you probably don't think of USA Network. The cable channel is known for breezy comfort-food procedurals such as Suits, Psych, and Royal Pains. That's about to change this fall with the ambitious—and expensive—six-episode series Dig. Pairing Heroes creator Tim Kring with Homeland exec producer Gideon Raff, the show has been dubbed ''Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code'' by a network exec. Jason Isaacs plays Peter Connelly, an FBI legal attaché who gets drawn into a mystery involving ancient prophecies and modern-day conspiracies while he's stationed in Jerusalem—where the Dig pilot was actually shot. ''As a backdrop, it's just spectacular. It's 3,000 years of history all around us,'' Kring says. One thing that's not a mystery: Though Dig tells a closed-ended story, expect a return if it's a hit. Says Kring: ''A legal attaché is an agent who investigates crimes by and against U.S. citizens on foreign soil, so it opens up a whole host of cases and stories.'' As long as there's digging involved, presumably. —James Hibberd

The last time SOA fans saw Jax (Charlie Hunnam), he was sitting in bloody hell: Tara had been killed by Gemma (Katey Sagal), Sheriff Roosevelt was shot by Juice (Theo Rossi), and DA Patterson (CCH Pounder) walked in to find a bereft Jax cradling his wife. But those tears don't make him any less of a suspect, so the seventh (and final!) season picks up 10 days later with Jax sitting in the pokey, where he encounters a white supremacist (Marilyn Manson). And Tara's offing isn't the only unresolved crime from last year: There's still the case of who supplied the gun to the boy who shot up that school, and the deaths of those Chinese dudes at the hands of the Irish. With all the loose ends left to tie up when SOA begins its final year in September on FX, expect a few 90-minute episodes to air before the finale. ''Because we're bringing it to a close, it's going to provide a more high- octane season,'' promises exec producer Paris Barclay. Does high-octane also mean high body count? ''The chickens are coming home to roost, and some chickens won't make it. They'll go to slaughter!'' —Lynette Rice

Find out creator Kurt Sutter's thoughts on season 7, see EW's First Look at Manson's guest role, then check out the first and second teasers for SOA's final season.

The first of Diana Gabaldon's eight-volume (so far) Outlander time-travel series hit shelves 23 years ago, giving plenty of time to amass millions of fans and build huge expectations. It's an understatement to say that the sweeping saga of combat nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe)—who travels from 1945 back to war-ravaged Scotland in 1743—presented filming challenges. But Ronald D. Moore, the man behind the Battlestar Galactica reboot, wasn't afraid to shake things up for the premiere, airing Aug. 9 on STARZ. ''There's a lot of things we did in the first 30 to 40 minutes [of the pilot] that aren't in the book or are compilations of things that happened in the book,'' he says. The show will have to constantly invent new ways to juggle two timelines as Claire toggles between the 20th century (where she's married to a historian, played by Tobias Menzies) and the 18th century (where she finds romance with Sam Heughan's warrior, Jamie Fraser). ''We were working really hard to give it an authentic sense, to make the characters as real as possible,'' Moore says, emphasizing that he was against conveying the novel's time-travel elements with anything hokey or sci-fi. ''I didn't want to suck her into the stone, didn't want to see her falling through time, didn't want to see the stars swirling around.'' —Stephan Lee

Read more on Outlander.

How can Fox's sleeper hit recover after a freshman finale that left nearly every character in mortal peril? Simple: The premiere will ''pick up two years later,'' according to co-creator Roberto Orci. Wait. What?! ''No, I'm just kidding,'' he continues. ''We're not going to cheat that way.'' (Phew.) Instead, Orci promises a tightly planned season (premiering Sept. 22) that will ratchet up the show's signature crazy quotient by raising its monster game. Take three of the beasts who'll be spooking Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) and Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) this year: a beefed-up Moloch, who's preparing for war (''He wants to look his best in case he manages to set foot completely into our world,'' says Orci); a terrifying take on the Pied Piper; and the Kindred, who's sort of like Sleepy's version of Frankenstein's monster. ''It's great when you have a Big Bad who can help you,'' Orci teases. ''But also, you can't control some things when you unleash them.'' —Hillary Busis

Check out Sleepy Hollow's Comic-Con poster.

John Constantine is in the business of exorcising other people's demons—as well as wrestling with his own. ''He's a first-class scumbag who turns everything to s--- and he still manages to save the world,'' sums up show runner Daniel Cerone (Dexter), who co-wrote the pilot with Batman scribe David S. Goyer. Starring Welsh actor Matt Ryan as the cursed comic-book antihero, the dark drama will draw inspiration from Swamp Thing's American Gothic story line for its first season. ''There are supernatural entities breaking into our world at a rate that's never been seen,'' says Cerone. ''Constantine has to try to put out these fires on a weekly basis while at the same time conducting an investigation into the powerful forces behind them.'' The NBC show, based on the Hellblazer comic series and debuting Oct. 24, will also explore Constantine's haunted, troubled soul. ''He's not beyond sacrificing a life,'' says Cerone, ''even the life of a close friend—if it's going to save more lives.'' —Dan Snierson

Read more about Constantine.