When HBO Max announced its Green Lantern live-action television series, speculation ran rampant on how the DC galactic superhero mantle would be handled after Ryan Reynolds starred in the notorious 2011 film flop.
However, it was essentially an adaptation nod in name only, since this version of Gardner, played by Matthew Settle, was hardly the impetuous loudmouth that fans knew and loved, and was instead a generic amalgam of Green Lantern tropes, and didn’t even retain his signature, Moe Howard-esque bowl cut; a mistake that hopefully won’t be repeated.
Pictures had on tap , who, as of late, has been making a habit of playing volatile characters, coming off a prominent role as institutionalized murderer Edmund Tolleson on Netflix series Ratched and—possibly by some cosmic coincidence—will play a character named Harry Gardener on the upcoming anthology iteration of FX’s American Horror Story.
While Jordan famously inherited the Green Lantern ring from mortally-wounded alien Abin Sur, it would later be revealed that Hal was one of two Earthlings selected as potential successors—with Gardner being the other—and only earned the mantle due to his closer proximity to the dying Lantern.
Yet, the whole “organic accident” part of this rebirth resided in the fact that Gardner was so drastically different from Broome and Kane’s original iteration that he may as well had been a completely different character altogether, which would have instead yielded Englehart and Staton credit and royalties as the creators; a move they both regret to this day.
It was a stride that was hit during a most accommodating era for such a personality, the late-1980s and early-1990s, when the concept of antiheroes was starting to have a prominent place in the comic book world; an era during which seemingly irredeemable villains were being positioned as protagonists in their own standalone titles.
Regardless, Guy Gardner has frequently flown close to the edge of evilness, notably during a storyline in which possession of Sinestro’s yellow Qwardian Power Ring channeled malevolent, fear-based powers, but don’t expect a villain arc from Wittrock’s rendition on HBO Max’s Green Lantern.