Creepy 'Green Lantern' Moments (That Won't Make The New Show)

While you weren’t looking, HBO Max has decided to bring back some of your favorite shows like Clone High, The Boondocks, Warrior, and a bunch more. The service is so hungry for new content that it’s resurrecting old and canceled properties as if it was Blackest Night, which, you know, makes sense since they’re also making a live-action Green Lantern series. (And before you ask: yes, geeks, I humbly accept the title of your king for that segue.)

No official premiere date has been set, but Finn Wittrock has recently been cast as Guy Gardner, with the announcement quickly adding that the series will span many decades and include other Lanterns from all over the universe. They probably felt the need to clarify that the series isn’t centered only on Gardner because the character is… an acquired taste. On the one hand, he is one of the few comic-book heroes smart enough to not trust characters with obviously evil names like Arkillo, unlike Hal Jordan, who didn’t see anything weird about a fellow Lantern (later turned villain) named Sinestro.

On the other hand … is Guy’s ring, which he once used to moon Batman. (Still not the weirdest use of the Green Lantern ring, though, as that honor belongs to Kyle Rayner using his ring to create a virtual greasy spoon to brood in.) Double-G and Batsy actually have a long history together, the highlights of which include Batman knocking Guy out with a single punch because of how confrontational and cocky the character could be. The HBO Max show will reportedly keep the character an obnoxious alpha-male stereotype, but hopefully, they will forego the scene where Guy, ever so briefly but still, considers sexually assaulting a knocked-out Power Girl.

That’s, unfortunately, not the only rape-related piece of Green Lantern canon that the show will probably have to scrub … There was also the time when Hal Jordan committed statutory rape. For a while, Hal was in a relationship with another Lantern named Arisia, who was a teenager when they met. She later uses her ring to age herself into legal age, but … mentally, she’s still a child. She’s the same person she was before the transformation: an adolescent without sufficient life experiences and knowledge to legally consent to sleeping with a man in his 30s. DC did try to fix this with some retcons, but there was just no coming back from Hal Jordan saying: “I have to show them I’m not a child molester,” you know, like non-creepy people don’t.

HBO Max didn’t confirm that Hal will be a part of the series, though, which will apparently kick off with the Alan Scott character, the original Green Lantern that was powered by magic but was also vulnerable against wood. Thankfully, no wooden weapons exist. On the show, Scott will be a gay FBI agent, a decision that seems to be inspired by the current version of the character. Cool and good. Buuuut they probably will ignore parts of the comic books. Like how the revamped Scott is basically Swamp Thing.

When Scott was first brought back to the mainstream DC Universe, it was an alternate version whose powers came from his link to The Green, the mystical energy connecting all of Earth’s plant life. It’s what created Swamp Thing and gave him his powers, including the one where he “has sex” by growing hallucinogenic potatoes out of his body and feeding them to women so they can take an LSD trip down to the astral planes of Boneville. We’re just going to assume that that part also won’t make it into the HBO Max Green Lantern show, although we hope to be proven wrong.

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Top Image: DC Comics