The Green Lantern Corps are getting plenty of time in the spotlight lately, courtesy of Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre’s detective double act in HBO’s live-action “Lanterns,” but this isn’t the first time the GLC got its own dedicated TV time. In 2011, Warner Bros. were trying to make a big deal out of DC’s most heroic space force. Not only did Ryan Reynolds don the ring in a live-action movie, but they also gave us “Green Lantern: The Animated Series” that same year, which is now free to stream on Tubi.
On paper, the show had every reason to succeed. DC Animated Universe world-builder Bruce Timm was developing it, following the massive successes of “Batman: The Animated Series,” “Justice League,” and “Justice League: Unlimited,” alongside animator Giancarlo Volpe, who’d go on to work on “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” The show also broke from the animation style of earlier DC shows and was fully CGI, giving the outer-space action extra oomph.
Adjusting the Green Lantern lore, the animated series brought relatively new comic book villains the Red Lanterns to the forefront. The show also created an all-new character, Razer, who joined the Red Lanterns, then defected to join the heroic Hal Jordan (Josh Keaton) and Kilowog (Kevin Michael Richardson). Even with this all-new lore being established, though, it was no match for poor sales and that other Green Lantern project, which had a damning impact on the Corps that would take decades to fix.
Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern movie was a nail in the coffin for Green Lantern: The Animated Series
Warner Bros.
If what many consider one of the worst comic book movies of all time shares the same name as your show, you’re guaranteed to take a hit in some capacity. In this case, it kept “Green Lantern: The Animated Series” from going beyond a single season. In an interview with IGN, Keaton, who voiced Hal, recalled why Warner Bros. called it quits on the show, and a lot of it was due to the movie’s failure.
“From what I’ve heard, the performance of the [Green Lantern] movie made it so there was a lot of movie toys still in stores. And so the stores didn’t necessarily differentiate between one being movie toys and others being animated series toys,” explained Keaton. “They just said, ‘Green Lantern? We already have those.’ And so because of that, a toyline wasn’t even made. And because a toyline wasn’t made, we really didn’t have the funding to go on in that sense, because a lot of funding is tied to that.”
From there, it was lights out for Hal Jordan and his adventures, with various loose threads being left dangling in space. That was until, nine years later, on a completely different show, fans of the Green Lantern’s brief CGI stint revisited one of its most interesting characters and closed the book on his chapter, which had been left untouched all that time.
Green Lantern’s Razer returned in Young Justice
Warner Bros.
At a time when “Green Lantern: The Animated Series” had been tucked away in the archives of the DC Animated Universe, the bright minds behind the impressive “Young Justice” dusted off a storyline from the show and reintroduced it into an episode of their own. In 2019, season 4, episode 19 — “Encounter Upon the Razor’s Edge” — the show sees Green Lantern Kilowog reunite with Razer, who’s become a Blue Lantern, a corps fueled by hope. The issue is that Razer no longer has any, and by the end of the episode becomes a one-of-a-kind Red and Blue Lantern, fueled by rage and hope in equal measure.
Since then, the events of “Green Lantern: The Animated Series” haven’t been revisited, but with the now-booming success of the HBO show, that could change. Besides Kyle Chandler redeeming the character of Hal Jordan after the Ryan Reynolds movie, and Aaron Pierre appearing in the “Superman” sequel, “Man of Tomorrow,” after “Lanterns,” love for the GLC could be reignited, and a new animated show could either pick up or surpass where the original show left off.
For now, the DC Universe’s schedule is busy, but who’s to say they can’t find space for more GLC? As is written in the space force’s oath: beware the power of the Green Lantern’s light.
