Swamp Thing Is Coming Back, Though Maybe Not The Way Fans Want?
After the recent Swamp Thing series was canceled, a new rumor suggests Swamp Thing could be coming back in the near future.
In 2019, Swamp Thing premiered on the DC Universe streaming service, but soon after the show’s premiere, DC canceled the new series. Only a month before its premiere, the show’s episode order was cut from 13 episodes to 10, due to creative differences with WarnerMedia. After premiering its one season on DC Universe, the streaming service soon closed, but the show did go on the air on The CW last year. But with Swamp Thing’s release and cancelation fraught with problems, a new rumor suggests that we might not have seen the last of Swamp Thing.
Gossip writer Daniel Richtman has posted on his Patreon page that a Swamp Thing show might be in the works for HBO Max. Richtman doesn’t provide any further details, where he heard this rumor from, or if this will be a continuation or an entirely new project, so take this rumor with a grain of salt.
However, late last year, The CW president Mark Pedowitz didn’t rule out the idea of a second season for Swamp Thing. Pedowitz said that would be a discussion for The CW and Warner Bros., and said that all The CW had at that point was the first season. But earlier this year, Pedowitz did say that it was unlikely Swamp Thing would return for a second season on The CW, but that the character could appear in Legends of Tomorrow. The character of Swamp Thing did appear on an Arrowverse crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths” through archival footage, so at least the character has been set up for the Arrowverse, if he were to return in some fashion.
In an interview with The New York Times last year, DC president Walter Hamada mentioned that every property is considered for an HBO Max spinoff of some sort. Considering the solid reviews Swamp Thing received before it was unceremoniously canceled, maybe Hamada saw the possibilities in telling their own Swamp Thing story, and planned on bringing Swamp Thing in some new iteration to HBO Max?
However, most of the DC Universe originals that aired on the streaming service were simply moved over the HBO Max. Titans, Doom Patrol, Young Justice, and Harley Quinn all moved over to HBO Max, while Stargirl became an exclusive for The CW going forward into its second season. In a little over two years of its existence, the only original series that was canceled was Swamp Thing.
But HBO Max already has a vast lineup of DC superhero shows on the way. In addition to James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad spinoff, Peacemaker, the network already has DC Super Hero High, Green Lantern, Justice League Dark, and several other shows based on DC properties coming in the near future. With all this DC, maybe HBO Max’s roster of shows is too packed for a Swamp Thing revival in the near future?
Yet it seems like we haven’t seen the last of Swamp Thing, whether that means a new series for the character, or a cameo in a future episode of a CW show. DC knows that Swamp Thing had its fans, so it would be strange for the company to put the character on the sidelines for too long.
