Poison Ivy Casting Confirmed
We are getting a new brand Poison Ivy for DC, one of the first live-action roles for the character that we have seen in some time.
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The world of DC characters is an expansive one considering we have multiple versions of characters sometimes happening in parallel across different franchises. In that way, it can often be tough to keep up with who is who and who is where. The latest exciting casting announcement though has us getting a new version of Poison Ivy, that botanical beauty who will appear in Season 3 of The CW’s Batwoman. According to Variety, Bridget Regan has been cast and will have a recurring role on the show.
Bridget Regan will play Pamela Isley, a botany student at Gotham University who was injected with plant toxins as part of dangerous experimentation. It looks like Batwoman’s story for the character will mirror much of the traditional and original comic book story with Isley taking on the Poison Ivy moniker once she is able to control the growth in an area, while also able to produce poisons of her own. In later versions of the character, it was discovered that her powers weren’t the result of experiments but rather a supernatural force called the Green which helps her operate on an elemental level. It doesn’t appear that Batwoman will go in this direction with the character’s story.
Before playing Poison Ivy, Bridget Regan most recently played the lead role alongside Josh Harnett in Paradise Lost. The series wasn’t renewed for a second season. She also had a recurring role in TNT’s The Last Ship and before that had a recurring role in ABC’s addition to the Marvel Universe with Agent Carter. If Batwoman is able to continue on the CW then this new role of Poison Ivy will likely expand over later seasons.
The operative question around Batwoman and whether Poison Ivy will be around for future seasons is whether the show is able to maintain considering its current viewership. Recent seasons have seen a massive drop in ratings for the show, with the second season really bottoming out at the end. It averaged fewer than half a million viewers per episode by the end of the season. The final three episodes were barely topping the 400K mark. That is really getting into the ratings’ pits.
But the casting of Poison Ivy here along with some other developments have some hoping that Batwoman can make a comeback. Javicia Leslie will reprise the titular lead after having taken over the role from Ruby Rose following the first season. We are also set for the expanded use of Batwing played by Camrus Johnson. That development at the end of Season 2 could help breathe new life into the program. The show is currently filming with a release date set sometime in 2022.
While Poison Ivy is an iconic character in the DC comic book pages, she hasn’t seen the big screen yet in the DC Extended Universe of films for Warner Bros. We have seen plenty of other villains there, but she has been out of the mix. There is some chance we eventually see the character pop up in some fashion if Robert Pattinson’s The Batman ends up seeing additional stories. Considering they have used the entirety of his villainous foe lineup in the first one, she was a notable omission. For the time being, Bridget Regan will be the screen’s only version of the character.
