The Green Lantern HBO Max series is relatively shrouded in mystery still being in the early stages of its development phase. What is known about the show is that it will feature a diverse range of characters, including the heroes Guy Gardner and Alan Scott.
The creatives behind the series have high hopes for its production quality, with producer Marc Guggenheim saying that HBO Max is going to "produce it like a film."
The Direct recently reported that the series is introducing an all-new character to the Green Lantern mythos who will be a half-human, half-alien Lantern from an advanced society on another planet,
Now, more information about the series has revealed one of the series' central concepts...
NEWS
The Direct has exclusively learned that the Green Lantern series for HBO Max will feature multiple time periods as a part of its plot.
Sources indicate that the show will feature the 1940s, the 1980s, and the modern day as settings. How the series will alternate between these time periods is currently unknown.
Alan Scott is also mentioned as being included in the series as a gay man, who has to traverse 1940s America whilst hiding this fact from the society around him. Meanwhile, Guy Gardner will be featured in the 1980s as a hyper-masculine and abrasive character, similar to his portrayal in the comics.
WHAT THIS MEANS
Multiple time periods featured in this show will make for an incredibly ambitious storytelling device for the Green Lantern series. Having a variety of different temporal settings allows the narrative and its visual counterpart to be diverse, being able to feature various iconography and address relevant social issues specific to the time periods. These specific settings also also line up with the Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze/Modern Age of comics, allowing the series to cover a lot of ground in Green Lantern's history.
The question then comes of how this series' writers, producers, and other creatives will achieve this feat. It may be a tad odd to introduce multiple timelines and to not have the respective characters converge at some point, so it is likely that they will not leave the characters separated for very long. This could indicate the presence of time travel in the series, allowing the Lanterns to cross temporal boundaries to meet with one another. Time travel is not typically a Green Lantern story trope, but its inclusion would make sense in the context of the DC universe. This would also allow for multiple Lanterns to occupy Sector 2814, the part of the universe that Earth resides in, at once.
HBO show and DC property Watchmen also dealt with multiple time periods, often featuring flashbacks to past events and having unique episodes that veered from a strict chronological order for dramatic effect. The Damon Lindelof-created series even dedicated an entire episode to being set in 1938, utilizing black and white footage and all. The Green Lantern series may take this approach, forgoing the need for time travel and instead telling its story in an unconventional manner. This might be a more risky option, but could allow for some poignant and exciting storytelling from the series.
However the Green Lantern series chooses to tackle its timelines, it will surely make for an interesting show at the very least.
