Summary
- Grant Gustin and Ryan Reynolds reunited in a commercial, giving fans a glimpse of what a live-action team-up between The Flash and Green Lantern could have been like.
- The fan art created by Julian Bell shows Gustin’s Flash and Reynolds’ Green Lantern meeting at STAR Labs, capturing the excitement of DC fans.
- The Arrowverse planted several Easter eggs for Green Lantern but never followed through due to character restrictions and budget concerns, unlike the upcoming Green Lantern Corps movie and Stargirl’s inclusion of the hero.
New DC Universe fan art brings Grant Gustin’s The Flash and Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern together, showing what a team-up between Barry Allen and Hal Jordan could have looked like in live-action. While their time as their respective DC characters is over, Gustin and Reynolds managed to show the internet the two figures for what is potentially one last time with a short but sweet commercial. Even though it was advertising for MNTN, Reynolds and Gustin still managed to go viral with the DC audience, as their commercial ended with the former saying, “You’ll always be my Barry,” while the latter said, “You’ll always be my Hal,” which is the closest that The Flash and Green Lantern have come to featuring together in live-action.
It didn’t take long for the world to have strong and positive reactions to the unofficial crossover between The Flash and Green Lantern. As someone who loved their commercial with the “Barry and Hal” moment, video editor and graphic designer Julian Bell shared artwork of Gustin’s The Flash from the Arrowverse meeting Reynolds’ Green Lantern from his universe.
The scenario that Bell imagined in his fan art of Hal and Barry takes place at STAR Labs from The Flash TV show. To sum up how many DC fans were feeling about seeing Gustin and Reynolds in the ad, Bell also included a hilarious shot of Cisco Ramon from The Flash season 1, as he is capturing their heroic moment on camera.
Why The Flash & Arrow Set Up Hal Jordan As Green Lantern But Never Paid It Off
Throughout both The Flash and Arrow’s respective runs, the Arrowverse TV shows actually did plant the seeds for Hal with numerous Easter eggs and even a cameo. The Flash season 1 had Barry reference a test pilot that went missing when they were at a shutdown Ferris Air location. During Arrow season 4, an uncredited actor was spotted wearing a flight pilot jacket, with the last name “Jordan” on it, while Oliver Queen was conveniently visiting the same Coast City bar.
Despite their continuous Green Lantern setups in the Arrowverse, The CW franchise never went through with bringing Hal into any of the shows for one specific reason: character restrictions. Green Lantern is one of the bigger DC properties that Warner Bros. was restrictive with, since they were prioritizing the Emerald Knights for the now-scrapped Green Lantern Corps movie. There were also likely budget concerns in mind, too, as making Green Lantern’s VFX on network television was a risk in itself.
Greg Berlanti, who created the Arrowverse, also produced and co-wrote Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern movie in 2011.
It’s a shame that not only did the Arrowverse never go through with bringing Hal into the franchise, but all of the Green Lantern setups for John Diggle never got a good payoff, either. It’s ironic that the Arrowverse weren’t able to do Green Lantern in any capacity given how Stargirl, which is adjacent to the franchise and set years later, brought in Alan Scott’s daughter Jade as the new Emerald Knight in the show, implying a history with the hero mantle that was never capitalized on. Hopefully, with James Gunn’s DC Universe already confirmed to introduce multiple Green Lanterns, it will make up for the hero’s lacking presence on The CW.
Source: Julian Bell/Instagram
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