It’s a funny thing. Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim are responsible for giving us one of the most popular pieces of DC media from the past decade, and one of the least. The pair are two of the minds behind The CW’s Arrow, which just finished a hugely influential eight-season run this year after kicking off in 2012. A year earlier, though, they were two of four writers credited for writing the screenplay of the critically-panned Green Lantern movie.
Guggenheim still has some affection for the Ryan Reynolds-starring film, however, and cites it as the reason that himself and Berlanti were able to make Arrow in the first place. In an illuminating interview on Fake Nerd Podcast, he revealed that this “huge connective tissue” is why Guggenheim couldn’t help but drop a nod to the movie into “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
The last chapter of the crossover featured a clip from 2011’s Green Lantern, revealing that it takes place on Earth-12. And here’s why he felt he had to include it:
“Oh, that was my decision. I was like, ‘I’ve got to get Green Lantern in there somewhere.’ There’s only one Green Lantern movie, so it just seemed obvious to me to do that… I just had to, because Greg Berlanti and I, we co-wrote the movie, for better or for worse.”
The EP also explained that fans really have the infamous cinematic effort to thank for the adventures of Stephen Amell’s Emerald Archer on TV, saying:
“We wouldn’t have done Arrow but for Green Lantern. And we almost didn’t do Arrow because of Green Lantern. So, it looms large, and it tickled me. It made me happy.”
The Arrow/Green Lantern connections didn’t stop with this “Crisis” cameo, either. In the series finale, it was heavily, heavily implied that John Diggle had got himself a Power Ring and was about to become a Lantern off-screen. Fans are now wondering whether Diggle will show up on HBO Max’s upcoming Green Lantern TV series. Berlanti is once again set to executive produce it, and hopefully it’ll prove to be much more successful than the film.
