Freshman DC Comics series Gotham and The Flash have already premiered, but fans have one more new show to look forward to this year: NBC’s Constantine, which follows Hellblazer comics star John Constantine, a supernatural detective who faces the darker corners of the DC Universe.
Constantine will – for the moment, at least – exist independently from the rest of the DC properties, which has allowed writer and showrunner David S. Goyer (Man of Steel, The Dark Knight trilogy) to lay the groundwork for the series to explore its own greater universe and pull from DC’s expansive pantheon of characters as needed. We already know that Jim Corrigan, the future Spectre, will show up this season, and now Goyer has teased his plans to include Swamp Thing and the Justice League Dark as well.
In an interview with Screen Rant, Goyer was asked about the possibility of seeing Justice League Dark characters like Zatana on the show. His response was incredibly encouraging:
“Yeah. I think you’ll see some of those… If the show takes off… even within the first 12 episodes we’ve introduced two or three characters from the broader DC universe that are not just exclusively with Hellblazer. Corrigan has been mentioned, but there’s a couple of other characters we haven’t talked about that will show up as well. If the show takes off and we get our back nine and come back a second season, we sort of have access to that whole corner of the occult universe. So, hopefully we’ll be introducing those characters as is appropriate.”
We’ve already seen an Easter egg teasing Doctor Fate’s involvement, but one of the characters that most Hellblazer readers would like to see on the series is Swamp Thing, who’s been beloved by fans of DC’s supernatural side for quite some time now. The character has been given a few live-action adaptations in the past, but none of them were particularly successful. Goyer is well aware of the challenges of adapting the character, but is still interested in bringing the beloved monster/hero to the small screen:
“It’s been thrown around. It’s not something I think we’d attempt in the first season. We need to make sure that we can pull off the special makeup effects. We don’t want to do a cheesy version of Swamp Thing. It’s a lot easier to do Dr. Occult or Zatanna or Jim Corrigan than it is to do Swamp Thing. So we’ll see.”
Goyer was then asked about the possibility of crossing Constantine over with the other DC shows. We know that Guillermo del Toro was interested in using the TV Constantine in his possible Justice League Dark film, but as that project is nowhere to be seen on DC’s new massive 12-film slate of upcoming films, I doubt we’ll be seeing the JLD on the big screen anytime before 2020, leaving cross-network TV crossovers our only hope to see the series expand beyond NBC. While Goyer doesn’t exactly confirm that such a thing will happen, he does say that it’s not outside the realm of possibility:
“You know, never say never. There aren’t any immediate plans, but it would be interesting to try that, to do kind of an internetwork crossover. I think anything’s possible. But we have to get our sea legs first. We’ve gotta premiere in a couple of weeks, and hopefully the audience likes what we’ve got and then we’ll see.”
Tell us, what do you think of Goyer’s comments? Would you like to see characters like Swamp Thing, Zatanna, and the rest of the Justice League Dark on the show? Let us know in the comments section below.
Constantine debuts on Friday October 24th on NBC.
