Arrow has been expanding its roster of superheroes outside of Team Arrow recently, from The Atom in Season 3 to Mr. Terrific next season, leading fans to wonder whether one of Oliver Queen’s partners from the late ‘60s-early ‘70s will be appearing on the show: Hal Jordan, a.k.a. Green Lantern. While it would be more likely that we would see Hal in his civilian persona rather than the space-faring cop, speculation arose that Hal might appear in Arrow Season 4 when flashback Oliver boarded a boat heading for Coast City, Hal’s hometown in the comics. However, now it doesn’t look like we’ll be graced with an appearance from the Silver Age ring-slinger.
Executive producer Marc Guggenheim recently stated that Hal Jordan is unlikely to appear on either Arrow (and subsequently The Flash) because of the Green Lantern Corps movie coming in 2020. According to Guggenheim:
They announced the Green Lantern Corps movie, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t include Hal Jordan. It would be great but I doubt it very much.
Guggenheim is indirectly referring to a recent trend of DC characters becoming unavailable for TV if they’re being used in the movies. Deadshot and Harley Quinn have already fallen to this unofficial rule, and while there are exceptions like Barry Allen and various Gotham characters, for the most part it would seem that Warner Bros is unwilling to have multiple live-action versions of heroes and villains existing at the same time.
It was reported last month that the Green Lantern reboot may feature multiple Green Lanterns, and now that the film’s title has been confirmed, it seems more likely that we’ll seen a new live-action iteration of Hal on the big screen in fives years. Because of that, it looks like the closest we’ll ever get to Hal Jordan in this TV universe is that mention of the test pilot who disappeared in The Flash’s penultimate Season 1 episode “Rogue Air.”
However, while Hal’s chances of appearing on Arrow are near zero at this point, THR says that might not be the case for his love interest Carol Ferris. Fans of Arrow and The Flash should know that her company Ferris Air has maintained a presence on both shows, through the company planes nearly being shot down by Edward Fyers in the Arrow Season 1 flashbacks or the S.T.A.R. Labs team using one of its airfields to test Barry’s speed in The Flash pilot. Neither show has given any indication that she’ll be appearing soon, but given how huge corporations continue to play a role on Arrow, seeing Carol isn’t outside the realm of possibility, though we don't know whether she would actually become Star Sapphire like in the comics.
While we wait for these new possibilities to play out, Arrow will return with new episodes on Wednesday, October 7 at 8 p.m. ET on the CW.
