Back in late 2020 we reported that HBO Max’s reboot series of the Green Lantern will feature the first Green Lantern character, Alan Scott – and, like in the Earth-2 comics, the character will be openly gay. But now it looks like DC is pushing Alan Scott back into the closet and out of the series and will now will instead be about John Stewart, one of DC’s first Black superheroes.

When the Warner Bros./Discovery Merger happened earlier this year, the project’s status was up in the air, as many shows in development, including Kevin Smith’s Strange Adventures show, were canceled. The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the show was still on track, just changed.

Marc Guggenheim, former writer for HBO’s Green Lantern TV series, broke his silence about the show’s overhaul and admitted he had complicated feelings about it: “I haven’t had much to do with the series for the past year or so. Nevertheless, my feelings about this development (or, I suppose, redevelopment) are… complex. However, my feelings about the writing staff — Elizabeth Hunter, Sara Saedi, Pornsak Pichetshote, Juan Carlos Fernandez, Geoff Johns, Lamont Magee, Kirsten Pierre, and Jabari McDonald — are anything but. Showrunner Seth Grahame-Smith and I assembled a group of incredible writers and terrific human beings whose voices were as layered and diverse as the show we originally set out to make. Although this version of Green Lantern won’t be breaking out of orbit, I’ll always be grateful that these wonderful folks ended up in mine.

 The original premise for the series reinvented the classic DC property through a story spanning decades and galaxies, beginning on Earth in 1941 with the very first Green Lantern, secretly gay FBI agent Alan Scott (Irvine), and 1984, with cocky alpha male Guy Gardner (Wittrock) and half-alien Bree Jarta.

Irvine and Wittrock are no longer attached to the project.