DC Universe’s short-lived “Swamp Thing” managed to work in some fun “monster of the week” type craziness, but the ten episodes we got were primarily centered on the origin storyline of Alec Holland/Swamp Thing and his relationship with Abby Arcane, along with a heavy focus on Avery Sunderland and his dirty deeds. But if a second season had been ordered up by DC, co-creator/writer/executive producer Gary Dauberman explained in a chat with Comic Book Movie this week, the series would’ve been free to cut loose a whole lot more.
“I think if you’re interested in what the other seasons were going to be like, you can go back to the source material,” Dauberman told the site, specifically referring to Alan Moore’s run.
“Season one is very much like a movie in that it has a beginning, middle, and end, and is one story told over the course of ten episodes and what I liked a lot about the comics is that there’s like werewolf in a hospital and things like that, so we would have had episodes like an anthology with standalone stories,” Dauberman continued. “The swamp is very much the kitchen sink of supernatural terror and, as you know, you can go into different subgenres of horror with that and I was really looking forward to exploring that in season two and getting into some of the more twisted horror tales from the later comics.”
He added, “It just would have got weirder. For people who don’t know the character, season one was telling people what Swamp-Thing was all about but season two was going to be more about getting into the deeper, twisted, weirder, and gross ideas.”
The first season of “Swamp Thing” didn’t quite end up living up to its potential, but the creative team’s season two approach sounds WAY more in line with what I was hoping to see more of from the series overall. Needless to say, it’s a huge bummer that DC Universe pulled the plug as quickly as they did, as the show could’ve gone on to become something pretty special.
Alas, we’ll never know what could have been…
