Andy Bean Joins Derek Mears As DC Universe’s Swamp Thing

 

Alec Holland finally has a face.
Variety reports actor Andy Bean of It: Chapter 2 will play the character in DC Universe’s Swamp Thing. Created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, the character debuted in 1972’s Swamp Thing #1 as the human guise of the creature known as Swamp Thing; which itself debuted with a different origin in an earlier issue of DC Comics’ House of Secrets. The new origin saw Holland as a contemporary scientist working with his wife Linda on a bio-restorative formula. When their lab is sabotaged and explodes, Linda is killed and Alec is seemingly transformed by the results of the bio-regenerative serum into a plant creature dubbed “Swamp Thing.” Eventually, the creature learns it absorbed Alec’s memories, but the man himself had long since died.
In the television series, Alec is described as ” a passionate biologist who finds himself in nightmarish circumstances as he realizes that the bizarre disease affecting townspeople may have come as a result of his work in the swamp.” In trying to confront the forces at work in the swamp, he becomes Swamp Thing. Mears, as previously reported but confirmed by Variety, will play Swamp Thing itself, though the site’s character description suggests the creature will be Holland and not a separate entity. According to Variety, Swamp Thing/Holland “quickly learns that he must embrace his new mutant form and defend the town against the perils of the swamp from whence he came.”
Of course, the revelation that Holland died and Swamp Thing absorbed his memories could always be a season-ending revelation or something to set the second season off on a whole new course.
Bean and Mears join star Crystal Reed, who will play lead character Abby Arcane, and a cast which includes Will Patton as Swamp Thing adversary Avery Sunderland, Virginia Madsen as Avery’s wife Maria, Jeryl Prescot as DC Comics’ favorite fortune teller Madame Xanadu, Maria Sten as Liz Tremayne — a tabloid journalist from an early issue of Swamp Thing re-imagined as Abby’s best friend — and Jennifer Beals as Sheriff Lucilia Cable, a family name which will be instantly recognizable to Swamp Thing fans.
Swamp Thing debuts on DC Universe in 2019.