Fans of “Smallville” certainly remember it: long before playing Jack Reacher, Alan Ritchson appeared in the series in the role of this superhero considered one of the worst DC characters…
Today he’s the star of Reacher, but yesterday he played another kind of hero, a certain superhero master of the oceans…
The flagship series which is currently a hit on Prime Video has in fact put Alan Ritchson in the spotlight after a prolific career in cinema and television. Thus, almost 20 years ago, the actor was part of the cast of Smallville, the CW series from the 2000s with Tom Welling which depicted the youth and origins of Clark Kent, also known as of Superman.
Being a DC series, we were able to see legendary superheroes such as Arrow (Justin Hartley), Supergirl (Laura Vandervoort) or even Aquaman… played by a young Alan Ritchson !
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The actor thus appeared in four episodes of season 5, episodes in which Clark meets Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, a young man endowed with extraordinary underwater powers. The latter arrived in Smallville in the hopes of sabotaging a Luthorcorp experiment that threatens underwater life. Barely arrived, Arthur also begins to have feelings for Lois, played by Erica Durance.
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Aquaman, a source of ridicule?
If Aquaman has since been entitled to his cinema version and his own series of films, the character has often been considered one of DC’s worst. For what ? Many agreed that his powers weren’t that great, especially for the one known as the Lord of the Oceans. Many series, films (or in popular culture itself) have therefore openly mocked him – as was the case in The Big Bang Theory or Family Guy which used the superhero as a source of ridicule.
It was not until Jason Momoa that Warner Bros. finally decides to bring the character to the cinema despite all the jokes against him. He will thus make his debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016, before returning in Justice League the following year (and the Snyder Cut much later), then in his own saga with Aquaman in 2018 and his sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in 2023.
Alan Ritchson can be found in Reacher exclusively on Prime Video or in Smallville also available in its entirety on the Amazon platform. The first part of Aquaman can be seen again on Netflix.