Swamp Thing Premiere Date on The CW Announced

The CW has announced its fall premiere schedule, including the broadcast debut of DC Universe's Swamp Thing series. The show will come to The CW on October 6th with a 90-minute premiere. Based on the DC characters created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, Swamp Thing follows Abby Arcane as she investigates what seems to be a deadly swamp-born virus in a small town in Louisiana but soon discovers that the swamp holds mystical and terrifying secrets. When unexplainable and chilling horrors emerge from the murky marsh, no one is safe. The series stars Crystal Reed, Virginia Madsen, Andy Bean, Henderson Wade, Derek Mears, Maria Sten, and Jeryl Prescott.

DC Universe canceled the series soon after its premiere. That was after cutting the show's production short by three episodes, the result of production going over budget due to expected tax credits falling through.

The CW's decision to air Swamp Thing came amidst the coronavirus pandemic, which has made it challenging to film new scripted content for the fall season. Fans of the series hold out hope that Swamp Thing's jump to the CW could mean a second season. The CW president Mark Pedowitz cautioned fans not to get ahead of themselves.

"At the moment, it's just the one season," Pedowitz said in May. "I do not know if it would come back. Obviously that would be a discussion for Warner Bros. and The CW. But at this time, Swamp Thing is just the episodes we have."

Series co-creator Gary Dauberman shared his plans for the show's second season during an interview late last year. "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 10 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 said. "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. 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."

Swamp Thing debuts on The CW on October 6th.