Comic book adaptations aren’t new, so it’s a delight for fans to see a familiar face pop up in the newer crop of films and television shows. One of the coolest castings in recent history was Wonder Woman Lynda Carter taking on the role of President of the United States on Supergirl. But it turns out, she almost played the same role in the final installment of the “Heroes v Aliens” superhero crossover on The CW. Dammit, Zeus!
Carter took on the role of President Marsdin on Supergirl earlier this season in an episode that had a few nods to her Wonder Woman past (and just after the Superman two-parter). While her return hasn’t been officially announced, there was something in the episode to suggest we’d be seeing her again.
Which was part of the reason my stomach did a little flip while I was watching Legends of Tomorrow, aka the last part of the Invasion! crossover, last week. When they mentioned bringing in the new President (after the old one met his untimely demise as the hands of the Dominators) I thought, “Oh my god, they’re going to bring Lynda Carter in!!” They didn’t, but they still cast another woman, Lucia Walters, in the role. As it turns out, Carter was who they initially intended to use as executive producer Marc Guggenheim told TVInsider.com:
In the aftermath of the president’s assassination by the Dominators, the writers initially intended on having Wonder Woman’s Lynda Carter (who is the president on Supergirl’s Earth) be the leader here, as well. “In the original draft of the Legends episode, she was the vice president who became the president,” Guggenheim said. “And the studio had what we all considered to be a very fair note, which is it was a bit too confusing. You’ve get into the parallel earths of it all, but she’s not the president on our Earth, she’s the vice president and you know, in the midst of you know, time travel and aliens it just was—as Oliver would put it—one sci-fi problem too much. And we thought, OK, if the studio is getting thrown by it, and confused, the audience might be too, so we took her out. Believe me, it was not for lack of wanting to.”
Noooo! What a missed opportunity! And I think the audiences would have rolled with it, considering The Flash has already introduced them to doppelgängers of their cast on alternate Earths. Oh well. We did get a really fun inside joke regarding Brandon Routh’s time as Superman in that episode so I can’t be too mad. TV Insider reports on that bit as well:
“It’s sort of like…last year on Legends we did the Prison Break [joke],” Guggenheim explained. “I said to the writers, ‘If we don’t make a Prison Break joke here with Wentworth, we’re not doing our jobs.’ I was like, “If we have Brandon and Melissa [Benoist] share the screen and we don’t make some sort of joke like that, we’re not doing our job. The truth is, that joke existed on Arrow originally and then a certain scene got cut so then I moved it over to Legends; I just kept moving it back and forth. I’m like, ‘I’m getting it in one of these episodes.’”
Good job, team!
(Via TV Insider)