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  2. Who was Reacher in Smallville? Alan Ritchson's DC days began long before the Amazon hit
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Who was Reacher in Smallville? Alan Ritchson's DC days began long before the Amazon hit

written by Monica Morrison
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Who was Reacher in Smallville? Alan Ritchson's DC days began long before the Amazon hit
Image credit: Google Veo 3

Long before Jack Reacher started dislocating shoulders on Prime Video, Alan Ritchson was turning up on Smallville in board shorts, needling Tom Welling's Clark Kent and irritating Lex Luthor. He wasn't playing a monster of the week. He was playing an A-lister.

Ritchson played Arthur Curry — "A.C." — better known as Aquaman. He appeared in four episodes across seasons 5, 6, 8, and 10, starting with "Aqua" in October 2005. That made him the first actor to play Aquaman in a licensed live-action production, more than a decade before Jason Momoa took the trident.

Every appearance

  • "Aqua" (season 5, 2005) — A.C. hauls Lois Lane out of Crater Lake, flirts with her, needles Clark, and sets out to sabotage a LuthorCorp weapons project.
  • "Justice " (season 6, 2007) — teams with Green Arrow, Impulse, and Cyborg in the show's proto-Justice League episode.
  • "Odyssey" (season 8 premiere, 2008) — helps spring Clark from a Russian labor camp.
  • "Patriot" (season 10, November 19, 2010) — returns married to Mera (Elena Satine), and his Atlantean name, Orin, is confirmed on screen.

The character's parting line in "Aqua" set the tone for the whole run:

"Stay super, bro." — Arthur Curry, "Aqua," 2005

The spinoff that almost happened

"Aqua" set a ratings record for the series, and Ritchson was offered his own Aquaman show as a Smallville spinoff. Then UPN and The WB merged into The CW. By Ritchson's account, the incoming network president questioned whether an actor with his thin résumé could carry a series.

Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar shot the pilot anyway — "Aquaman," also known as Mercy Reef — with Justin Hartley in the lead. It never went to series, and Hartley was handed Oliver Queen on Smallville instead. Four years later, "Patriot" recycled underwater footage from that unaired pilot for Ritchson's swimming shots.

The rest of his comic-book résumé

Ritchson voiced Aquaman in the 2008 animated film Justice League: The New Frontier, then played Hank Hall — Hawk — on Titans from 2018. Reacher premiered on Prime Video in 2022 and turned him into a leading man about seventeen years after the Crater Lake rescue.

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