Auliʻi Cravalho, the Hawaiian actress who first voiced Moana for Disney a decade ago, has been cast as Jessica Cruz in My Adventures with Green Lantern, a Warner Bros. Animation spinoff of Adult Swim’s hit series My Adventures with Superman. Cravalho makes her debut as Cruz this Saturday, June 20, in the second episode of Superman’s third season before headlining the standalone series on HBO Max.
The character, reimagined for this animated universe by showrunners Jake Wyatt and Brendan Clogher and writer Josie Campbell, departs meaningfully from her DC Comics origins. In the source material, Jessica Cruz is a woman in her mid-20s traumatized by witnessing a murder, who first bonds with the fear-powered Ring of Volthoom before eventually mastering a traditional Green Lantern ring under Hal Jordan’s mentorship.
Here she is a shy, anxious high school student whose life upends when a Power Ring literally falls from the sky and selects her as its next bearer. The spinoff’s official synopsis describes the stakes that follow: more debris from an ancient Lantern space war arrives on Earth, along with alien enemies, forcing Jessica to lead an entirely new Lantern Corps while dealing with ordinary teenage pressures.
Her introduction in the Superman episode “Mobile Suit Toyman” is engineered to serve the show’s Supergirl storyline. Wyatt told Entertainment Weekly that the writers wanted to show how different people responded to Kryptonian heroes appearing in their world — and a star-struck high schooler in a House of El T-shirt, watching Kara Zor-El (Kiana Madeira) field questions from an audience, was their answer. Sam Register, James Gunn, and Peter Safran are executive producers on the spinoff, with Stephanie Gonzaga serving as co-executive producer and Graci as head writer.
The announcement lands amid a broader DC animation revival. Warner Bros.’ last interconnected animated DC universe ended with Justice League Unlimited in 2006, making My Adventures with Green Lantern the first attempt to build a new one in twenty years.
The timing puts two Green Lantern properties on screen simultaneously — the adult-skewing live-action detective series Lanterns on HBO, and now this younger-skewing animated series aimed at the Superman show’s existing fanbase. Cravalho, 25, has voiced animated characters for Disney and Prime Video since Moana, and her casting continues the franchise’s pattern of drawing on voice actors with existing animated credibility for its expanding roster.
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No premiere date for My Adventures with Green Lantern has been announced.
