Aug 18, 2026 11:44am IST
Nathan Fillion on ‘Lanterns’, What Makes Guy Gardner ‘Fearless’ and The DC Character He Wants His Green Lantern to Team Up with (EXCLUSIVE)
Nathan Fillion, recently seen as the abrasive Guy Gardner, aka the Green Lantern, in the DCU’s “Superman,” is one of those franchise chameleons who easily flit between fictional worlds. He has played/voiced multiple characters across the Marvel and DC universes, video games and animated films and immortalized characters in iconic shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly,” “Castle,” and the ongoing “The Rookie.” On HBO’s “Lanterns” series, he stars alongside two other Green Lanterns, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre).
In a chat with Variety India, Nathan Fillion reveals how Guy Gardner’s obnoxiousness makes him fearless and reveals the DC character he’d love for Guy Gardner to team up with.
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There are shades of Richard Castle in Guy Gardner—the cockiness, the disregard for rules and boundaries. But while Castle was ruggedly handsome, Guy has a very questionable haircut and yet thinks he is all that. Reflecting on what it takes to play a character as obnoxious as Guy, Fillion says, “So you think about a characteristic that's important. One of the most important characteristics of Guy Gardner is that he does not care what people think about him. He's not limited by people's opinion of him. So how do you portray that? One very easy way is his haircut. You look at that guy's haircut and realize he clearly does not care about your opinion. So that's just one easy way to see what kind of a man Guy Gardner is. If he's willing to wear that on his head, then I mean, there's just no sense in arguing with this guy. You're not going to get through. He thinks that hairdo is reasonable.”
Hal Jordan and John Stewart are pretty much playing a detective duo in “Lanterns”. Having had his own detective team-ups in “Castle” and “The Rookie,” who would Fillion pick as Guy Gardner’s partner in solving intergalactic crime? “I'm super fond of the idea of an Abbott and Costello-type dynamic: The funny man and the straight man. So in that case, I would love to pair up Guy Gardner with someone super stoic, like the Batman. But I think there'd be far more entertainment in watching two buffoons bungle, kind of like “The Other Guys” movie. I would put Guy Gardner with Booster Gold. I think that would be two guys easy to laugh at,” he replies.
Interestingly, Guy Gardner and Booster Gold have teamed up at least thrice in the comic books but never on the screen. What makes Nathan Fillion’s appearance in “Lanterns” even more exciting is that this isn’t his first time going Green. Before he played Guy Gardner in the live-action DC universe, Fillion voiced Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern for over a decade across multiple animated DC films and shows, starting with “Green Lantern: Emerald Knights” (2011). In “Lanterns," he faces a character he once voiced, played by another actor, while he plays a future version of the same superhero.
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DC Studios’ “Lanterns” is an eight-episode series featuring Kyle Chandler as the experienced Hal Jordan, the first-ever Green Lantern from Earth, and Aaron Pierre as the new recruit, John Stewart. The two team up to solve a murder in Rushville, Nebraska, which leads to a bigger, more tangled intergalactic mystery, including how Fillion’s Guy Gardner ends up being the Green Lantern in the current timeline.
The series also stars Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt and Poorna Jagannathan and is created for HBO by Chris Mundy of “True Detective,” Damon Lindelof of “Lost,” “Watchmen” and “The Leftovers,” and Tom King, whose “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” comic book miniseries inspired DC’s "Supergirl," starring Milly Alcock.
“Lanterns,” which premiered on Monday, August 17, 2026, on JioHotstar, will drop weekly episodes until October 4, 2026.
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