Source : the age
When comic books first carved gods and monsters from cheap newsprint paper, they transformed low-quality wood pulp into invincible icons such as Superman and Batman and the terrifying villains they face. These heroic figures, like their stablemates the Flash and Aquaman, were variously otherworldly princes, noble avengers or scientific geniuses.
Guy Gardner – better known as Green Lantern – had a far more earthly origin story. His childhood was brutal, at the hands of an alcoholic father. He grew up in the shadow of a more popular older brother. And his football career was derailed by injury. Created in print in the late 1960s as an aggressive hothead, he offers a uniquely offbeat take on what it means to be a superhero in 2026.
“Audiences are more intelligent now,” says Nathan Fillion, who plays Gardner’s Green Lantern in the Superman movie series and now in the HBO Max series Lanterns. “When I started reading comic books, they were terrible. They were a drawing of a hero describing action and story, and telling you what’s happening, rather than showing you. Then, comic book stories and art started getting beautiful.
“Much in the same way, I think Batman was darn near happy when he was invented, but now the twist is, what if that guy’s not all just together there, [what if he’s] psychotic? That’s the reality of it. We lean into that kind of stuff, and that’s very satisfying because it allows us to think we could believe in these people.
“Guy Gardner is less complicated. I think he’s overly simplified. He has a sense of right and wrong, of good and evil. I just think if you were around Guy Gardner, you would wish he were a little smarter.”
Guy Gardner was created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appearing in Green Lantern #59, published in March 1968. Abin Sur, one of the Green Lantern Corps – a kind of space police – crashes on earth and, dying, uses his power ring to find a successor. Eventually, he ends up with three: the more classically heroic Hal Jordan, the more strategic John Stewart, and the abrasive Guy Gardner.
Fillion, revered by genre fans for his early role as Mal Reynolds in the critically revered science-fiction series Firefly, is almost cast against type as Gardner. Elsewhere – for eight years as Richard Castle on Castle, and for eight years and counting as John Nolan on The Rookie – Fillion’s characters have been smart outsiders who came to their power quietly, almost as underdogs.
Castle was a civilian mystery novelist who shadowed police officers, while Nolan is a mature-age police department rookie starting – at least back in season one – a new career after leaving construction. Both use their perspective as outsiders in a tight space where their inexperience is viewed with scepticism as a tool for problem-solving.
And both have a screen life measured in hours: 173 episodes of Castle, between 2009 and 2016, and 144 episodes of The Rookie, between 2018 and now.
Gardner, in striking contrast, has a screen life still measured in minutes. In the 2025 film Superman, he was part of the still-unformed Justice League ensemble, he appeared in the spin-off series Peacemaker, and he will return, in 2027, in the new Superman film Man of Tomorrow.
Lanterns, an eight-episode series commissioned for the streaming service HBO Max, will develop Gardner’s story substantially. In it, he joins the two other Green Lanterns – Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, and John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre. And in a substantial nod to the character’s comic book origin story, the series will feature the Green Lantern Corps nemesis, Thaal Sinestro, played by Ulrich Thomsen.
The journey from a life measured in minutes of screen time to hours will be illuminating, Fillion says, though perhaps not in the obvious way. “What I try to strive for is not to change, [it] is for consistency,” he says.
“Because in the Superman film we’re introduced to Guy Gardner, and he has a very specific tone, but Lanterns is a very, very different tone. I thought it would be important that these two worlds exist, but this character exists as well. So I think he had to have some consistency throughout.
“Time spent with a character is time spent witnessing their choices and being there on that journey with them. Our choices, our experiences shape who we are. So longevity inevitably leads to evolution, and taking that journey with a character is, I think, extremely satisfying for an audience member. It’s an investment.”
Why an actor suits a role often lacks rhyme or reason. Chemistry plays a bit part of it – with co-stars, but also between actor and character. In Fillion’s case, Gardner’s dry, dislikeability is tempered by Fillion’s natural charm.
“I have been very fortunate that I have been able to play characters that are extremely likable, and that comes along with a real education as to [why],” he says. “You can’t like a perfect character. Perfect characters don’t exist. You like people because they’re flawed like you and me. You like people because you get them, you can relate to them. On some level, when they fail, you say, I get it because I also have been kicked by life.
“So, there is likeability in being flawed. When it comes to someone like Guy Gardner, who is supposed to be essentially unlikeable, he doesn’t contain malice, he’s just cranky and difficult to be around. We all have someone like that in the family, someone you don’t want to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. We’ve all got that person. So, the secret is just playing that guy. Yeah, we get it, but he’s my uncle, so he’s family. He’s that guy.”
Fillion comes to this iteration of the DC Universe with an unusual, even immersive pedigree. He voiced another Lantern – Hal Jordan – in six animated films. But his relationship with the DC Universe goes back to his childhood, he says.
“My parents were high school English teachers, and they encouraged reading, they didn’t care what we read,” Fillion says. “So my choice was comic books. I wasn’t a collector in the beginning as far as following a series because we bought all our comic books second-hand [from the Wee Book Inn in Edmonton, Alberta], so my tastes were extremely varied.”
He knew Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern he says, but – and here’s the twist in the tale – he didn’t like him. “I didn’t see his worth back then, and I didn’t know how beloved he was until I actually got this role and people started talking about Guy Gardner in a way I’d never heard,” Fillion says
At the centre of the Green Lantern canon sits the green power ring each of them wears. In technical terms, it can do almost anything: project a force field, create tools, weapons or vehicles, translate languages and, when needed, let a Green Lantern take flight.
And it is recharged by reciting the Lantern Corps oath: “In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil’s might / Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light.”
As a prop on the set of a television series, it does possess talismanic properties, Fillion agrees. That puts it, in pop-cultural terms, alongside a lightsaber from Star Wars, The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver in Doctor Who, or Wonder Woman’s golden lariat.
“What I have found interesting is, given a prop gun, there are times when you have to imitate the kick of that gun,” Fillion says. “Given a blaster of sorts, you have to imbue the object with an action, the force that it reckons for you. Much the same, I had to concoct, and I think everybody who’s been a Green Lantern has to feel the force of something happening, and create that effort that it comes with this physical effort.
“For me, the ring, as far as what it conjures, I think about the reality of it. If I had a ring like that, I would be charging it every other hour, I would never take it off. And yet, I fidget constantly, so I’d take it off, and I would be so paranoid in those moments. I’d be just furiously worried about it constantly.”
Lanterns streams on HBO Max from August 17.
