Nathan Fillion has taken a rare space in fantasy, a place occupied by very few performers. Like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Bruce Campbell before him, he's a geek favorite because he can play a certain type of character with incredible élan. He first made his mark on television as jukebox master Johnny Donnelly in Two Guys and a Girl and captured the hearts of fans as Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, the hilarious captain of Serenity, in Joss Whedon's short-lived Science. fi "Firefly" series. Fillion's television profile gradually rose throughout the 2010s as his portrayal of thriller novelist Frank Castle on ABC's The Castle, opposite Stana Katic as detective Kate Beckett, became a top 20 Nielsen ratings hit. He was so indelibly endearing in these varied roles that comic book readers began to portray him as any hero with a wry charm.

For this reason, a significant contingent of fans latched onto the notion of Fillion as Earth-born Green Lantern member Hal Jordan prior to the casting of the 2011 Warner Bros. film. They aggressively lobbied the studio and DC to cast him as the iconic hero, and while the part obviously went to Ryan Reynolds, Fillion didn't go home empty-handed. No, no, this is not about Fillion getting a role bowl-cutting-sporting Guy Gardner in James Gunn's upcoming Superman. More than a decade before landing this gig on the spot, Fillion put the ring on a different medium.

Since the movie business is very much a business, and 2011's Green Lantern cost Warner Bros a whopping $200 million, the studio chose a younger, taller star than Fillion to play the title character. In retrospect, given that Green Lantern bombedthis worked out well for Fillion. Had he attached his star to that film, it might have become an industry joke. This was before The Castle caught on in a big way, giving him the lead role in the failed television series. and an equally unpopular movie spinoff as the star of a mega-budget superhero movie would make Fillion look like something of a fun bad luck charm in the future.

Instead, DC found Fillion a comfortable low-key home as the voice of Hal Jordan in the animated, direct-to-video features Green Lantern: Emerald Knights and Justice League: Doom. Both films have been loved by the fan base and critics (the former is rated 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter boasts a perfect 100% score), and Fillion had a lot of fun making them. As he told Slice of Sci-Fi in 2012:

"This job makes me happy. It makes me smile. When I do these voices, I kind of want to live in the moment. You suspend reality for just a second. You know what Green Lantern looks like, you know the situations, you know the characters that surround him, so I kind of want to live in that moment for half a second like I'm there... and that makes me (smile).

Fillion is already making comic book fans smile, if not angry, with his brief, casually destructive work in the first trailer for James Gunn's Superman with an expansive look. which is just one more reason to step up for the film's July 11, 2025 release. Is it too much to ask for Philion Gardner to get his own movie? WB might be cool with the idea given the bad juju that unwrapped the 2011 film (which lost in the neighborhood of $120 million for the studio), but there are probably a million comic book bastards who can make them think otherwise. If Gunn's film corrects the mistakes of the Man of Steel franchise after failed revivals by directors Bryan Singer and Zack Snyder, Guy Gardner could very well have his day.