Lanterns Episode 6 Brings In Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner
Guy Gardner has finally walked into Lanterns — bowl cut, attitude and all.
Season 1 Episode 6, titled “Bad Optics”, is now streaming on HBO Max, and it brings Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern into the story after five episodes without him, according to Variety. Fillion plays Guy, Aaron Pierre plays John Stewart and Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan.
Guy does not get a quiet entrance. John has left his ring behind for good, and the Guardians of the Universe — the ancient bosses of the Green Lanterns — pick Guy as his successor. The catch is in the ranking. Guy was Earth’s third choice, after Hal and John.
The episode was written by Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson and directed by Stephen Williams, with Chris Mundy as showrunner, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It opens up the handover in stages. Guy picks up a distress signal from Rushville and visits John in jail. John later returns to Rushville and sees Hal one last time before Hal is found dead in the bleachers.
That death follows trouble in Episode 5. Hal engineered a fight between Zoe the Manhunter, played by Poorna Jagannathan, and extraterrestrial enemies, putting John and the people of Rushville at risk. John grabbed Hal’s ring, then gave it up. Now the ring is changing hands again.
This Guy is already larger than life in Rushville. His face first appears in the town as a cardboard cut-out advertising Electro Punch in the local grocery store. Backed by corporate benefactor Maxwell Lord, he plants a Green Lantern beacon in the town centre, a giant light meant to work like the Bat-Signal. He also wants to open his own bar. When John comes back in 2026 to investigate Hal’s death, he asks Guy to get Hal’s decommissioned ring back from the Guardians.
For Fillion, the role closes a long loop. He voiced characters in the mid-aughts Cartoon Network series Justice League Unlimited and led the sci-fi series Firefly. He played Guy Gardner in Superman (2025), directed by DC Studios co-chief executive James Gunn, and Lanterns follows on from that film as an HBO series from DC Studios.
What makes this stand out is how deliberately the show held Guy back. Five episodes built around John and Hal. Then one episode flips the roster.
