Nathan Fillion Was Originally Cast as Green Lantern Hal Jordan, 36 Years Ago Y01

Long before he was ever cast as Green Lantern, millions of people around the world already agreed Nathan Fillion was born to play Hal Jordan. Even though his Lantern role has taken a different path, fans can take comfort in one of the strangest comic book coincidences of all time: that DC Comics somehow broke the laws of time to cast Fillion in the role… before the actor’s 18th birthday.

Superman Chose A Familiar Man To Become Earth’s Green Lantern

Action Comics #642 (1989) by Elliot S. Maggin, Gil Kane & Glenn Whitmore

To understand this million-to-one comic book coincidence(?) fans must head all the way back to January of 1989, when Action Comics #642 hit comic book shelves everywhere. With a shocking new story titled “Where There is a Will…” the very origin story of Earth’s Green Lantern was rewritten. As fans knew it previously, the dying alien Lantern Abin Sur crashed on Earth, and called upon the nearest worthy hero to claim his ring. That man was test pilot Hal Jordan, and the rest was soon history. But that was all about to change.

In the new, previously unknown sequence of events, it was actually Superman called to become Green Lantern first. The Kryptonian politely declined, but Abin Sur sensed this Clark Kent was the right kind of person to help him decide among the candidates. Recognizing one face from a previous news story, Clark named Hal Jordan the best choice to claim the role of Green Lantern. A face which, 36 years later, has since become famous for the very same reason:

Yes: as unlikely, as absurd, or as downright impossible as it might seem, the face of Hal Jordan (or more accurately, the entire side profile and hairstyle) is as close to an artist’s rendition of Nathan Fillion as one could likely deliver. Even more absurd, Fillion’s own birth in 1971 means that when this issue was published in 1989, the actual actor did not yet look as similar to his future self as this comic art (still attending Holy Trinity Catholic High School in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada at the time).

Assuming that acclaimed artist of the era Gil Kane was not secretly a time traveler, clairvoyant, or ‘seer’ of any kind, it would seem the only explanation is pure, random coincidence. But in the grand scope of history, from the dawn of comic book superheroes in the 1930s, fans won’t find as prophetic a superthero casting prediction as Action Comics #642. That the anomaly occurs in a scene of Superman literally ‘casting Green Lantern’ from a series of headshots suggests something much, much greater at work.

The Only Explanation: Fillion Was Destined To Be Green Lantern

Whether Guy Gardner or Hal Jordan, Nathan Fillion’s Role Was Already Decided

Given this new information, the fan campaigns to see the Firefly star cast as a live-action Green Lantern, and his own voice performance as Hal Jordan in Green Lantern: Emerald Knights were weaving the threads of fate all along. Of course, what this means for Fillion’s casting as Guy Gardner, and not Jordan in James Gunn’s Superman (2025) is less certain.

Thankfully, audiences will have the chance to see Fillion’s Gardner in the upcoming Lanterns series, opposite the DCU incarnation of Hal Jordan played by Friday Night Lights alum Kyle Chandler (an accomplished actor in his own right, but whose predestination for the role remains unclear).

So whatever the future may hold for Fillion’s role within the larger Green Lantern mythology, fans now have the universe itself supporting their belief that this superhero synergy was meant to be.