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In the final moments of the first episode of “Lanterns,” Hal Jordan is shown in an unexpected light.
After a 10-year time jump from the main events in Sunday’s premiere, the veteran Green Lantern played by Kyle Chandler is sitting alone in the snowy stands of a rural high school football field — dead. And the ring that gives him powers is nowhere in sight.
“That might have been another reason why I said, ‘I want to do this,’” Chandler says during a recent interview. “That sets into the tone of the show.”
The Jordan that the audience gets to know is a bit surly and self-centered. A former military test pilot turned space cop, Jordan knows he’s good at his job and has grown used to doing things his way. He has no problem expressing his displeasure at being inconvenienced by his unwanted trainee or earthbound law enforcement officers.
Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler star in the latest DC Studios series on HBO, playing a pair of intergalactic detectives who work for the Green Lantern Corps.
“I love the old grouchy characters,” Chandler says. “They always try to do bad but it always falls on top of them. Then, when they do good, it’s heartwarming. You get to play all these different colors inside of these guys.”
Created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King, “Lanterns” follows Jordan and new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), whom he has been assigned to train. Considering new Green Lanterns are usually only called up when a current one dies, Jordan isn’t really keen on having to teach his “backup.”
The HBO Max series is based on DC comic book characters and is set within the same universe as films like “Superman” and “Supergirl” and the TV series “Peacemaker.” But don’t worry, familiarity with the comics or other franchise installments are not required.
Mundy says he and his cohorts envisioned their Jordan as a Chuck Yeager type — someone who is cool and confident with the skills to back it up — and that Chandler’s was a name that had come up immediately.
“Kyle has a really, really good sense of himself, in the best way,” says Mundy, who’d previously worked with the actor on the series “Bloodline.” “Kyle, just as a person, is so likable and it’s real. [So] it allows you to push the character to be even more of a jerk to John because you know it’s going to fall back on, ‘Oh yeah, it’s Kyle doing it.’ So it can land a little bit softer, and people can tolerate a little bit more.”
Likable and charming are among the immediate impressions Chandler makes during a morning interview in West Hollywood earlier this month. He notes at the start that he’s unsure if he has enough to talk about for the full duration we’re scheduled for as if he’s not a veteran actor with an arsenal of anecdotes and self-deprecating quips. (“I don’t think my humor is going to go over very well in print,” he jokes. “It doesn’t go over very well anyway.”)
Among Chandler’s signature roles is the dedicated and dependable coach Eric Taylor on “Friday Night Lights” — a character whose full-hearted approach to mentorship is quite different from Jordan’s. His time on the show and working with executive producer Peter Berg “changed my whole way of looking at what acting was and is,” he says. Chandler won an Emmy for his work on the show in 2011.
“I think the thing that people don’t quite understand because he makes it all look so easy is how technically proficient he is, and how many choices he’s making all the time,” Mundy says. “He’s very, very gifted on a granular level as an actor.”
