Nathan Fillion's New 8-Part HBO Detective Series Has One Of Its Best Casts

Published Oct 8, 2026, 9:21 PM EDT Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more. Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics." Nathan Fillion is one of the stars of this new HBO detective series that has already released all of its eight episodes, and the show has one of the best casts for the genre at HBO, which is saying something. The list of HBO's best TV shows is filled with crime thrillers and such, and they tend to come with many stars. Among HBO's crime series are projects like The Sopranos, The Wire, The Penguin, True Detective, and many more. Taking the latter as an example, given how it is an anthology series, thus has to introduce a new cast every season, HBO routinely hits it out of the park. True Detective has featured Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell, Mahershala Ali, Jodie Foster, and many more. In recent years, HBO crime thrillers like The Penguin, with stars like Farrell and Cristin Milioti, and Mare of Easttown, with Kate Winslet and Evan Peters, have kept that tradition alive. As such, with such a huge number of stars, it is hard for an HBO crime series to rise above the rest. That said, a new 2026 HBO series has done just that. Higheror Lower? Choose the movie with the higher Rotten Tomatoes score. With a weekly release schedule and debuting on HBO and HBO Max on August 16, Lanterns quickly grew to become one of the biggest TV shows of 2026. The live-action DC series mixed True Detective's gritty and grounded crime thriller tone with the cosmic scope of DC Comics' Green Lanterns. The Lanterns season 1 finale aired on October 4, and with the season over, it is clear that it has an impeccable cast. Lanterns Cast The Perfect DC Heroes And More Lanterns had a difficult task. It was the first live-action Green Lantern project since Ryan Reynolds' 2011 movie, which was far from ideal. As such, it could not miss the mark with the two iconic Green Lanterns that were to lead the show. In the end, DC Studios cast the perfect actors for the roles, with Kyle Chandler just being endlessly charismatic as the most popular Green Lantern in the comics, Hal Jordan, and Aaron Pierre brought all the determination and posture John Stewart is known for in comics and animation to the small screen. Apart from its main stars, Lanterns created a complex character in the form of Kelly Macdonald's Sheriff Kerry Kane, who showed her credentials as an experienced detective like the Green Lantern legend Hal and always had the perfect sharp comment to reply to his advances. Garret Dillahunt was frightening as William Macon and Poorna Jagannathan made Zoe incredibly nuanced. John Stewart's parents, J. Alphonse Nicholson as John Stewart Sr. and Jasmine Cephas Jones as Bernadette Stewart, led to John's best backstory yet. Rounded up with Fillion as the sarcastic Guy Gardner, Ulrich Thomsen as the wise and cunning Sinestro, and Laura Linney as the mysterious Lianna, Lanterns had the perfect cast of new and classic DC characters. Lanterns' Casting Was So Good That It Created A DCU Problem In fact, Lanterns' Hal Jordan casting was so good that it has now created a problem for the future of the DCU. As shown by the Lanterns season 1 finale, where John was set up as the main Green Lantern of the DCU, using Hal's ring as he is truly dead and casting Guy Gardner to space, DC clearly planned for John to be the standout character of the series. However, even though Pierre was electric as John, Chandler's charisma as Hal just made him the fan-favorite. Every scene Hal was in had so much energy and kept dictating the pace of Lanterns season 1. Now that he is confirmed to be dead, with the Hal-o-gram gone as John charged Hal's ting on Sinestro's unsanctioned power battery, DC has to find a way to bring him back, or else risk Lanterns' extraordinary season 1 viewership dwindling if Hal is not back for season 2, which is in early development. Release Date August 16, 2026 Network HBO Showrunner Chris Mundy Cast Aaron Pierre John Stewart Directors Alik Sakharov, James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Patel Writers Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson Franchise(s) DC Universe Creator(s) Tom King, Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof