In Sunday's fourth episode of Lanterns, Hal Jordan and John Stewart get much more than they bargained for when they tunnel underneath William Macon's compound in search of the enigmatic villain's mysterious "benefactor."
After being captured by Macon's men thanks to their anti-Green Lantern ring technology, the rancher holds the heroes at gunpoint, strips naked, and demands that Stewart sketch him.
“Of course I was nervous. I thought those days were long past. I’ve been naked in a few plays and a few things early on. So, yeah, I had to get ready,” Garret Diallahunt tells People.
“[My character is] sort of unusually fit for a guy my age. And I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t think I’m unusually fit. I better try to get unusually fit,’ and I had a little bit of time, so I did my best. But, thankfully, everyone was funny and cool and we had a decent time that day. The scene works. If it didn’t work, I think I’d have different feelings about it. But, I don’t know, it was fun.”
In a separate interview with EW, Dillahunt joked about stripping down at the age of 61 and impressing co-star Aaron Pierre with his physique.
“I was like, ‘Get ready to be amazed, Aaron! You’re gonna wanna take notes.’ I thought that was the ballsiest part: ‘Listen, you middle-aged man. You’re gonna strip down in front of Aaron Pierre and really impress him. Get Garret for that! That’s his MO.’”
Some viewers have wondered whether this scene was really necessary, and they probably do have a point - although it did brilliantly set up Hal's "Weenie" joke a little later on.
Lanterns is going from strength to strength in viewership.
According to Variety, episode 3 averaged 10 million viewers globally and 7 million viewers in the U.S. after three days of viewership. This marks a series high for the DC Studios/HBO Max show (the pilot episode has now attracted more than 20 million viewers worldwide), which ranks among the top five series launches in the platform’s history.
HBO in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. The pilot episode is co-written by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, who are co-creators for the series. Mundy serves as showrunner. The first two episodes are directed by James Hawes, with Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Alik Sakharov also tapped to direct. The series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, James Gunn, Peter Safran, King, Ron Schmidt, and Hawes. Based on the DC comic characters from Green Lantern.
The series stars Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
The series follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.