Kyle Chandler is arguably best known for playing Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights, and now, 20 years after it ended, he’s revisiting the role in a completely different show. Kyle Chandler has a long list of great movies and shows he’s starred in over the decades, ranging from comedic satires like The Wolf of Wall Street to deadly serious dramas like Manchester by the Sea. His most famous and beloved role, however, was in Friday Night Lights.
Friday Night Lights served as Kyle Chandler’s breakout role when it began in 2006, and it remains one of his most acclaimed to this day. He was nominated for two Emmy Awards and won one in 2011 for the role, which is his only Emmy win to date. It’s also by far his most culturally relevant role ever, as Friday Night Lights is still considered one of the best shows of the 2000s and Coach Taylor’s motto of “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” is still regularly quoted years later.
Despite its popularity and fame, Kyle Chandler has been moving away from Friday Night Lights in the years since it ended. He’s prioritized movies over television and only starred in two TV shows since 2011: Bloodline and Super Pumped. He also plays wildly different characters, from law enforcement officers to scientists. Now, however, Chandler is ready to step back into the role of a coach and mentor in a very different kind of show: the DCU’s superhero series Lanterns.
Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan Has A Lot Of Similarities To Friday Night Lights’ Eric Taylor
Kyle Chandler is set to star in the upcoming DCU show Lanterns as Hal Jordan, a Green Lantern who uses his super-powered ring to act as an interstellar law enforcer and peacekeeper. At face value, it’s a very different role from the very realistic and grounded high school football drama of Friday Night Lights. Lanterns, however, has a hook that makes Hal Jordan into the spitting image of Coach Taylor.
Lanterns will see Chandler’s Hal Jordan training the younger John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) as the newest Green Lantern and his replacement for a yet-unknown reason. Scenes from trailers have highlighted Hal imparting words of wisdom about the ring and how to use it, as well as Hal telling John that he needs to be fearless to be a Green Lantern. Clearly, Kyle Chandler is about to play a coach and teacher in Lanterns, for the first time since Friday Night Lights ended in 2011.
Hal Jordan and Coach Taylor are both former prodigies in superheroing and football, respectively, both are mentors training the next generation in their respective fields, and both seem to have a “tough love” approach to teaching. Coach Taylor never accepted anything less than 100% effort, and while we don’t know much about Chandler’s take on Hal Jordan yet, it certainly seems like he’s going to push John Stewart to his absolute limit to prepare him to use the ring.
Aside from being coaches played by Kyle Chandler, Hal and Taylor also have other similarities. Both have a strong sense of justice; Hal being a superhero and law enforcer, and Taylor holding his players to high standards and even suspending them for egregious offenses. They’re even both in similar settings, as Lanterns reportedly takes place in small-town America, just as Friday Night Lights takes place in small-town Texas. One may deal with intergalactic aliens while the other deals with teenage football players, but Lanterns should still be very reminiscent of Friday Night Lights.
Hal Jordan Should Give Kyle Chandler A Chance To Age-Up Coach Taylor
Lanterns‘ similarities to Friday Night Lights will also give Kyle Chandler a unique opportunity to play a character like Coach Taylor at a very different point in his life. Coach Taylor, while he could be very demanding and focused on tough love, was always a very likable and wholesome figure in Friday Night Lights. He’s a great coach and mentor, he always went to bat for his players, and he had a great family life outside of football as well.
Hal Jordan in Lanterns, however, is a very different kind of coach. As the trailers for Lanterns have teased, Hal seems like an old, jaded Green Lantern who is effectively past his prime. He uses his ring to counterfeit money, he seems entirely displeased with the idea of someone replacing him, and he comes across as a bit of a jerk. Lanterns is essentially taking Coach Taylor and showing him if his life went wrong and he ends up as an older, meaner version of himself.
Hal being essentially an older version of Coach Taylor means that Lanterns can do some things with its mentor character that Friday Night Lights never got a chance to. For example, Hal will almost definitely have some kind of redemption arc and come around to training John Stewart, which Taylor never needed to do. Additionally, while Taylor did sometimes interact with former players, Lanterns and future DCU stories should let Hal be a much more constant presence in John’s career as a Green Lantern.
Between ongoing teaching and training for John Stewart and the fact that Hal is presumably giving up the Green Lantern mantle, Lanterns is letting Kyle Chandler’s character directly interact with his legacy and impact as a coach more than Friday Night Lights ever did. Hal is going to get to see his student grow beyond him and become his own man more than Coach Taylor ever did with his players, which makes <em>Lanternsa familiar but distinctly new take on Kyle Chandler playing a mentor character.
