Lanterns: Newest Cast Member May Secretly Be a Major DC Villain

Red alert: there’s a new addition to the cast of HBO’s Lanterns. The DC Studios series has cast Paul Ben-Victor — an actor known for roles on the HBO series The Wire, Vinyl, and Entourage — in what could be a major villain role. According to Deadline, which first reported the news, Ben-Victor will play Antaan, “An extraterrestrial devoted to exposing the truth and exacting vengeance against those who wronged his people. Consumed by a deep and unrelenting hatred for the law, he is determined to deliver justice on his own terms.”

Antaan’s character description sounds like Atros, a.k.a. the raging Red Lantern Atrocitus. The villain debuted in the pages of Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver’s Green Lantern #25 in 2007, where the Guardians of the Universe warned that a force of hate would rise and a Red Lantern would be anointed in blood.

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If the color green represents the willpower that fuels the power rings of the Green Lantern Corps — one color on a spectrum that includes yellow (fear), violet (love), orange (avarice), indigo (compassion), and blue (hope) — then red is rage.

Atrocitus has hated the Guardians ever since their original police force, the android Manhunters, murdered his family and the rest of their people during a massacre that destroyed their home in Space Sector 666. The Guardians retired the law enforcement robots and replaced the Manhunters with the Green Lantern Corps, and Atrocitus’ hatred turned into rage.

From his base on the planet Ysmault, Atrocitus kept the corpse of the Mad Guardian Krona, whose decision to reprogram the Manhunters led to the destruction of an entire sector and the deaths of trillions. Atrocitus held a grudge against the Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who denied Atrocitus his vengeance when he took Krona’s life, so Atrocitus took it upon himself to punish those who deserve retribution as an “instrument of vengeance.”

Atrocitus created the Red Lantern Corps — beings of pure rage like Bleez, Fury-6, Nite-Lik, Haggor, Ratchet, Skallox, Zilius Zox, and Atrocitus’ cat, Dex-Starr — and swore their own version of the Green Lantern oath: “With blood and rage of crimson red, ripped from a corpse so freshly dead, together with our hellish hate, we’ll burn you all, this is your fate!”

Atrocitus is somewhat of a tragic villain: he trained to be a psychologist to help people before the deaths of his wife and children. He was left with nothing but pain and anger, and so the wrathful Red Lantern Corps was born.

The Lanterns series stars Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, two Green Lanterns from Sector 2814 who are “drawn into a dark, Earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland,” per the logline.

The cast includes Nathan Fillion, who reprises his Superman movie role as Green Lantern Guy Gardner, and Kelly Macdonald (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew), Garret Dillahunt (Fear the Walking Dead), Poorna Jagannathan (Deli Boys), Sherman Augustus (Stranger Things), Nicole Ari Parker (And Just Like That…), Jason Ritter (Matlock), Chris Coy (Lawmen: Bass Reeves), with Ulrich Thomsen (The New Pope) as Sinestro.

Chris Mundy (True Detective, Ozark) serves as showrunner and executive produces alongside Damon Lindelof (Lost), Tom King (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow), and DC Studios co-chiefs James Gunn (Superman) and Peter Safran (Creature Commandos).