20 Years Ago Today, A Lanterns Star Launched a Remake of a Hit Movie and Changed Television Forever

HBO’s Lanterns has become HBO Max’s biggest DCU TV show yet. The Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre-starring show drew 9.3 million views in its first three days and has averaged 19 million viewers globally per episode. The show opens with Chandler’s Green Lantern Hal Jordan going to Nebraska to investigate a mass murder at a football game. The show establishes Hal’s disarming sense of humor when he interrogates a witness and immediately suspects something is afoot. The suspected alien accidentally reveals himself when it knows more details about the Cornhuskers than the name of the school Harry Potter went to. Chandler tees up the scene with a winking line to his past, “I love football.” Indeed he does, because in a previous life, he played America’s favorite football coach, Coach Eric Taylor.

Twenty years ago, Coach Taylor led the Dillon Texas Panthers on Friday Night Lights. Based on H.G. Bissinger’s 1990 nonfiction book of the same name, Peter Berg retooled his own film into a series for NBC. Berg would direct the pilot that premiered on October 3rd, 2006. The series followed Chandler’s Coach Taylor, and his guidance counselor wife, Tami, played by Connie Britton, as they tried to guide the teenagers of Dillon on and off the football field. Those teenagers would go on to be some of the biggest superstars of their generation.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose

The series would follow players and the people intertwined in their lives as they navigate a world obsessed with football. When the starting quarterback, Jason Street, played by Scott Porter, suffers a catastrophic injury, the whole town is put on its heels. Backup quarterback Matt Saracen, Zach Gilford, has to navigate the politics of becoming QB1 and dating the coach’s daughter Julie, played by Aimee Teegarden. Star running back Smash Williams, portrayed by Gaius Charles, is the team’s biggest prospect for going to a Division I Football program. Then there’s full back Tim Riggins, played by Taylor Kitsch, arguably the heart of the show. The charming rebel would anchor a love triangle with Minka Kelly’s Lyla Garrity and Adrianne Palicki’s Tyra Collette acting as the opposite and adjacent. And then there’s Jesse Plemons as the outsider and lead singer of Christian rock band Crucifictorious Landry Clarke, also sometimes known as Lance. The show’s casting director launched some of the biggest careers in Hollywood when they assembled this ensemble.

The writing team, led by showrunner Jason Katims, crafted some of the most memorable dialogue of modern television. The quotable line “Texas Forever” became a symbol of the show’s earnest appreciation for the simpler life of the small towns of the heartland. Coach Taylor was giving inspirational speeches two decades before Ted Lasso would pick up the torch. Ted’s optimism is infectious, but Lasso’s simple “Believe” could never surpass the moment when Kyle Chandler uttered the phrase, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”

The show’s first season would follow the Panthers all the way to the state championship, where, spoiler alert for a 20-year-old series, they take home the trophy. It’s what happened in the show’s second season that will always leave a small black mark on FNL’s otherwise spotless legacy. With the second season getting a full 22-episode order, the producers began exploring more storylines outside the football field. The show’s plots became something decidedly less football family drama and more nighttime soap opera. In season one, Jesse Plemons’ Landry and Adrianne Palicki’s Tyra begin an odd-couple friendship that starts fairly normally. Then in season two, Tyra is assaulted by a stalker. Landry, whose father is a cop, kills him while defending her. Together they dispose of the body. Landry confesses to his father, and it’s just dropped. Future seasons would never bring it up again. The second season would thankfully end early due to the 2007-2008 writers’ strike.

Texas Forever and Ever Again

While the show was beloved by critics and the audience that did tune in, the drama never had huge ratings during its first two seasons on NBC. However, the number of DirecTV subscribers that tuned in was enough to get the satellite provider to make an unusual deal with NBC to co-produce the show, allowing DirecTV to air the episodes first before airing on the broadcast network. For the rest of the show’s run, FNL had 13-episode seasons and kept the show focused on the real drama during the football season. Season 3 would see most of the Dillon Panthers see their senior year. A reinvention for season four would give Coach Taylor and the audience a whole new perspective on the game.

After being forced out of West Dillon, Coach Taylor takes a job coaching the crosstown rivals at East Dillon. The show refocused to tell a story about what football means to a different type of community and featured a new generation of players and their peers. The new cast most notably featured Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett in breakout roles as Vince Howard and Jess Merriweather. Coach Taylor turns an ailing program around to create not just good players, but good men. He also gets an unexpected assistant in Smollett’s Jess. The dynamics also change for Coach Taylor and his wife as Tami stays at West Dillon as principal before joining her husband at East Dillon as a guidance counselor again. After 5 seasons and 76 episodes, the show would end with Eric Taylor moving to Philadelphia to support Tami in her career while coaching another high school team.

The final season would earn Friday Night Lights two Emmy wins. Kyle Chandler won for Lead Actor in a Drama, and Jason Katims won Best Writing for the finale. The series continued gaining new fans when it became a streaming hit on Netflix. A large portion of the cast would go on to fill out the spandex of superheroes. Taylor Kitsch played Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, having been coached for his audition for the role by comic aficionado and FNL co-star Scott Porter. Porter would go on to voice Cyclops in multiple cartoons and video games. John Wick‘s Adrianne Palicki would appear on Agents of SHIELD as Mockingbird and portray Wonder Woman in a failed NBC pilot from Ally McBeal’s David E. Kelly. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Minka Kelly would play Dove against Alan Ritchson’s Hawk in DC’s Titans. Jesse Plemons would continue appearing in Peter Berg films, including Battleship with Taylor Kitsch. Over the years, though, he has become one of the finest actors of his generation, with standout performances in films like Bugonia and the non-Avengers Civil War from A24. He stars in two of the best episodes of Black Mirror as the worst kind of nerd. Birds of Prey cast Jurnee Smollett as Black Canary. And of course, Michael B. Jordan would go on to play Erik Killmonger in Black Panther and win an Oscar for his performance in Sinners. It’s only appropriate that their coach play the Green Lantern.

The show is now on Peacock, where a reboot is also being developed. Kyle Chandler’s Eric Taylor will not return, as Peter Berg and Jason Katims are constructing the new series around a new coach and a new team in a new town. The show is expected to follow a community as they rebuild after a devastating hurricane, rallying around the high school football team. You can still catch Kyle Chandler on Lanterns, saying the Green Lantern oath to charge the ring. But we all know there’s a variation we want to hear: “In brightest day, clear eyes, in blackest night, full hearts, Green Lantern’s light, can’t lose.”

What was your favorite superhero role played by a Friday Night Lights cast member? Let us know in the comments below.