Nathan Fillion Is Too Old to be a Dreamboat and We Need to Accept That

TV and sci-fi lovers of America, it’s time that we come clean about something. Nathan Fillion is an excellent actor who has given us many smarmy and delightful performances from Firefly‘s Captain Malcom to Castle‘s …er… Castle. But we’ve reached the end of an era. Nathan Fillion is comfortably a middle-aged actor, and we need to start treating him like one instead of another 20-something dreamboat.

This fall will see Fillion star in ABC’s The Rookie, a drama about a middle-aged man who decides to become a LAPD officer after stopping a bank robbery. On paper it’s a perfect transitionary role for Fillion that matches his evolution on screen. After over a decade of playing a handsome heartthrob, the action star has to face his advancing age head on. Except that’s not what The Rookie‘s John Nolan asks Fillion to do.

John Nolan is just like almost every other character Fillion has played. He’s headstrong, but typically right. He has a good heart hiding beneath the surface of his snarky rebellious streak. He makes women swoon with just one flick of his thick hair. He even has a seemingly 20-something in-show love interest, played by Melissa O’Neil. Only this time Fillion’s character is approaching 50, rather than 40.

It’s not that Nathan Fillion isn’t still a hunk as he enters middle age. He very much is and likely will always be in the sexy star category thanks to his voice alone. But treating him like a young dreamboat and pairing him with love interest who could be his daughter is making this sexy hero unnecessarily creepy. Why do this?

It’s not like an actor can’t be both sexy and age-appropriate. When Robert Downey Jr. starred as Iron Man in 2008, he entered Marvel’s superhero universe as a flirty and fast-talking playboy who slept with reporters who were terrible at their jobs. But as the MCU expanded, Downey’s role changed. Marvel still harnessed his sex appeal, but by giving him an age-appropriate partner in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts, Tony Stark leaned away from desperation and creepiness.

9-1-1‘s use of Peter Krause is an even better example of how to make an older lead appropriately hot. The last episodes of Season 1 teased a relationship between Krause’s repentant Bobby and Angela Basset’s struggling Athena. Bobby needed someone to convince him that he wasn’t responsible for killing an apartment’s worth of people, and Athena needed someone to see her as beautiful while she handled her husband coming to terms with his homosexuality. Bobby and Athena have an emotionally believable relationship. Because of this, watching these lovebirds find each other has become one of the sweetest parts of this crazy series. And as a bonus, with Krause at 53 and Basset at 60 (though she looks like she never ages), it flips the paradigm neatly.

That’s what Fillion deserves — a role that embraces his charm and age in equal measure. And Fillion is a funny guy; he can handle the self-awareness that comes from realizing he’s no longer the new, sexy, cult TV star. Oddly it’s Netflix’s raunchy animated comedy Big Mouth that’s married these two parts of the beloved actor best. Fillion stars as himself in the comedy, and often appears as a figment of the nerdy Missy’s (Jenny Slate) sexual fantasies. But often while he’s complimenting Missy’s intellect or sweeping her onto a horse, another character will point out how much older he is than the young woman who imagined him. He’s sexy, sure, but it’s weird that he’s THE sexual fantasy for a younger-leaning audience. Fillion gives a phenomenally self-aware performance, proving that he understands how odd his hunky lot in Hollywood is.

People — even sexy people — get older. That’s one of the curses of life. But we don’t have to make it weird, Hollywood. Let Nathan Fillion embrace middle age and the meaty parts that come with it, instead of making up cringeworthy romantic subplots. We don’t want our image of Fillion tarnished; and Nathan Fillion deserves better.

The Rookie premieres on ABC Tuesday, October 16 at 10/9c.

Watch The Rookie on ABC