Matt Rhule appears in DCU's 'Lanterns' finale, jokes about Broadway

Matt Rhule, head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, is a canonized character in the DCU — and he made a surprise cameo in Sunday night’s *Lanterns* season finale on HBO, according to awfulannouncing.com.

His DCU variant handed a Nebraska hat to highly recruited quarterback Noah Macon, played by Sean Pritchard, after Macon led his team to a state championship. The gesture indicated Macon would continue his football career with the Cornhuskers, paying off a storyline in which the young quarterback had been glimpsed in the stands for his final game.

The exact nature of Rhule’s role beyond the cameo is not confirmed. The source does not specify if he has any lines or further appearances in the series.

In a Monday press conference, Rhule peeled back the curtain on how his acting debut came to be. “I filmed that not this past summer, the summer before,” Rhule said. “Chris Mundy is the executive producer. He’s a Nebraska native and a huge Husker fan, and so got to know him at one point through somebody else.”

“We became friends, and as they were doing the show, and it was obviously based in Nebraska, he asked if I would want to go out and film that role, and so I did,” Rhule added.

HOW THE CAMEO HAPPENED

Rhule credited Chris Mundy, the show's executive producer, for the opportunity. “He’s a Nebraska native and a huge Husker fan,” Rhule said, noting he got to know him “at one point through somebody else.”

“We became friends, and as they were doing the show, and it was obviously based in Nebraska, he asked if I would want to go out and film that role, and so I did,” the coach explained.

“Lanterns” is the latest entry in James Gunn’s DCU, following Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart — played by Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre — as they investigate extraterrestrial activity in Nebraska. The exact timeline of when Rhule filmed the cameo is not confirmed beyond his statement that it was “the summer before” the current one.