Lee Majors Played An Assassin In This Canceled 2010s Show Based On A DC Comic

Today, DC’s TV fortunes are looking up. “Lanterns” was DC’s riskiest bet yet but it paid off, with the show being generally well-received. But not every DC series has fared as well. There have been some egregious missteps in the past, and “Human Target” might be one of them. This little-known Fox series debuted back in 2010 and garnered some truly wretched reviews. It did, however, feature small screen legend Lee Majors, who two years after appearing in a star-studded comedy that notoriously flopped at the box office, brought some of his considerable gravitas to the “Human Target” Season 1 finale.

You may not have heard of “Human Target,” but it’s a DC property with a legacy that stretches all the way back to the 1950s. The first character to use the “Human Target” moniker was named Fred Venable. He first appeared in “Detective Comics” #201 back in November 1953, wherein Batman and Robin encountered this mysterious individual who, as the cover exclaimed, “deliberately exposed himself to others” (which is a lot less lewd than it sounds). Venable impersonated the identities of those targeted for assassination, thereby protecting them.

The second Human Target was Christopher Chance, and it’s this character that got his own show — two, in fact. Chance first appeared in 1972’s “Action Comics” #419 and has since appeared in one-shots, and an ongoing series. More recently, “Lanterns” co-creator Tom King and Greg Smallwood oversaw a “Human Target” limited series for DC Black Label in 2021. Since his debut in the 1970s, Chance has also appeared in a 1992 ABC TV show, wherein he was portrayed by Rick Springfield, who incidentally got his start on Majors’ biggest show, “The Six Million Dollar Man.” 18 years after Springfield’s portrayal of Chance, Majors also played the character.

Rick Springfield made his acting debut on “The Six Million Dollar Man,” appearing opposite Lee Majors in the episode entitled “Rollback” in 1977. In 1992, Springfield appeared as Christopher Chance in ABC’s “Human Target,” a short-lived show based on the DC character which lasted just seven episodes and garnered some less than impressive reviews. 1992’s “Human Target” might even be one of the worst superhero shows of all time. 18 years later in 2010, Fox had another go at bringing the Christopher Chance version of the character to the small screen, and it wasn’t all that much better.

This time, the network hired Mark Valley to play the character. In the 2010 “Human Target” show, Valley’s Chance (previously known as Junior) is an ex-assassin who shunned his former mentor to become a private contractor, providing bodyguard and security services to his clients. Rather than assuming their identities like his comic book counterpart, this version of Chance takes on identities that allow him to remain extremely close to his clients. He’s also supported by a team consisting of ex-police officer Laverne Winston (Chi McBride), fellow ex-assassin Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley), financier Ilsa Pucci (Indira Varma), and master thief Ames (Janet Montgomery).

In the world of the show, Chance was trained and mentored by an individual known as The Old Man, who referred to Chance only as Junior. But when Chance was assigned to kill a target named Katherine Walters (Amy Acker), he refused, thereby severing his connection to The Old Man and becoming a lone operator. It’s not until the end of the first season that he takes on the name Christopher Chance, which he borrows from a mysterious man played by Lee Majors.

Lee Majors will forever be known for playing TV action legend Steve Austin in “The Six Million Dollar Man” and bounty hunter Colt Seavers in “The Fall Guy.” Though it may not one of Lee Majors’ best roles, casting him as an extremely skilled former assassin in “Human Target,” then, was an inspired choice.

At the end of “Human Target” Season 1, we see Christopher Chance and Katherine Walters pay a visit to the warehouse office of a bodyguard played by Majors. Turns out, he’s named Christopher Chance, and the name itself is more of a mantle passed down to successive assassins. Majors’ Chance was previously part of the same group of assassins to which Junior belonged prior to breaking away. In the finale episode, Chance offers his advice to Junior, with whom he evidently faced off before, becoming one of the only men to ever beat Junior in a fight — and rightly so, he’s the Six Million Dollar Man.

Majors only appears in that one episode, but he left his mark by giving Mark Valley’s Junior the name which he used throughout the rest of the series. Unfortunately, that series didn’t last too long. After debuting in January 2010, “Human Target” was canceled after two seasons, wrapping up in May 2011. During that time it failed to impress any critics, with Season 1 earning a 20% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, it can at least claim to have brought Lee Majors back to the small screen in the kind of badass role befitting such a TV action legend.