TV SERIES · 2026–present · USA
Lanterns
- Created by
- Damon Lindelof, Tom King, Chris Mundy
- Network
- HBO
- Seasons
- 1
- Episodes
- 8
- Studio
- DC Studios, HBO, Warner Bros. Television
38 archived facts 6 topics 3 sources Last reviewed Sep 2026
Two intergalactic cops, new recruit John Stewart and Lantern legend Hal Jordan, are drawn into a dark, Earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (38)
- #001
The series was created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King for HBO, produced by DC Studios and Warner Bros. Television, with Chris Mundy serving as showrunner.
- #002
In January 2020, Greg Berlanti said the Green Lantern series would span several decades and tell two stories about Green Lanterns on Earth, along with a story about the villain Sinestro in space.
- #003
The story follows veteran Lantern Hal Jordan and newcomer John Stewart as they investigate a murder committed on Earth that leads to a larger mystery.
- #004
HBO Max officially picked up the Green Lantern series for a 10-episode season in October 2020, with Marc Guggenheim and Seth Grahame-Smith writing and Grahame-Smith serving as showrunner.
- #005
The production's detective narrative was shaped by inspiration from the series True Detective and Slow Horses.
- #006
The Green Lantern series could not use the main comic book Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart because they were reserved for DC Extended Universe films; instead, it was set to explore other Green Lanterns such as Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Alan Scott, Kilowog, and new characters created for the series.
- #007
Greg Berlanti began developing a series based on the Green Lantern characters in October 2019; after James Gunn and Peter Safran became co-CEOs of DC Studios in October 2022, the project was redeveloped.
- #008
Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre were confirmed for the lead roles in October, the same month James Hawes joined the team to direct the first two episodes.
- #009
Filming took place in Los Angeles between February and July 2025; Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel and Alik Sakharov also directed.
- #010
John Stewart is regarded as an exception in the history of the Corps, as he is the first Lantern chosen by the Guardians of the Universe rather than by a Power Ring.
- #011
Berlanti wrote the series with Grahame-Smith and Guggenheim, all serving as executive producers alongside Geoff Johns, Sarah Schechter, David Madden and David Katzenberg, and Pornsak Pichetshote was later revealed to be part of the writers' room.
- #012
Thaal Sinestro, portrayed by Ulrich Thomsen, is a former Lantern who went astray after succumbing to the corrupting yellow energy of fear; following a failed coup in which he killed one of the twelve Guardians, he was expelled from the Corps and imprisoned in space.
- #013
In April 2022, Discovery, Inc. merged with Warner Bros.' parent company WarnerMedia to form Warner Bros. Discovery, led by president and CEO David Zaslav. The new company was expected to restructure DC Entertainment, and Zaslav began searching for a leader for the subsidiary comparable to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.
- #014
Nathan Fillion will appear in the series as Guy Gardner; he described the character here as more tense compared to his introduction in the 2025 film Superman.
- #015
The production's broadcaster is HBO, it consists of one season and eight episodes, and its first release date is August 16, 2026.
- #016
In October 2022, Grahame-Smith was revealed to have left Lanterns, which was being redeveloped to focus on Stewart.
- #017
Lanterns was announced on January 31, 2023, as the third television series in the DCU slate that begins with Chapter One: Gods and Monsters.
- #018
Lanterns is a new version of the long-in-development Green Lantern series and centers on the two best-known Green Lanterns, Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
- #019
According to Safran, Lanterns is an Earth-based detective story rather than the space opera that Berlanti had envisioned, and he described it as an "HBO-quality event" in the style of True Detective and Slow Horses.
- #020
The mystery investigated by Jordan and Stewart leads into the main DCU storyline, making Lanterns an important project for Gunn and Safran.
- #021
Damon Lindelof was consulting on Lanterns as a producer by January 2024, at which point the series was described as a priority project for the streaming service Max.
- #022
Lanterns received an eight-episode straight-to-series order from HBO in June 2024, with Chris Mundy confirmed as showrunner and executive producer.
- #023
In February 2025, Stephen Williams was confirmed to direct for Lanterns alongside Geeta Vasant Patel and Alik Sakharov, and Ron Schmidt joined as an executive producer the following month.
- #024
By August 2026, a writers' room had been working on a second season of Lanterns for around six weeks, but HBO was waiting to greenlight it until after the series premiered later that month to gauge critical and audience reception and viewership ratings.
- #025
Chris Mundy said that Lanterns was designed to stand alone from other DC Studios projects and to tell a complete story, while he hoped it could expand to multiple seasons; he added that a potential second season was still in the breaking-story stages.
- #026
By the end of May 2024, Chris Mundy, Tom King and Damon Lindelof had completed the pilot script and series bible for Lanterns while assembling a full writers' room.
- #027
Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson and Vanessa Baden also served as writers on Lanterns.
- #028
Tom King drew on his time as a CIA counterterrorism officer for Lanterns, and writing for the series was finished by the start of filming in February 2025.
- #029
Lanterns unfolds across two storylines: one set in 2016 involving a murder in Rushville, Nebraska, which Jordan believes to be an extraterrestrial incident, and a second connected to that murder taking place in 2026.
- #030
Chris Mundy compared the structure of Lanterns to the emotional mysteries of True Detective's first season, describing it as an exploration of why the mystery occurs rather than a traditional whodunit, and likened the relationship between Jordan and Stewart to that of Rust Cohle and Marty Hart.
- #031
Lanterns is primarily set in Sheridan County, Nebraska, with some scenes taking place in Iowa, and it does not adapt any specific comic storylines, though Chris Mundy said it is steeped in Green Lantern comic lore, with the main characters possessing power rings.
- #032
Chris Mundy said he aimed to create a grounded series within the Green Lantern mythology, seeking to turn elements of the source material into a layered, human HBO drama that would be accessible to newcomers while satisfying existing fans, and he noted that Jordan and Stewart would act as opposing forces in season one.
- #033
According to Chris Mundy, Guy Gardner would appear at a few different times in Lanterns and was described by Mundy as fabulously obnoxious.
- #034
Gunn said Lanterns would feature the interdimensional prison Salvation and the organization Checkmate, both introduced in the season two finale of Peacemaker (2025), and would be really important in setting up things in the wider DCU.
- #035
Nathan Fillion was cast as Guy Gardner for Superman in July 2023, and by September 2024 he was expected to co-star in Lanterns.
- #036
Josh Brolin was offered the role of Hal Jordan in Lanterns at the end of August 2024, but he passed on it soon after the offer was reported, saying it "didn't work out".
- #037
For Lanterns, DC Studios sought a younger, "fresh-faced" Black actor in his 20s to play John Stewart, while Matthew McConaughey and Ewan McGregor were considered for Hal Jordan if a deal with Josh Brolin fell through.
- #038
In March, Nicole Ari Parker, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Sherman Augustus, J. Alphonse Nicholson and Jason Ritter were cast in recurring roles, and Ulrich Thomsen was cast in January 2025 as Thaal Sinestro.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Wikipedia (EN)
- TMDB TMDb
- Wikipedia Lanterns (TV series) — Wikipedia
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