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
18 Facts From the Making of Lanterns
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
- #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.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Lanterns (TV series) — Wikipedia
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