HBO's Green Lantern show swaps cosmic battles for a small-town murder in Nebraska
Two space cops with power rings land in Rushville, Nebraska, to investigate a killing. Lanterns, HBO's take on DC's Hal Jordan and John Stewart, borrows its mood from True Detective and Slow Horses rather than blockbuster spectacle, pairing a veteran near retirement with the first recruit the Guardians ever picked themselves.
Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King created the series, with Mundy running it day to day for DC Studios and Warner Bros. Television. It is the third television show in the rebooted DC Universe and belongs to the slate branded Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. Eight episodes began airing on August 16, 2026, with the finale scheduled for October 4.
Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan, a former Air Force test pilot who guards Sector 2814 and is being eased toward retirement by training his successor. The writers modelled him on Sam Shepard's Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Aaron Pierre plays John Stewart, a Marine and architect who is an oddity in the Corps: every earlier Lantern was chosen by a ring, but he was selected by the Guardians of the Universe. Kelly Macdonald plays Kerry Kane, the local sheriff who resents the outsiders, and Ulrich Thomsen is Thaal Sinestro, Hal's old mentor, who turned rogue, killed one of the twelve Guardians in a failed coup and has escaped from prison by 2026.
The project had a long road. Greg Berlanti, who had co-written the 2011 Green Lantern film, announced a series for HBO Max in October 2019, and a 10-episode season was ordered a year later. That version could not touch Hal or John, who were being held back for the older film universe, so it planned to feature other Lanterns such as Guy Gardner and Jessica Cruz across several decades.
When James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios as co-CEOs in October 2022, the show was rebuilt around the two classic heroes and a detective format, announced in January 2023. HBO ordered it in mid-2024. James Hawes, a director on Slow Horses, shot the opening two episodes, and filming ran in Los Angeles from February to July 2025. Nathan Fillion also turns up as Guy Gardner, a role he first played in the 2025 film Superman.
Source: Lanterns (TV series)
