For all the old anxiety about whether HBO and DC Studios’ “Lanterns” would sand down the cosmic weirdness of the Green Lantern mythos into something too grounded—and the color-coded controversies that sparked with diehard fans— showrunner Chris Mundy is making a slightly different pitch. The new series is not running from the Corps, the rings, or the alien baggage. It is using those pieces to build a cop-show mystery with a decade-long fracture running through it.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Mundy revealed several new story details about the upcoming DC drama, which stars Kyle Chandler as veteran Lantern Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as new recruit John Stewart. The series, co-created by Mundy (“Ozark”), Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen”), and Tom King, has long been described as a “True Detective”-inflected Green Lantern series. Now, the shape of that mystery is clearer.
The story begins in 2016 in Rushville, Nebraska, after a shooting that Hal believes has alien origins. Local sheriff Kerry, played by Kelly Macdonald, is not convinced, giving the show its first central conflict: the Lantern Corps investigating on someone else’s turf.
“There’s a familiar tension just in terms of jurisdiction,” Mundy told EW. “It’s not like F.B.I. and locals. It’s the Lantern Corps. and a local sheriff.”
Hal is also forced to bring along John Stewart, who has only been a Lantern for two months and whose selection breaks Corps tradition. Mundy explained that the Green Lantern ring normally chooses its bearer, but John was appointed by the Guardians of the Universe themselves. That makes him both Hal’s trainee and a threat to his place in the Corps.
The other major reveal is that “Lanterns” unfolds across two timelines. Season 1 moves between the 2016 Rushville case and a second story in 2026, with Mundy teasing another mystery waiting down the road. “Eventually two different mysteries get worked out over the course of the show,” he said.
That 10-year gap is also where the larger DCU comes in. The events of “Superman” sit between those two timelines, and Guy Gardner, played by Nathan Fillion, will appear “a few different times.” Mundy described the character as “fabulously obnoxious,” though other Lanterns will be referenced rather than brought directly into the season.
The show’s biggest character tension may come through Sinestro. Ulrich Thomsen plays Thaal Sinestro, Hal’s former mentor, though Mundy would not confirm whether the character is the season’s main villain. Instead, he pointed to the damage that can travel through mentorship.
“Obviously, in the canon, Sinestro’s the big bad,” Mundy said. “The thing that interests us is this idea [that] Hal was trained by Sinestro, Hal is training John.”
Mundy called the Hal/John dynamic “the old guard and the heir apparent,” and the series appears to lean into the resentment baked into that setup: what Hal learned from Sinestro, what he passes down to John, and what John refuses to inherit.
For fans worried that the show’s early marketing looked too brown, gray, or Earthbound for a Green Lantern series, Mundy also offered a direct answer. The visual effects approach will not be a wall-to-wall spectacle, but the show will not abandon its iconography.
“It’s a Green Lantern show, so there’s green,” Mundy said.
The series is also not necessarily designed as a one-and-done. Mundy said he would be “bluffing” if he claimed to know the full endgame, but “Lanterns” has been built with the possibility of multiple seasons in mind. For now, Season 1 has eight episodes to solve its two mysteries, define Hal and John’s fractured partnership, and prove that DC’s most cosmic cops can work inside a grimy, Earthbound crime story.
“Lanterns” premieres August 16 on HBO and HBO Max. Check out new photos from EW below.
