The Green Lantern is a strange superhero with an even stranger history in film and TV, despite being one of the poster boys for DC Comics.

He’s made cameo appearances in hit TV shows like Smallville, featured heavily in animated projects, and had his only solo film in 2011, but the less we talk about that, the better.

Yet for over 15 years, the space-cop known for creating things with his mind using a will-powered ring has been missing.

So, with the pantheon of superhero media we are currently experiencing, fans have been pleading for a new screen-based project for their favourite jewellery-wearing, green construct-projecting hero. Enter HBO.

The new series, simply titled Lanterns, is an eight-episode series that follows two comic characters who have held the Green Lantern mantle: Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, and John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre.

In 2016, the Guardians task Hal, the current Green Lantern, with training John to use the ring if he dies or goes missing.

When a mysterious series of deaths occurs in rural Nebraska, Hal and John investigate to determine whether extraterrestrial beings are involved.

However, the show plays with multiple timelines, so at the same time as the situation in Nebraska, the story also shifts to 2026, where John is investigating the murder of Hal, who was killed on the same football field where the mysterious deaths occurred in 2016.

While this may seem like a spoiler, it is the core mystery of the entire show, and everything mentioned occurs in the first episode.

The best thing about Lanterns is its core narrative and the way it presents it.

This isn’t your typical MCU Disney+ series, and it definitely isn’t in the vein of 2025’s Superman. It’s gritty, it’s thought-provoking, and it’s brilliant.

The show feels like the superhero version of True Detective, exactly how creators Tom King and Damon Lindleoff, the latter known for writing Lost, pitched it, and it delivered in spades.

Two core mysteries split the season in half, with the show spending the first half on events in 2016 before jumping back or forward(?) to 2026 to catch us up on Hal’s death in the latter half.

It’s brilliant because, throughout the first four episodes, we know Hal’s fate, but it doesn’t become the focus until the end of the season. As a result, the audience can’t help but theorise about who did it and dissect every interaction he has in the 2016 timeline to figure out what led to the events of 2026.

The two leads are also incredible.

Hal and John don’t like each other, but they understand the job at hand, and Chandler and Pierre convey that perfectly.

Hal knows that John’s gunning for his job and refuses to hand over the ring lightly. Meanwhile, John has spent his entire life preparing to take the mantle and sees Hal as a washed-up shell of his former self.

The two butt heads, each with a different ego: Hal with the bravado of a guy who’s been doing the same gig for decades and John as an unflappable, get-the-job-done ex-Marine.

Unlike their Marvel counterparts, DC’s HBO offerings choose character analysis over spectacle. While it can be frustrating not to see these comic book characters in huge space fights with fluoro green constructs everywhere all the time, this show doesn’t need it.

That’s not to say there aren’t huge action scenes; there are, especially in the middle of the season, but it’s very much characters first, set pieces second.

Lanterns is fantastic as a show about two troubled space cops fighting to be top dog with a very strong central mystery.

Some viewers will undoubtedly be frustrated by the pace and the choice to ground these space-hopping characters, but it’s almost irrelevant because what we get instead is spectacular.

Lanterns is currently streaming on HBO Max and is set to be renewed for a second season.