Lanterns Is Great, But HBO's Darker Superhero Series From 7 Years Ago Is Still Superior

Published Oct 10, 2026, 10:45 AM EDT

Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. 

Lanterns may just be the best superhero TV show of the last seven years. It would probably be the best of the last 20 if it were not for another superhero series that also premiered on HBO. Damon Lindelof has done it again, adding another fantastic series to his already singular resume.

Lanterns premiered in August 2026 and ended with the episode 8 finale in October, racking up the ire of some online fanboys in the process but also resounding acclaim and appreciation from critics and the majority of the viewing audience. Lindelof's take on the Green Lantern DC comic is fresh and unique, yet also totally faithful to the spirit of the ring-wielding comic character.

The series is a more mature version of the superhero story, and not as in it's ultra-violent or that it's gunning for an R-rating. It's a superhero show that assumes the majority of its audience is adults who like superheroes. Lanterns does not underestimate its characters nor its audience, and that's the Lindelof difference.

If you don't believe me, watch Watchmen, Lindelof's other comic book adaptation for HBO and the only superhero show that we can safely rank above Lanterns. Watchmen is Lindelof's take on Alan Moore's comic, but like Lanterns, Watchmen expands on its IP instead of tracing a better story. Lanterns is fantastic, but Watchmen is super.

Watchmen Is A More Complete Story Than Lanterns

Credit: MovieStillsDB

Lanterns tells a gripping whodunnit, with the added excitement of power rings and extraterrestrials capable of shooting laser beams from high in the atmosphere. By the time it's over, you feel like you have a handle on the world, the characters, and understand the changes they've made on their way to becoming who they are in the finale.

Watchmen does this all, but it does it a tad better. While there hasn't been any news of a Lanterns season 2, the ending leaves things open for another story set in this world with the same characters. Watchmen has a similar ending, but the difference it, it almost feels like we're not supposed to know what comes next.

In Watchmen, we've learned so much about the consequences of the events of Moore's comic, with the show set a few decades afterward, that it doesn't really make sense to revisit it. Each storyline in Watchmen winds into one another satisfyingly, and the conclusion of one signals a critical juncture in another.

Lanterns is a bit more open-ended, perhaps a result of the Green Lantern source material being much more expansive than Watchmen's. It's not that threads are necessarily left hanging, though there are those in Lanterns that do; it's that we are exposed to stories in Lanterns that we don't get the ending to, purposefully, which is not the case in Watchmen.

Watchmen Allows Damon Lindelof To Be As Weird As He Wants

Credit: MovieStillsDB

Lindelof has an exceptionally inventive mind. It's no wonder that he was drawn to a superhero whose power involves constructing whatever amazing creation they can think of. From Lost to The Leftovers to Mrs. Davis to The Watchmen, all of his shows are filled with ideas and sequences that feel like only he could have thought them up.

Polar Bears in Lost or a game show version of King Arthur's sword in Mrs. Davis are just a few of the imaginative ideas Lindelof packs his shows with. Lanterns, despite the presence of a power ring, feels like it's reigned in, in terms of how bizarre it's willing to be. It's ironic his most alien show is his most down-to-earth.

Watchmen, on the other hand, is bonkers. I won't waste time detailing every weird visual, unbelievable idea, or strange character; I'll just say that the giant psychic squid that is the climax of Moore's comic and the kickoff of the TV show does not even scratch the top ten strangest things in the miniseries.

Lindelof's Watchmen Threads A Narrower Needle

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Lanterns was never going to be an easy show to make. Standards are high for superhero fare these days, and standards for HBO have never fallen. Still, it's been done successfully before. Lanterns even nods toward a successful adaptation with the inclusion of Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner.

Watchmen was the more difficult show to make. Not only is Watchmen a more difficult text to make comprehensible to a wide audience, but Lindelof's version of the show also isn't just a remake for TV. It's a sequel, but it's also a prequel, and it even somehow manages to bring Zack Snyder's film into the fold.

HBO's Watchmen is a comprehensive text, bringing the old and the new to elevate what Moore's story was saying, recontextualize it for the modern era, and then add in some ideas and philosophies of Lindelof's own. Watchmen isn't really a story that's for everyone, but Lindelof makes it his own, and then turns it into something that anyone can enjoy, no matter their relationship to the franchise.

Watchmen Understands What It Wants To Say Better

Watchmen is a beautifully moving series, not to say Lanterns isn't, but Watchmen has something a little deeper going on. Lindelof is always one to tackle thorny issues head-on, presenting the Tulsa Massacre in Watchmen and reminding viewers that Black and White people in America can have very different definitions of what it means to be afraid in Lanterns.

Lanterns jumps around these societal and psychological issues a bit too freely. It's my only knock against it. I would have liked Lindelof to be more focused in his analysis of systems and people, like he is in Watchmen. Watchmen's understanding of racial history in America, the police state, and foreign intervention is so clear.

Whether you agree or not with Lindelof's positions on the world, by the end of Watchmen, you are perfectly certain of what those positions are. Watchmen has an idea. Many ideas. Ideas about race, heroism, structural inequality, and more, and it lays them bare for others to poke, prod, and maybe learn from.