HBO's 'True Detective Meets Watchmen' Sci-Fi Series Is Off To A Great Start

Published Aug 17, 2026, 12:30 PM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

James Gunn’s DC Universe faced its first major stumble earlier this summer with the critical and commercial disappointment of Supergirl, and the initial teaser trailer for Lanterns didn’t make the franchise’s future look any brighter. When Gunn first announced Lanterns, he described it as a mix of a typical DC superhero spectacle and a grisly HBO murder mystery in the vein of True Detective or Mare of Easttown, and I just couldn’t picture how anyone could marry those two tones successfully.

The first trailer was really dull and drab and underwhelmingly Earth-bound. It looked as though DC had made a Green Lantern show without space or aliens or even the color green. But the second trailer turned it all around, and made it clear that, while Lanterns is a grounded murder mystery, it’s not shying away from superhero action, or the cosmic side of the story.

And now that Lanterns has premiered on HBO, I’m happy to say that it’s a return to form for the DCU. Supergirl may have crashed and burned, but this franchise is still very much on track. Against all odds, the first episode of Lanterns does successfully marry those two tones. After introducing the dysfunctional mentor-mentee dynamic between our two heroes, Lanterns takes us to the gruesome aftermath of a mass shooting at a high school football game in a small town in Nebraska. That’s a horrific, real-world crime, with real consequences — the kind of case that Rust Cohle or Mare Sheehan would tackle — but in Lanterns, Hal Jordan suspects the culprit is an alien.

I didn’t think they could pull it off, but Lanterns somehow simultaneously feels like a Green Lantern comic and a gritty HBO crime thriller. Part of that is just how well our two stars capture the central characters and their fraught relationship.

Lanterns Is An Intoxicating "Buddy Cop" Adventure

The opening scene of Lanterns’ series premiere provides all the setup and exposition we need. We see a young John Stewart looking up to a green, inexperienced Hal Jordan, shortly after he’s first donned the Power Ring and revealed himself as Earth’s intergalactic protector, and within five minutes, we know what kind of guy Hal is, what kind of kid John is, and exactly what the Green Lanterns are. And once we’ve got all that out of the way, the series begins proper.

The episode jumps forward to two decades later, when John has been recruited as a reserve Lantern, and he’s being trained by a veteran Hal. Hal is cocky and arrogant and constantly lording his authority over John, while John feels underappreciated and underutilized. It’s a classic “buddy cop” dynamic. We’ve seen this push-and-pull between a jaded, seen-it-all detective and the hotshot young rookie in everything from Lethal Weapon to Se7en to Training Day, but it works for a reason: it’s always fun to contrast the cops’ bickering and bantering with their high-stakes investigation; the plot is about a horrific crime, but the story is all about this burgeoning friendship.

The much-talked-about twist ending of the Lanterns series premiere may have already killed the best part of the show, because the back-and-forth between Kyle Chandler’s Hal and Aaron Pierre’s John is what got me hooked at the beginning of the episode. Hopefully, in keeping with the True Detective inspiration, we’ll follow dual nonlinear timelines, pre- and post-Hal.

If HBO’s “Weeks Ahead” trailer is anything to go by, we’ll still get plenty more time with Hal and John throughout the rest of the season. Lanterns has gotten off to a really strong start with that premiere episode. After Supergirl was a massive let-down, the DCU is exciting again. Bring on Clayface!