Every Green Lantern Featured on HBO's 'Lanterns,' Ranked
Michael John Petty is a Senior Author for Collider who spends his days writing, in fellowship with his local church, and enjoying each new day with his wife and daughters. At Collider, he writes features, reviews, recaps, and conducts interviews. In addition to writing about stories, Michael has told a few of his own. His novella, The Beast of Bear-tooth Mountain, was released in 2023. His Western short story, The Devil's Left Hand, received the Spur Award for "Best Western Short Fiction" from the Western Writers of America in 2025. Michael currently resides in North Idaho with his growing family.
Sign in to your Collider account
Spoiler Alert: This list contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 7.Lanterns has kept audiences on their toes from the first moment we met Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Who will wear the ring? How will Lanterns set up the larger DC Universe that launched with Superman? Who is the best Green Lantern out there? Well, now that the HBO series is about to wrap up, we've ranked each Lantern seen here based on how effective they were as a Green Lantern and their overall on-screen vibe — that's right, their cool factor is certainly at play here. Whichever iteration of Green Lantern you resonate with most on-screen, there are only a small handful to choose from on this HBO drama.
To be clear, we're not referencing any GLs that Lanterns confirms exist but doesn't actually show. Despite the clever reference, Mogo, the living planet that wields a power ring, doesn't appear, nor does the "squirrel" Hal references (whose name is Ch'p, by the way). Instead, we're sticking to the three characters we witness wearing a power ring on Earth and the one who we know once had his own before his failed coup against the Guardians of Oa. So, without further ado, here are all the Green Lanterns explored on Lanterns, ranked.
4 Thaal Sinestro
Played by Ulrich Thomsen
The last Green Lantern on our list is the only member of the Green Lantern Corps who we don't actually ever see wield a power ring. While many hoped that Episode 7 might show some flashback to his time training Hal to use the ring, the truth is that Thaal Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) lost it long before the events of the series. Once a highly respected Green Lantern, Sinestro trained Earth's first GL back when he was just a rookie. Sinestro continued to mentor Hal throughout his tenure with the Corps until he eventually turned on the Guardians of Oa, killing one of them, before being taken down by his protégé. Despite that, Sinestro and Hal formed a strong bond, with the former serving as a surrogate father figure to the latter, one that would be difficult for them to shake in their later years.
Considered one of the many DC villains that folks wanted to see in the DC Universe franchise, Sinestro has finally made himself known via Lanterns. Unfortunately, Thomsen's version of the character was more of a Hannibal Lector-inspired take where he is more a thorn in the side of the Corps from the discomfort of his prison cell rather than a true, continual threat to Hal and John. Even now that he has been removed from that prison context, he doesn't embody the same sort of presence that, say, Mark Strong did in the 2011 Green Lantern film. Still, even though he doesn't ever form a construct, we understand that Sinestro was one of the most formidable ring-slingers to ever serve the Corps, and that's not for nothing.
3 Guy Gardner
Played by Nathan Fillion
Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner may be a small part of the 2026 plot of Lanterns, but we first met this Green Lantern back in 2025 as a member of the "Justice Gang" in both Superman and Peacemaker. Thus far, he has been the main GL of the larger DC Universe franchise, which was an interesting move to say the least. After John rejected the ring in 2016, the Guardians chose Guy — a former gym teacher with an iron will — to replace Hal Jordan as Earth's next Green Lantern. As Hal's successor, Guy was under the more careful eye of the Guardians. Even so, he somehow continues to find himself getting in the middle of terrestrial political conflicts (such as the Boravian affair in Superman), not unlike his predecessor.
Perhaps even cockier than Hal Jordan, Guy Garner has no problem being the second choice after John for taking over the ring. For Guy, it's not about how or why he was chosen, it's enough that he was chosen at all — and he aims not to have that power revoked. His constructs are more fluid and vibrant than Hal's or John's, almost as if he bleeds willpower. Although he doesn't appear all too much on Lanterns (most of what we get from him thus far has come from Superman, oddly enough), we know that he has at least a solid decade's worth of experience. There may be other heroes out there more perfect to join the Justice Gang (and the Green Lantern Corps), but Guy Gardner is still a hero through and through.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Superhero Team Should You Join? Avengers · X-Men · Teen Titans · The Boys
Every team is a personality test with a uniform. One saves the world and argues about it the whole way home. One has been fighting for the right to exist since the day it formed. One is still working out who it is while the fighting happens. And one has no powers at all, plus no intention of playing fair. Eight questions decide where you actually belong.
🛡️Avengers(Marvel Studios)
🧬X-Men(Marvel)
🐦Teen Titans(DC)
💊The Boys(Prime Video)
01
What kind of power would you actually want? The power matters less than what you would be willing to do with it.
02
Why join a team at all? Nobody puts on the suit for the reason they say out loud.
03
How do you feel about the people in charge? Every team has a chain of command. Very few of them survive contact.
04
What is your role inside a group? Every roster needs the same handful of people to function.
05
How do you win a fight you should lose? This is the scene the entire film gets built around.
06
What is this work costing you? Nobody does this for free. The bill just arrives differently for everyone.
07
How should the world see your team? Half of this job is public relations, and everybody knows it.
08
The offer arrives. What makes you say yes? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your team.
Recruitment Is Complete Your Team Is…
Four teams, four completely different reasons to put yourself in danger for strangers. This is the roster you actually belong on, what they would want from you, and what it would cost you to stay.
The Avengers
You belong where the stakes are largest and the personalities are loudest. This is a team of people who are all used to being the most important person in the room, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it keeps nearly falling apart.
- The Avengers are not friends who became a team. They are a team that slowly and reluctantly became friends, and you would recognise every stage of that process.
- You can hold your own among big egos without needing to win every exchange, which is the real entry requirement here.
- The arguing is part of the method. This group does its best thinking mid-disagreement, usually at volume, usually in a very expensive building.
- When the sky opens, they are who shows up. You would want to be standing in that line.
The X-Men
You have never had the luxury of being thanked for this. The X-Men protect a world that has never once been comfortable with them existing, and something in you understands exactly why they keep doing it anyway.
- This is the only team on the list whose central conflict is not a villain. It is being wanted gone by the same people they keep saving.
- You know what it is to be the outsider in a room and to decide, anyway, that you will not make yourself smaller so everyone else is comfortable.
- The X-Men are the most genuine found family in comics. People arrive with nowhere else to go and are never once asked to explain themselves.
- You would not be joining for the glory. There has never been any.
The Teen Titans
You do not want colleagues, you want your people. The Titans are the team where the friendship came first and the world-saving turned up afterwards as an inconvenient side effect.
- Every Titan is somebody's sidekick who decided to stop being one. That decision, not the villain of the week, is what the team is actually about.
- You would be joining people who are all working themselves out at the same time as you, which is far less lonely than being the only one.
- The Titans lose regularly. Then they eat together and come back better, which is a more honest model of growing up than any other team here manages.
- The tower would be loud, chaotic, and the first place that ever felt like yours.
The Boys
You are not asking who to trust. You worked out the answer a while ago and it was nobody in a cape. This is where you go once you have decided the people in charge need watching, and that nobody else is going to do it.
- The Boys have no powers, no mandate and no funding. What they have is leverage, patience, and a very high tolerance for consequences.
- You are the person in the room who notices the thing everybody else has quietly agreed not to mention.
- This is not a heroic team and it has never pretended otherwise. It is a group of damaged people doing necessary work in ways nobody would call clean.
- You would not sleep well. You would keep going anyway.
2 John Stewart
Played by Aaron Pierre
On paper, John Stewart always appeared to be the perfect candidate to become a Green Lantern. Raised to be fearless, John has been on the military track since he was a child. A battle-tested Marine with a sharp will, John proves himself almost instantly, revealing his ability to maintain constructs without the use of the power ring — an ability eventually achieved by his comic book counterpart, as well. Of course, John isn't without his faults. He, like many before him, falls for the seductive wiles of a Manhunter (Poorna Jagannathan), which isn't probably the best look for a "space cop" sent to track down such a fugitive. More than that, although John is more than capable with the ring, he allowed the motivations of others — his parents and the Guardians — to cloud his better judgment concerning Hal until it was too late.
John was able to beat Hal in hand-to-hand combat, but we never fully got to see what he was made of with the ring. Sure, his constructs are complex and impressive (that drill especially is a delight), but for most of Lanterns, he's still "in-training" rather than actually ring-slinging on his own. Fortunately, John Stewart is set to return in James Gunn's Superman follow-up Man of Tomorrow, which is good news for those of us hoping to potentially see him in full-blown Green Lantern attire. Before we get there, however, you can always revisit some of the character's finest on-screen adventures with the best episodes of Justice League. It may not be DCU continuity, but it's the John Stewart variant that many of us first adored.
1 Hal Jordan
Played by Kyle Chandler
The first Earthman to become a Green Lantern, Hal Jordan made DCU history when Abin Sur's ring chose him decades ago. Because of his fearlessness, Hal spent the better part of his life serving as a member of the Green Lantern Corps, dealing with intergalactic problems as well as alien affairs on his homeworld. According to Hal, he's had plenty of space adventures that we were not privy to here on Lanterns, but it makes us wish we could have seen him in his prime. It was Hal who defeated Sinestro, Hal who kept tabs on Rushville, and Hal who eventually (upon losing the ring) aimed to become a better man by doing everything he could to atone for his past mistakes. Despite his untimely death in 2026, Hal Jordan proved himself more worthy of the ring than most.
Of course, we get a glimpse at the most heroic version of Hal via the "Halogram," the A.I. backup of his consciousness from around 2005-ish that aids John by the end of the season. The "Halogram" is everything good and virtuous and hopeful about Hal rolled into one without the snark that comes from too many years on the job. While it would have been ideal for Lanterns to have fixated a little more on this period in the Green Lantern's life rather than those later declining years, we can see the type of hero he was to the core in this short-lived backup. That alone makes him the standard. For more adventures featuring the "greatest Green Lantern," check out these comics perfect for Green Lantern newcomers.
Lanterns
- Release Date
- August 16, 2026
- Network
- HBO
- Showrunner
- Chris Mundy
- Directors
- Alik Sakharov, James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Patel
-
Hal Jordan
-
Aaron Pierre
John Stewart
-
Sheriff Kerry Kane
-
William 'Will' Macon
- Writers
- Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson
- Franchise(s)
- DC Universe
- Main Genre
- Sci-Fi
- Seasons
- 1
- Producers
- Breannah Gibson, James Gunn, Peter Safran, Ron Schmidt, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Karen Wacker, Kiegan Downs
- Creator(s)
- Tom King, Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof
- Streaming Service(s)
- MAX
- Release Window
- 2026
- Executive Producer(s)
- Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, James Gunn, James Hawes, Peter Safran, Tom King, Ron Schmidt
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.