In brightest day, in blackest night, no HBO Max trailer shall escape Empire’s sight. Let those who worship DC Studios’ might, beware its power… Lanterns’ light! Yes, Chris Mundy, Tom King, and Damon Lindelof’s HBO detective series Lanterns — the ring-wielding Green Lantern Corps’ first proper outing in James Gunn’s DCU — is well on its way. And now, along with a newly confirmed 17 August premiere date, we have a whole new trailer for the show, which is about to introduce us to Kyle Chandler’s grizzled Lantern Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s charismatic up-and-comer John Stewart. Check it out below;
Okay, now there’s a trailer. As we saw in the last Lanterns teaser, Lindelof and co’s new show is set to see Chandler’s Hal Jordan and Pierre’s John Stewart butt heads as they reluctantly team up to solve a grizzly crime — a decent enough hook in and of itself. But as we perhaps didn’t see so much last time, this also looks to be a series with licks of comedy, hints of cosmic shenanigans afoot, and bigger aspirations than merely ‘What if DC did True Detective?’ Here we see Chandler’s Lantern using his Power Ring to conjure counterfeit cash and conjure force fields. We see Hal Jordan suiting up — and seemingly heading off-world — while John Stewart faces the institutional biases of the law and fights to prove his worth as a member of the Corps. And we hear a simple but important question, ‘Are you afraid?’, being asked as unseen threats circle and John Stewart tries Hal’s Power Ring on for size. Oh! And three-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney’s just joined the cast, as if it wasn’t stacked enough already.
The official logline for Lanterns — which also stars Kelly Macdonald, Jason Ritter, Nathan Fillion, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Ulrich Thomsen, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones — reads as follows. “[Lanterns] follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.”
Where exactly is the threat coming from in Lanterns? Can Hal Jordan and John Stewart set aside their differences long enough to solve the series’ mysteries? Could we even see one of them break bad and end up on the wrong side of the supe divide? And will Guy Gardner ever get a better haircut in this DCU? We guess we’ll find out when Lanterns hits HBO Max on 17 August…
