Lanterns just aired the best pilot DC Studios has ever put out, and I’m not hedging on that. They pitched this as a True Detective/Ozark take on Green Lantern, and then they actually delivered it.

Chandler and Pierre Go Together Like Butter on Bread

The show opens with an origin sequence that does more work in five minutes than most pilots do in an hour — it’s the same footage HBO Max dropped last week as a preview, and in context it’s even better. It plants Hal Jordan a decade into the job and gives you John Stewart’s rough start, including his dad shooting apples off his head, before jumping twenty years into the real story without a single wasted beat.

Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre are playing completely different characters — the show goes out of its way to stress that — and somehow it works anyway.

They go together like butter on bread.

Chandler is my favorite Hal Jordan ever put on screen. Full stop.

It’s a Grounded Situation, Not a Grounded Show

Here’s the distinction that makes this pilot smarter than it needed to be: this isn’t a grounded take on the Lanterns. It’s a grounded situation. Two intergalactic cops land in Rushville, Nebraska, to investigate a murder that turns out to have cosmic implications, and the show never pretends that’s all there is. It keeps reminding you there’s a whole galaxy waiting on the other side of this small town, and it does that without breaking the show’s rural-noir mood. I wasn’t expecting much cosmic stuff in episode one, and I didn’t need it — I just needed the tease, and they gave it to me.

Credit where it’s due structurally too: the season runs on dual timelines, a 2016 thread in which Hal trains John, and a present-day 2026 investigation, and the transition between them in the pilot is seamless.

Then there’s William Macon. Garret Dillahunt’s playing a wealthy Rushville rancher with his own private militia, and the show is clearly setting him up as more than a local weirdo — fans are already speculating he’s a pseudonym for the supervillain Black Hand, and after watching this premiere, I’m on board with that theory. His wife Zoe, played by Poorna Jagannathan, is the woman John Stewart hooks up with the night before finding out exactly whose bed he was in — Zoe is the wife of local militia organizer William Macon, and she strikes up a romantic fling with John Stewart in the premiere. That whole dynamic is going to be a problem, and I’m here for it.

Release scheduleLanternsHBO / HBO Max · Sundays 9 PM ET
  1. E1Episode 1Series premiereSun · Aug 16
  2. E2Episode 2Sun · Aug 23
  3. E3Episode 3Sun · Aug 30
  4. E4Episode 4Sun · Sep 6
  5. E5Episode 5Sun · Sep 13
  6. E6Episode 6Sun · Sep 20
  7. E7Episode 7Sun · Sep 27
  8. E8Episode 8Season finaleSun · Oct 4

That Ending

SpoilersHow the pilot endsTap to reveal

We jump forward to 2026 and Hal Jordan is dead — frozen solid on the bleachers of a high school football stadium, a projectile through his head. John Stewart is standing over the body with Sheriff Kerry, and when John checks his own hand, his ring is gone. Hal's ring is gone too. Which means somebody else has it — and the obvious guess is Guy Gardner, except the ring we see doesn't match his at all, and the timeline doesn't line up: Guy Gardner is confirmed as the Green Lantern in the 2025 movie era, not 2026. So the real question the finale of episode one leaves hanging is simple: who's holding that ring right now?

I don’t think it’s Guy Gardner. That ring looks completely wrong for him, and the timeline doesn’t math out — Gardner’s already established as a Lantern a year earlier. Something else is going on, and I’ve got theories I’m not ready to fully commit to yet.

The Verdict

I loved every single second of this.

Your callYour verdict on the Lanterns pilot?

Every Sunday, baby. Let’s do it.