In 2019, HBO elevated a comic book series to a prestige drama, grounding it in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Watchmen became an acclaimed superhero show because of this direction. Seven years later, HBO is doing it again with its next DC show.
Just like Watchmen, HBO's next live-action DC superhero show, Lanterns, gives a comic adaptation a very human and relatable feel. The series is set in rural Nebraska, where Hal Jordan is investigating a murder mystery. Its creators describe Lanterns as a True Detective-inspired show. HBO is bringing back one of the most effective superhero adaptation playbooks to TV.
The Watchmen connection runs deeper than a shared sensibility. Damon Lindelof, who created the 2019 series, is also one of the writers shaping the Lanterns pilot and series bible, working alongside Ozark showrunner Chris Mundy and comic writer Tom King. James Gunn and Peter Safran tapped this team specifically to make the Green Lantern story feel grounded and real, even with two intergalactic cops as its main focus.
This is not the first time HBO has run this play in the comic book adaptation space. In 2024, the network turned The Penguin into a mob drama that drew constant comparisons to The Sopranos. Colin Farrell played Oz Cobb as a Tony Soprano-style figure, clawing his way up the Gotham underworld with the same hunger and mother issues that defined HBO's most famous gangster. Critics treated the series like prestige TV, and it pulled in awards attention that HBO normally reserves for its top dramas.
Lanterns follows the same instinct. Kyle Chandler plays a veteran Hal Jordan, with Aaron Pierre as rookie John Stewart, and the eight-episode series puts the two intergalactic cops at the center of a small-town American murder case. The first trailer leaned into the procedural feel, with very little space cop iconography on screen. Showrunner Chris Mundy described the show as "much of a buddy cop show as a superhero show."
Lanterns Could Be 2026's Most Unique Superhero Show
Superhero TV is in a strong place right now. The Boys delivered a solid final season on Amazon Prime. Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 wrapped a confident run earlier this month and drew strong reviews. It has already been renewed for a third season, a first for any live-action Marvel Studios series.
Wonder Man also brought a fresh Hollywood-satire angle to the MCU when it dropped on Disney+ in January. Lanterns is arriving in a healthy genre, and it needs to stand out from the tons of superhero shows out there. Which is why Lanterns taking a unique grounded approach is perfectly reasonable. Watchmen did something special with its prestige direction, and very few superhero shows have taken that direction since then.
Lanterns is taking that lane, and it could easily make it the most interesting superhero show of 2026. Most superhero TV right now is action-forward or comedy-forward. Lanterns is going for mood and character instead. Its murder mystery unfolds slowly, and the focus stays on the friction between Hal and John, while the cosmic drama happens in the background.
The Green Lantern Corps usually appears on screen as a peacekeeping force from across the galaxy with massive CGI battles. Mundy and his writers take the opposite approach, telling a story about two space cops who do not get along while working on a case in farm country.
Green Lantern is one of the most difficult DC properties to adapt because the cosmic scale tends to overshadow the characters. The 2011 Ryan Reynolds film tried to do everything at once and flopped.
The Greg Berlanti version that HBO Max scrapped in 2023 would have leaned on the same cosmic spectacle, too. Lanterns is taking the opposite path from the Reynolds movie, and it might work well in its favor.
Lanterns is also a very ambitious DC show. James Gunn and Peter Safran stacked the writers room with prestige talent in Lindelof, Mundy, and King. With these talents working together, they can easily nail the aspect of Watchmen that made that show so great seven years ago.
Watchmen proved in 2019 that a superhero series could win the kind of awards normally reserved for prestige drama. It picked up 11 Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series, and changed what HBO could do with comic book IP. So, it makes sense for Lanterns to try the same approach.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
