Lanterns is off to a shining start.
The new DCU series racked up a very impressive 9.3 million views in its first three days of availability across HBO and HBO Max, for the biggest premiere for a DC Studios show on HBO Max to date.
"Pilot" has also become one of the top five premieres on the platform overall, outperforming the likes of IT: Welcome to Derry, The Penguin, and True Detective: Night Country.
Lanterns is also very popular with critics. After initially hitting Rotten Tomatoes with 91%, above Superman and Supergirl, but below Peacemaker Season 2 and the animated Creature Commandos series, the second live-action DCU show has risen to 95% to become the highest-rated DCU project on the aggregator.
It's worth noting that critics have only seen the first four episodes (and some were only given access to the series premiere), so there's a possibility that this score could fluctuate once the entire first season is available to stream on HBO.
Lanterns: 95% / 85%
Peacemaker Season 2: 94% / 79%
Creature Commandos: 93% / 79%
Superman: 83% / 90%
Supergirl: 52% / 73%
The premiere seemed to go over pretty well with fans for the most part, but a lot of viewers did take issue with the final scene, which revealed (or appeared to reveal) that Hal Jordan is dead in the present timeline.
There's always a chance that this isn't actually Jordan (the show does feature at least one race of shape-shifting aliens, after all), but we're probably going to have to wait until the Season finale to find out for certain one way or the other.
Kyle Chandler was asked for his take on the scene during a recent interview with Total Film.
"Everyone is going to have to watch and find out to make their own decision. I think it turns out great," Chandler said. "I think there's a lot of different moves in the whole deal. It's an exciting poker game. We didn't have all the scripts starting out. They started coming in… it's not a slow burn. It goes from one world into another, and grows into that."
HBO in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. The pilot episode is co-written by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, who are co-creators for the series. Mundy serves as showrunner. The first two episodes are directed by James Hawes, with Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Alik Sakharov also tapped to direct. The series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, James Gunn, Peter Safran, King, Ron Schmidt, and Hawes. Based on the DC comic characters from Green Lantern.
The series stars Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
The series 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.