The first teaser trailer for Lanterns didn't tell us much, but it seems DC Studios is finally ready to pull back the curtain on its first HBO TV series. Entertainment Weekly has sat down with showrunner Chris Mundy, who has confirmed the story takes place in 2016 and 2026.
Interestingly, everything we've seen in the trailers seems to be the 2016 timeline. According to the site, when a shooting takes place in Rushville, Nebraska, Hal Jordan (who has been keeping a close eye on the town) is convinced that it was an alien incident. Sheriff Kerry, however, disagrees.
At the same time he's investigating the cosmic crime, Hal finds himself tasked with training John Stewart. They've been working together for a couple of months, and tensions stem from Hal's unhappiness that the Guardians of the Universe have chosen John. Usually, the ring chooses the Lantern, but for reasons which have yet to be revealed, they felt the need to pick another Earthling.
As Mundy puts it, it's "the old guard and the heir apparent. We lean into that tension quite a bit in that early time period." Teasing "something else" for the 2026 timeline, he added, "That becomes a second mystery that we know is down the road for us. So eventually two different mysteries get worked out over the course of the show."
The duelling timelines "create emotional mysteries," and like True Detective, "It was less of a whodunnit as much as like, what happened and why? We think of this as a relationship show between John and Hal, and there's a lot to unpack over the course of the eight episodes."
However, while the "fabulously obnoxious" Guy Gardner, played by Nathan Fillion, appears "a few different times," Mundy confirmed that we won't see any alien members of the Green Lantern Corps.
"There are a bunch of other people from the mythology, from the canon, but not the other Lanterns," he explained. "We talk about them at different times, but they're not gonna interact with them in the course of this season." The plan right now is for Lanterns to be a multi-season series, so that could change down the line.
As for the Sinestro of it all, Mundy wouldn't reveal whether he's Lanterns' big bad, but did say, "The thing that interests us is this idea [that] Hal was trained by Sinestro, Hal is training John. In the coaching tree, we're very interested in what gets passed on, what doesn't, how much is human nature."
"We talked a lot about programming and parenting and training...What did Hal take away from Sinestro that was good or bad? It brings up a lot of interesting worries."
Addressing the fan backlash, Mundy said the visual effects will be on the "medium-to-low side," though "there's plenty in it. There are a couple episodes where they're incredibly heavy, but from the jump, it's a much more boots-on-the-ground approach."
"The aesthetic of the show — it's supposed to be very grounded and real, so we're shooting practically in places. We're not heavily green-screened. It's not like day glow in its presentation of anything. I think Green Lantern fans will not feel like we've somehow made a brown show of their green comic at all. It's very much 'we're in the world,' and then when we use the constructs, they're what people would expect them to be."
There are a lot of intriguing insights here, along with some updates that will likely disappoint fans. Hal, John, Guy, and Sinestro appearing in the series isn't a bad thing, but the absence of Green Lantern Corps members like Kilowog, Arisia, and Tomar-Tu suggests we won't visit Oa.
Lanterns is set to premiere on HBO in August. You can see some new stills from the series below.