Showrunner Chris Mundy reveals new story details for the Kyle Chandler- and Aaron Pierre-fronted HBO series.

How Lanterns gave DC’s ‘space cops’ a gritty drama with dueling timelines (exclusive)

Showrunner Chris Mundy reveals new story details for the Kyle Chandler- and Aaron Pierre-fronted HBO series.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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May 14, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

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Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan on 'Lanterns'. Credit:

- *Lanterns* showrunner Chris Mundy explains how the DC show mashes up cosmic characters with an "on-the-ground story."

- Mundy reveals new story details, including dueling timelines and the fallout from Sinestro.

- The co-creator also promises there's definitely green in the show despite recent online chatter.

Of all the heroes in the pantheon of DC Comics, the Green Lanterns are more fantastical than most of their peers. That’s courtesy of their power rings, a perk of entering the Green Lantern Corps., the intergalactic policing organization that protects sectors of the cosmos.

Fueled by the green energy of will, the alien bling allows its bearer to summon virtually anything they can imagine into existence. Need to catch a falling civilian in a giant baseball mitt? Want to suit up inside a glowing green Gundam-style battle bot? Power blasts, force fields, armor, weapons, constructs — it’s all on the table.

“It's the power of creativity to a certain extent. You're thinking on the fly,” Chris Mundy, the showrunner behind HBO and DC Studios’ upcoming* Lanterns* drama, tells **. “It's the power of whatever your brain decides will solve the thing in front of you. So we try to have fun with that. There are times where we use it as a funny thing in the middle of a situation and then there are times where we use it [practically].”

It’s what makes the specific vision for the new prestige drama so intriguing. You can’t get more intergalactic than the Lanterns, yet *Lanterns*, the series, is a very grounded Earth-based mystery in the style of *True Detective*. Kyle Chandler (*Friday Night Lights*) and Aaron Pierre (*Mufasa: The Lion King*) star as two of these heroes, veteran Hal Jordan and newbie John Stewart, who investigate a crime in Nebraska.

Basically, Mundy & co. — including fellow co-creators Damon Lindelof (*Watchmen*, *Lost*) and Tom King (comics scribe) — gave the so-called "space cops" of the DC universe their own cop show.

“We wanted to tell an on-the-ground story, and that has a couple of different mysteries inside of it,” Mundy explains. “What we have going for us is that it's a Green Lantern story. They can conjure anything from the ring. They do go off the planet. There's all these other powers that they have. We wanna use everything that's great about the mythology of the Green Lanterns, but at the same time, we wanted it to feel like an upscale mystery, a very emotionally tangible story about these people that are in it.”

“The old guard and the heir apparent”

Kelly Macdonald, Aaron Pierre, and Kyle Chandler on 'Lanterns'.

That story begins in 2016, when a shooting occurs in the small rural town of Rushville, Neb. Hal Jordan, who has been keeping tabs on the town from afar for quite a while, is convinced it's an alien incident. However, the local authority, Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald), finds no evidence to support that assertion.

"There's a familiar tension just in terms of jurisdiction," Mundy describes. "It's not like F.B.I. and locals. It's the Lantern Corps. and a local sheriff. That's our entry into that town and into the mystery."

Hal is forced to bring along John Stewart, the new Earth-bound Lantern recruit he still reluctantly mentors two months in. John remains a constant source of ire for Hal due to the fact that he is an anomaly.

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In the history of the Corps., the ring always chooses the Lantern. Those are the rules. It's how Hal got the job in the first place. There was never meant to be a Green Lantern of Earth, Mundy says, but after one of their members, Abin Sur, fatally crash landed on the planet, the alien's ring was drawn to this former pilot to be its new bearer.

John's recruitment, however, marks the first time the Guardians of the Universe, the very founders of the Corps. itself, intervened to self-anoint a member of their order. They felt they had just cause.

Back when Hal was a recruit, he was mentored by a veteran Lantern named Thaal Sinestro. Fans know the character's story well from the pages of DC comics: The once-storied member of the Corps. went rogue and became consumed by the more corrupt yellow energy of fear. Ulrich Thomsen portrays Sinestro on the HBO drama, but Mundy plays coy about whether he is the big bad of season 1.

"Obviously in the canon, Sinestro's the big bad," he prefaces. "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."

The main worry being that Hal is now forced to train his own replacement. John is the backup Lantern in the event anything happens to Hal. It’s “the old guard and the heir apparent,” Mundy notes. "We lean into that tension quite a bit in that early time period.”

Dueling timelines

Aaron Pierre as John Stewart on 'Lanterns'.

No, Mundy didn't slip up. There are two timelines in season 1 of *Lanterns*. The drama unfolds between the 2016 setting involving the shooting in Rushville and 10 years later “to something else” in 2026, the showrunner teases.

"That becomes a second mystery that we know is down the road for us,” he continues. “So eventually two different mysteries get worked out over the course of the show."

Going back to the *True Detective* reference, Mundy explains how the dueling timelines of *Lanterns* “create emotional mysteries.” Referring to that Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson season, in particular, he says, "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."

Within the 10-year gap between the timelines are the events of last summer's *Superman* movie, which introduced Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) as the Green Lantern of Earth's sector. Mundy confirms Guy, whom he describes as "fabulously obnoxious," will "be in the show a few different times."

"There are a bunch of other people from the mythology, from the canon, but not the other Lanterns," he notes. "We talk about them at different times, but they're not gonna interact with them in the course of this season."

*Lanterns* is designed as a multi-season show, should they get the opportunity to do more, so more Lantern pop-ins could be in the cards down the line. "I'd be totally bluffing if I said I could tell you the last thing of the endgame," Mundy adds.

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But so far, the mashup of the cosmic with the Earthly is working out well, at least behind the scenes. According to Mundy, the visual effects will lean toward the "medium-to-low side," though "there's plenty in it." He says, "There are a couple episodes where they're incredibly heavy, but from the jump, it's a much more boots-on-the-ground approach."

One thing he makes clear: "It's a Green Lantern show, so there's green."

It's in reference to a so-called "controversy" that was blown out of proportion on the internet due to a general lack of green in the early marketing for *Lanterns*. After Lindelof addressed a past joke that was making the rounds, Mundy further helps level-set the matter.

"The aesthetic of the show — it's supposed to be very grounded and real, so we're shooting practically in places," he says. "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."

Mundy acknowledges how part of being a fan involves guessing what the show is going to be, though he feels some of the worry is based on preconceived notions of what they think it is.

"We could have put out a trailer that was tremendously green," he continues. "So the fact that people are talking about it just means, to me, that they're excited about the show. We have a lot of respect for the source material, otherwise we wouldn't be doing this show. I think when people see it, it won't be a controversy."

*Lanterns *premieres August 16 on HBO and HBO Max.

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