The new DC series Lanterns has arrived, and it is already making a big impact. The show pulled in 9.3 million global viewers within its first three days of release. Starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as Hal Jordan and John Stewart, the series takes the Green Lantern story in a fresh direction. Instead of focusing only on space and cosmic battles, the show grounds itself as an Earth-bound murder mystery. Co-creators Tom King and Damon Lindelof sat down for an exclusive interview with Hindustan Times to explain their approach. They wanted to make sure Lanterns connected with audiences on a human level, not just as another superhero spectacle.
The Challenge of Making a Superhero Show Today
Tom King and Damon Lindelof know that creating a superhero series in 2026 requires more than big action scenes and visual effects. With Lanterns, they aimed to keep the awe and scale that fans expect from Green Lantern. But they also wanted the world and the characters to feel real enough for viewers to care about.
For King, that meant starting from the ground up. He wanted audiences to feel the physical world before they saw anything superhuman. He explained his approach:
“I think what I very much wanted to do was feel the grass. You see so much comic material and everything’s become, you know, can be done with computers and everything becomes green screen, everything becomes CGI, and you kind of stop believing in superpowers because they don’t seem real because there’s no scale.”
King believes that creating a sense of scale is what makes superhero elements feel powerful instead of fake. He wanted to bring the story into the human realm so that the super parts would actually feel super. He added:
“Because if you’re not in the realm of the human, then the super isn’t super and you lose that sense of awe, wonder and just fantastic that I’ve always loved in superheroes.”
King wanted viewers to feel the physicality of the world. He described it this way:
“I want to feel boot on the ground, I want to feel the crunch of the sand, I want to feel like these people are as real as people I know, so that when the super explodes on you, it explodes like the dragons in Game of Thrones and blows your mind.”
Making Lanterns Accessible to Non-Comic Readers
Damon Lindelof approached the project with a different but equally important goal. He wanted to make sure Lanterns could appeal to people who did not grow up reading comics. He shared his thoughts:
“For someone who was raised on a steady diet of comic books and has loved comic books all of his life, I also think that that phrase ‘it’s a comic book show’ can cut both ways. For the people who love comic books, it’s very inviting, but for the people who don’t have that same childhood that I did or the same affinity, it can be very off-putting. It can feel like it’s childish or ridiculous.”
According to Lindelof, the answer lies in the characters. He believes that genre does not matter if the audience does not care about the people on screen. He said:
“It doesn’t matter if they’re wizards at Hogwarts or they’re trying to get the throne in Westeros or they’re fighting over a magic ring that can manifest their imaginations. If you don’t care about the people, the show is not going to work.”
Addressing Superhero Fatigue
Lindelof also spoke about the larger issue of superhero fatigue. He thinks audiences are no longer willing to watch a show just because it belongs to a popular genre. He explained:
“I think people at times can use genre as a crutch. If I make something in space, this much of an audience will come, so I don’t have to make it as good. I don’t have to try as hard because I get a guaranteed audience because it’s genre.”
Lindelof believes that viewers have become more careful about what they watch. They now expect superhero stories to offer something more than just mythology and spectacle. He added:
“You’ve got to give us something beautiful. You’ve got to give us something that connects. You’ve got to give us something great.”
For him, that means starting with a small question, even though the world of the show is very big. He said:
“You have to understand that you’ve got your arms around something very big, but you have to think very small and ask yourself this question: Why am I supposed to care about these people? And how can their lives—which are super and fantastic, and they’re dealing with issues on a global scale—how can that be relatable to me?”
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The Core of Lanterns: Hal and John
King and Lindelof see the strength of Lanterns not in the powers, mythology, or cosmic world-building. Instead, they believe the show works because it makes Hal Jordan and John Stewart feel like people audiences can invest in. Lindelof explained their starting point:
“Who is Hal and what does Hal want? Who is John and what does John want?”
Everything else, he said, follows from there. The series premiered last week, and new episodes are rolling out weekly.
Also Read: Lanterns HBO Max Debut Breaks Records With 9.3 Million Viewers in First 3 Days
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