'Lanterns' Just Posted DC Studios' Biggest Premiere Numbers Ever, and a Season 2 Is Already Taking Shape

DC Studios has spent the past couple of years trying to prove its new streaming era can actually compete with the biggest names on HBO Max, and the results have been mixed at best. After a rocky summer at the box office, the studio badly needed a win somewhere, and its newest Green Lantern series appears to have delivered exactly that.

‘Lanterns‘ debuted on HBO and HBO Max on August 16, pairing Kyle Chandler’s veteran Hal Jordan with Aaron Pierre’s rookie recruit John Stewart in a genre-blending murder mystery set against a cosmic backdrop. The show arrived under a bit of a cloud too, after a resurfaced 2024 podcast clip of co-creator Damon Lindelof joking that “the green was stupid” when explaining the title drew criticism from fans and from Green Lantern comics writer Grant Morrison.

None of that controversy appears to have dented the show’s launch. ‘Lanterns’ pulled in 9.3 million global viewers and 6.6 million in the U.S. over its first three days on HBO and HBO Max, according to Warner Bros. Discovery, making it the biggest series premiere yet for a DC Studios show, ahead of ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘The Penguin.’

That comparison isn’t a close one either. ‘The Penguin’ took eleven full days to reach 10.4 million viewers across all platforms after its 2024 debut, while ‘Lanterns’ blew past a comparable audience size in a fraction of that time. The show also landed among the top five series premieres in HBO Max history overall, trailing only ‘House of the Dragon’ spinoff ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,’ which opened to 6.7 million U.S. viewers earlier this year.

The premiere numbers have also translated into sustained attention rather than a single opening-weekend spike. ‘Lanterns’ has remained at number one on HBO Max’s daily Top 10 chart since its debut, a signal that the audience drawn in by the launch has largely stuck around for subsequent episodes.

That kind of early momentum has already gotten the show’s creative team thinking well past its first season. Showrunner Chris Mundy, working alongside ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ co-creator Christopher Cantwell, confirmed that planning for a second season is already underway, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “We’re about six weeks into laying out a season, and then we’ll talk to folks about it really soon.”

That comment is notable given HBO has not yet issued a formal renewal for the series. Mundy’s remarks suggest the writers’ room intends to have a fully mapped-out season ready to pitch before the network makes any official call, an approach that could allow for a faster turnaround into production if a second season does get greenlit.

There’s a wrinkle behind the scenes worth noting, too. Lindelof and co-creator Tom King are both expected to sit out a potential second season, with Lindelof committed to ‘The Chain’ and King attached to ‘Mister Miracle,’ leaving Mundy and Cantwell to steer the story forward without two of the show’s original architects.

For a DC Studios series that arrived with a genuinely uncertain reception, largely built on cast chemistry between Chandler and Pierre and a slow-burn mystery structure unlike anything else currently on HBO Max, this level of early success is a meaningful signal. Whether that momentum holds through the rest of the season, and whether a second season actually gets the green light, remains to be seen.