HBO Max's Lanterns Replacement Is Officially The Start Of A New DC Universe

Nov 04, 2026 - 17:03

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HBO Max's Lanterns Replacement Is Officially The Start Of A New DC Universe

Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan standing at the Rushville stadium in Lanterns

Published Nov 4, 2026, 8:30 AM EST

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

HBO Max has found its Lanterns replacement in the perfect series, and it will mark the start of an exciting new DC Universe. Lanterns is one of the first projects in James Gunn's DCU, which has released six movies and TV shows thus far, with more confirmed to be on the way, such as 2027's Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow.

Lanterns was not the first DCU project to feature a Green Lantern, with David Corenswet's Superman movie marking the DCU debut of Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner, who also showed up in the HBO sci-fi series. However, Lanterns served as the debut project for Kyle Chandler's Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre's John Stewart, the two most popular Green Lanterns from DC Comics.

After the old DCEU barely used any Green Lanterns, with no human versions ever making it to the big screen, it was exciting to watch Lanterns weave in three of the space cops into a mysterious storyline filled with twists. It remains to be seen whether HBO and DC will renew Lanterns for season 2, but with high viewership, positive reviews, and a writers' room already open, it is looking likely.

While Lanterns' fate remains undecided, DC Studios is already working on another Green Lantern TV show. However, this one is completely unrelated to Lanterns and Gunn's DCU, being one of the franchise's Elseworlds projects, which are either standalone or exist in separate universes outside DCU canon. That sci-fi series is My Adventures with Green Lantern.

After HBO's Lanterns came as a continuation of Gunn's DCU, My Adventures with Green Lantern will serve as the project that consolidates a new animated shared universe for DC Studios. In the past, DC has had multiple animated universes, including the Harley Quinn series and its spin-off Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, the Tomorrowverse movie continuity, the DC Animated Universe, and more. My Adventures with Green Lantern adds to that as a spin-off set in the same universe as My Adventures with Superman, which has three seasons currently streaming on HBO Max. The show is going for a different take on Green Lantern lore.

Rather than focusing on Hal Jordan, John Stewart, or Guy Gardner, My Adventures with Green Lantern stars a female hero, Jessica Cruz, who is a teenager in the story, having to deal with the result of an ancient space war as Green Lantern heroes and villains make their way to Earth, with Jessica being chosen by a power ring to serve as the new beacon of hope for an updated Green Lantern Corps. Jessica Cruz will be voiced by Moana star Auliʻi Cravalho, who made her debut in the role as a cameo in My Adventures with Superman season 3.

The start of a new DC animated shared universe is a sight to behold. After all, the franchise has shown time and again that it tells some of its best stories in animation, and it has succeeded multiple times when it comes to animated universes, be they focused on movies or TV shows. It also allows different types of DC viewers to get more out of the brand as a whole, as most of the focus on DC Studios right now is on the DCU's slate of projects, which still has to debut its version of major characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, and many more.

My Adventures with Green Lantern will offer more of the action and grand scope that some fans missed in HBO's Lanterns, being a neat follow-up to that hit series. It also builds on an already successful show. My Adventures with Superman perfectly modernized DC lore, Superman characters, and their powers, with The Boys' Jack Quaid making for a charismatic and comics-accurate Clark Kent. The Superman animated series also boasts a rare 100% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes for all three seasons. As such, building on that kind of success bodes well for Lanterns' replacement, with My Adventures with Green Lantern showing a lot of promise.