If HBO’s Lanterns looked a little too grim and grounded — and not green enough — for your tastes, a new trailer for the True Detective-inspired mystery series might just change your mind. Revealed Friday at San Diego Comic-Con, the final trailer for HBO’s Green Lantern show takes things out of its small-town setting and into space. Lanterns is raising the stakes by bringing a new threat to the DCU: Manhunters.
In DC Comics lore, Manhunters are the predecessors to the Green Lantern Corps. Created by the Guardians of the Universe as an interstellar police force, the robotic Manhunters eventually become self-aware and ultimately resentful of their creators, rebelling against the Oans who built them. While the Guardians destroyed many of the Manhunters in their uprising, some have infiltrated planets across the galaxy, disguised as living creatures who turn others toward their cause. The Guardians of the Universe created the multi-species Green Lantern Corps as a replacement. Thus, they’ve often clashed with the Manhunters.
(If this is already sounding like a better version of Marvel Television’s terrible Secret Invasion, you’re not alone.)
Lanterns appears to be leaning into that interstellar conflict and alien subterfuge, presenting the Manhunters as suspects in the murders that Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) are investigating in the series. Clearly, there’s conflict between the two Green Lanterns, as Stewart is repeatedly pitched as Jordan’s replacement.
In another exciting turn, we also get a look at another Green Lantern icon: Sinestro will make his DCU debut in Lanterns, played by Ulrich Thomsen.
But if you’re here for Green Lanterns manifesting things from their rings and sheer will, you’ll get plenty of that. We see poor John Stewart attempting to fly, but generating a flying bird instead. The much more capable Hal Jordan generates force fields, tornados, and even a bottle opener, showing the Green Lantern-in-training how it’s done.
Lanterns stars Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones. Lanterns will debut on HBO on Aug. 16, and will also be available to stream on HBO Max.