If you’ve spent any time on Film Twitter (or whatever we’re calling it this week) in the last 24 hours, you already know: the Lanterns Midseason Trailer has landed, HBO Max dropped it straight onto YouTube with zero warning, and the internet immediately lost its collective glowing green mind.
Titled, with admirable lack of pretension, “Lanterns | Midseason Trailer | HBO Max,” the clip does exactly what a good midseason trailer should do — it makes you feel like you understand less about this show than you did five minutes ago, while somehow being more excited about that fact.
So let’s break down the Lanterns Midseason Trailer properly: what’s in it, what the trades are saying about it, what the internet is theorizing, and why a small-town murder mystery wrapped in a cosmic superhero burrito continues to be one of the most quietly deranged things on television right now.
Wait, Why Is a Green Lantern Show Doing a True Detective Cosplay?
For the uninitiated: Lanterns is Damon Lindelof and Chris Mundy’s DC Studios series starring Aaron Pierre as John Stewart and Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan, and it has spent its first five episodes doing something genuinely odd for a superhero show — being a slow-burn regional murder mystery first and a cosmic space-cop procedural second.
The show has been running with a True Detective flavor since its premiere, which established that events are unfolding in 2016, and by episode five, “Lights Out,” the mystery had fully swallowed the mythology.
That’s the exact seam the new Lanterns Midseason Trailer rips wide open. The trailer sets up the final three episodes of the season, with John Stewart investigating Hal Jordan’s apparent death while Sinestro and Guy Gardner return to the story.
Translation: your two Green Lanterns spend the back half of the season either dead, imprisoned, or morally compromised, and absolutely nobody involved seems to be having a good time. Perfect.
The Trailer, Beat by Beat (Spoilers, Obviously)
According to ComingSoon’s breakdown, the Lanterns midseason trailer opens with Hal and John meeting, with John telling Hal “All right, I’m listening,” Hal confessing “I took the fall for what we did,” John firing back “You didn’t take the fall, you fell and people got killed,” and Hal responding “There’s more than one killer at this table” — which, if you’re keeping score at home, is the most noir line ever spoken by a man who can also punch through a moon.
The same footage then cuts to the scene of John discovering Hal’s body, which apparently we needed to see again, presumably because trauma loves a rewatch.
Per tbreak’s coverage, the trailer picks up right after episode five, in which both Lanterns lose their green rings — Stewart surrendered his, while Jordan had his forcibly taken. And in a detail that should surprise absolutely no one who has ever watched a prestige mystery show, IGN reports new footage of Stewart behind bars, with Guy Gardner flatly telling him, “I can’t help you solve this murder.” Cool. Cool cool cool.
Great use of a superpowered ring-slinger, everybody — let’s put him in a cell and hand the case to the guy with anger issues.
Meanwhile, over at Gizmodo/io9, there’s a full theory-crafting session underway about Zoe Macon’s grandson, glimpsed in a conversation about the coming war before Rushville became a warzone, and later seen making a football team in footage that also appears in the trailer — with the outlet speculating he could be the one who eventually shoots Hal Jordan point-blank as payback for Zoe’s death, though they admit they’d personally rather see Hal stay definitively dead so the show doesn’t undercut its own stakes.
It’s the kind of theory that only makes sense after your fourth rewatch of the Lanterns Midseason Trailer, and yet here we all are, doing exactly that.
“The Blackest Night Is Yet to Come” (Cool Tagline, Terrifying Implications)
If the plot mechanics weren’t ominous enough, HBO Max also gave us a tagline built for maximum dread. BroadwayWorld notes that the midseason trailer carries the ominous warning “the blackest night is yet to come,” signaling an escalation for the rest of the season — a line comic readers will recognize as a none-too-subtle nod toward one of the darkest Green Lantern events in DC history.
Whether the show is actually building toward that event or just borrowing the vibes for a killer marketing line is, naturally, a mystery the Lanterns Midseason Trailer is very happy to leave unsolved.
Both ComingSoon and SuperHeroHype also flag a teased reunion between John Stewart and Ulrich Thomsen’s Sinestro, which is the TV equivalent of your most emotionally unstable coworker showing up right when things are already on fire. Good. Great. Very fine, normal, stable choice, show.
The Cast Currently Suffering Through This (Beautifully)
Beyond Pierre and Chandler, the ensemble taking part in this slow-motion small-town implosion includes Ulrich Thomsen, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Jason Ritter, and Laura Linney. That’s a genuinely absurd amount of “serious drama” pedigree to throw at a show about a magic ring club, and it’s a big part of why the Lanterns Midseason Trailer hits as hard as it does tonally — everyone involved is playing this completely, gloriously straight.
Will There Be a Season 2? Lindelof Is Being Coy (Shocking, We Know)
Because no HBO prestige drama can simply exist without a renewal narrative attached, ComingSoon also has executive producer Damon Lindelof addressing the future, telling ScreenRant: “If it’s successful and people love it, there’s a lot of runway to launch into future seasons. But I think Chris Mundy has already started a new writers’ room, figuring out what new stories could be for Lanterns.”
In classic Lindelof fashion, that’s either a confident tease or a man trying very hard to manage expectations after The Leftovers taught him what happens when finales don’t stick the landing. Either way, the Lanterns Midseason Trailer doesn’t confirm a season two outright — as tbreak points out, it plays instead like the first season is reaching one ending before starting another, which is a very fancy way of saying “we’re keeping our options open.”
What Happens Next
Episode 6 premieres on HBO Max on September 20, with the season finale scheduled for October 4, meaning the mystery kicked off by the Lanterns Midseason Trailer has exactly three episodes to answer: who actually killed Hal Jordan, whether John Stewart can clear his name from behind bars, what Sinestro wants this time, and whether “the blackest night” is a metaphor, a prophecy, or just a really good marketing department having a moment.
Whatever the answer, one thing is certain: HBO Max has once again proven that the fastest way to make superheroes feel dangerous again is to strip them of their powers, throw them in a small town full of suspects, and let a murder board do the heavy lifting. The Lanterns Midseason Trailer isn’t just a tease — it’s a promise that the back half of Season 1 is going to hurt, in the best possible way.
New episodes of Lanterns stream Sundays on HBO Max.
