Aaron Pierre & Kyle Chandler Clash In HBO Lanterns Trailer

In brightest day, in blackest night, a Lanterns trailer is here to shed some light… on Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King’s upcoming DCU detective series! Yes, after a minor snafu involving a premature teaser upload earlier this afternoon, HBO Max has decided to lift the lid on its True Detective style take on the DC Universe’s ring-wielding Green Lantern Corps and offer us our first formal introduction to Kyle Chandler’s grizzled Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s charismatic young buck John Stewart. Scrub all memory of Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern from your mind and check out the new Lanterns in action below;

Hoo boy — they weren’t kidding when they said we were getting a True Detective flavoured riff on Green Lantern were they? Confidently eschewing the more overtly comic book presentation of that ill-fated Reynolds movie and Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner in James Gunn’s Superman last year, this first look at Lanterns leans into a world-weary master/(over)confident apprentice dynamic between Hal Jordan and John Stewart, two members of the Green Lantern Corps — an intergalactic law enforcement agency whose agents wield emerald rings capable of constructing solid shapes out of light — who find themselves investigating a murder down on Earth in the American heartland.

As we see here though, not only is the case the duo are tackling (aided by Kelly Macdonald’s County Sheriff Kerry) a dark and claret-soaked affair, but it’s also one that sets their clashing egos on a collision course. “It’s the Green Lanterns’ oath to protect people,” coolly states Pierre’s Stewart, affecting his Rebel Ridge brand of hyper-competence, “and we both know I do a better job of this than you.” “This is my job,” claps back Chandler’s Jordan, “and as long as I’m alive that ain’t changing.” It’s not all grit and gloom though, no sirree — we do get glimpses of a Lantern costume, a power ring, a Green Lantern power battery, and a line of dialogue acknowledging the existence of comic book deep-cut squirrelly Lantern Ch’p here, too.

The official logline for Lanterns — which co-stars the likes of Garret Dillahunt as modern cowboy William Macon; Poorna Jagannathan as the ‘composed and cunning’ Zoe; Ulrich Thomsen as rogue former Green Lantern Corps agent Sinestro; Nicole Ari Parker as John’s mother Bernadette Stewart; and Jason Ritter as Kerry’s husband Billy Macon — reads: “The series follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.”

We’ll find out whether Hal and John can learn to work together, if Lanterns can live up to its True Detective comps, and just how exactly this all ties into the wider DCU when the series hits HBO Max this August.