Handed House of the Dragon’s Sunday 9 PM ET/6 PM PT slot, Lanterns needed only a matter of days to push the dragons out of the top position on the U.S. charts.
For a Green Lantern property, that is a remarkably quick turnaround. The previous live-action swing at the character was the 2011 Green Lantern movie starring Ryan Reynolds, a box office bomb that still carries a 25% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a 45% audience score.
Lanterns, by contrast, arrived at a 94% critics’ score and an 86% audience score — and that is off the strength of a single episode, since episode 1 is all fans have watched so far.
The baton passed almost overnight
House of the Dragon season 3 closed out on August 9. Lanterns debuted on HBO and HBO Max on August 16. One week, and the franchise handoff was complete.
That third season had been running the table, sitting atop HBO’s viewership figures and HBO Max’s global charts week after week as new episodes landed. Following an act like that is no minor assignment.
As of this writing, Lanterns ranks as the third most-watched TV show on HBO Max worldwide. It is trending across 42 countries and holding the No. 1 spot in 21 of them.
Who it passed on the climb
On HBO Max’s global charts, Lanterns currently sits above Rick and Morty and President Curtis, its new sci-fi spinoff. Nor is it the only DC entry on the board: My Adventures with Superman, the animated series, is presently the seventh most-watched show on HBO Max worldwide.
The United States counts among the countries where Lanterns reached No. 1, unseating House of the Dragon outright.
Globally, though, House of the Dragon season 3 remains HBO Max’s most-watched series. For the moment, at least.
The math favors the Lanterns
Seven episodes are still to come after the premiere, arriving weekly, while House of the Dragon’s season 3 finale drifts further into the past with every passing Sunday.
Those two curves are moving in opposite directions, which makes it likely that Lanterns claims the streamer’s global crown at some point during its run.
A debut on HBO is coming soon, and the show is positioned to reshape James Gunn’s DC Universe in major ways, introducing fan-favorite heroes along the way.
Nathan Fillion had already suited up
Fillion has portrayed Green Lantern Guy Gardner across multiple DCU releases, so the ring is hardly new to this version of the DC world. Even so, Lanterns is the first true live-action Green Lantern project since 2011.
HBO’s library of originals runs deep — The Sopranos, Succession, Chernobyl, The White Lotus. The network has stacked up franchise work as well: Dune: Prophecy, The Penguin, The Last of Us.
Game of Thrones, adapted from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, has produced multiple spinoffs since it wrapped, and that universe has grown intrinsically tied to HBO. Which is precisely why what Lanterns just did in the U.S. registers.
The show itself
Lanterns is a modern update on Green Lantern. Intergalactic law enforcers John Stewart and Hal Jordan join forces, defending Earth while investigating a murder mystery set in the American heartland.
House of the Dragon, for its part, unfolds roughly 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones, chronicling the rise of the Targaryens, the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria.
Dragonlords out. Space cops in the heartland in. Same Sunday, same 9 PM.