HBO's Lanterns trailer is giving Green Lantern fans blue balls

'Bro, wheres the green?'

When HBO revealed a first look at the upcoming DC Universe series Lanterns in a sizzle reel last year, Green Lantern fans had one question: Where are the Green Lantern powers? There were no green energy blasts. No solid light constructs. For a few seconds of footage of a show that was a year away, this wasn’t a huge surprise, but a full teaser trailer for Lanterns just arrived, and it’s not doing much to relieve those concerns.

The trailer opens on our two heroes: Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) in a car together. “We’ve been training for two months and I haven’t even worn the ring yet,” Stewart complains. In response, Jordan hands him the Green Lantern Ring, drives the car over a cliff, and leaps out the door to safety.

If Stewart uses his powers to survive, we don’t see it. As far as the trailer has confirmed, that two-month streak continues.

Throughout the trailer, which runs just over two-minutes, we never actually see either Jordan or Stewart use the Green Lantern Ring to do anything. The closest is Jordan flying away at one point while wearing his normal clothes and no green energy field. At the very end of the trailer, he also appears to charge up the ring for an energy blast, but we don’t actually see it happen.

While the comments on the YouTube trailer are largely positive, some fans are already voicing their concerns.

“Bro, wheres the green?” one person asked.

“The entire teaser was released, but we didn't see a single shot of Green Lantern wearing a suit or using his powers again,” said another.

“Green Lantern show with literally nothing green,” a third joked. (To be fair, we do see a physical green lantern in one shot.)

The response on X, where the trailer was also posted, wasn’t much better, with fans theorizing that Lanterns could wait until the end of its eight-episode season to show any significant Green Lantern superpowers.

“Surf Dracula kinda vibes,” one person wrote.

“Will they wait until the last episode to wear the suit?” asked another.

Overall, the Lanterns trailer definitely feels closer to True Detective than Superman. We wouldn’t necessarily expect any of the creative uses of the Green Lantern Ring that Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) deploys in that movie. Instead, Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King are seemingly taking a much more grounded approach with the HBO show, which still shares the same universe as James Gunn’s high-flying movie.

Then again, maybe HBO and DC Studios just need a little more time to finish up the Green Lantern special effects. We’ll find out later this year.

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Lanterns premieres in August on HBO and HBO Max.