Lanterns trailer connects to Superman 2025 with a strange HBO theory

Free HBO — at motels or from Skydance's grasp

The first trailer for HBO and DC’s Green Lantern TV series Lanterns will send the seasoned Oa enthusiast spiraling in a number of lore-fueled directions. Why doesn’t Hal glow green when he takes flight for a split second? Will this gritty True Detective-esque cop show eventually feature a cameo from Ch’p, guardian of the planet H'lven? Does Hal Jordan’s claim that he is the only human member of the Green Lantern Corps imply that Guy Gardner, previously seen in Superman, is non-human or does the show take place in the past, before Gardner has yet to hit the scene?

There’s lots that Lanterns co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King will have to answer for, but I imagine the most interesting thread the Lanterns teaser tugs on when it comes to hardcore DC fandom is: If HBO exists in James Gunn’s DCU, will it be acquired by Paramount Skydance, which seems to also exist in the DCU?

An answer would be quite prescient for a show greenlit in June of 2024, seeing as David Ellison’s Skydance Media only got around to gobbling up Paramount Pictures in August 2025 and ended its public battle against Netflix for ownership of HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery in late February of this year. But hey, fans of Lindelof’s HBO sequel to Watchmen noticed that he got something all too right about militarized law enforcement groups patrolling our neighborhoods like masked vigilantes six years after its premiere, so you never know with that guy.

The existence of HBO within the DCU was not a foregone conclusion, even after Mr. Terrific’s fight scene to “5 Years Time” in Superman. That diagetic needle drop suggests that music industry veteran Martin Kierszenbaum eventually left Warner Bros. Records to found Cherrytree Records in 2005, and successfully released Noah and the Whale’s debut album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down. But it was all conjecture until this pivotal shot in Lanterns.

Whenever — or in whichever reality — Lanterns takes place, we now know that motels of that world do, as in our own, provide free HBO along with standard cable. This raises a key question of the trajectory of Warner Bros.’ prized asset in Gunn’s framework and one that needs answering, because there’s also evidence Paramount exists in this world too.

At the start of Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s tense interview early on in Gunn’s Superman, Clark playfully — but also a little rudely! — jabs his secret girlfriend with the following dismissive: “Let’s do it, Cronkite.”

Walter Cronkite became a household name IRL as the host of CBS Evening News, a role he held for nearly 20 years on top of years as a field reporter for the network. Without a clip of a classic Cronkite broadcast, we can’t 100% verify that CBS Evening News existed in the metahuman-filled alternate reality of the DCU, but I’m guessing Clark hasn’t listened to a ton of Cronkite’s ’30s era broadcasts from his days at WKY radio in Oklahoma City. CBS could exist in a world without Paramount Pictures — Viacom, the first corporation to own both companies, only acquired CBS in 1994 — but with so much in Gunn’s fictional world hewing close to our reality, I am prepared to take the leap that this all went down off-screen in the DCU as well.

Which raises serious questions about the fate of Warner Bros. and HBO in this continuity. Some monstrous force seems to have decimated a Midwestern motel in either the past or present of the DCU — is the same about to happen by way of a media titan to HBO’s parent company in this world? And what of Netflix? Combing through scripts for Gunn’s recent DCU projects yields no sign of the dominant streaming platform, which… perhaps… renders this entire thought experiment moot.

Well, bring on Ch’p!

Lanterns premieres on HBO this August, at which time David Ellison believes he will own the network.