Lanterns took over House of the Dragon’s Sunday, 9 PM ET/6 PM PT slot, and within days it had knocked the dragons off the top of the U.S. charts.
That’s a fast turnaround for a Green Lantern property. The last live-action attempt at this character was the 2011 Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds, a box office bomb that sits at a 25% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 45% audience score.
Lanterns opened with a 94% critics’ score and an 86% audience score, and that’s off a single episode. Fans have only watched episode 1 so far.
The handoff happened almost immediately
House of the Dragon season 3 wrapped on August 9. Lanterns premiered on HBO and HBO Max on August 16. One week, and the franchise baton changed hands.
House of the Dragon season 3 had been running the table, dominating HBO’s viewership numbers and HBO Max’s global charts week after week as new episodes dropped. Following that is not a small assignment.
At the time of writing, Lanterns is the third most-watched TV show on HBO Max worldwide. It’s trending in 42 countries and ranking No. 1 in 21 of them.
What it beat on the way up
Lanterns is currently sitting above Rick and Morty and its new sci-fi spinoff President Curtis on HBO Max’s global charts. It’s also not the only DC title in the mix. My Adventures with Superman, the animated one, is HBO Max’s seventh most-watched show worldwide right now.
The United States is one of the countries where Lanterns hit No. 1, dethroning House of the Dragon outright.
Globally, though, House of the Dragon season 3 still rules supreme as HBO Max’s most-watched series worldwide. At least for now.
The math favors the Lanterns
Seven episodes remain after the premiere, released weekly. House of the Dragon’s season 3 finale recedes further into the past every Sunday.
Those two curves are headed in opposite directions, and Lanterns will likely take the streamer’s global crown at some point during its run.
The series will debut on HBO soon, and it’s set to change James Gunn’s DC Universe in major ways, introducing fan-favorite heroes along the way.
Nathan Fillion was already here
Fillion has played Green Lantern Guy Gardner across multiple DCU releases, so the ring isn’t new to this version of the DC world. But Lanterns is the first true live-action Green Lantern project since 2011.
HBO’s library runs deep on originals. The Sopranos, Succession, Chernobyl, The White Lotus. The network has also stacked up franchise work: 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 spawned multiple spinoffs since it ended, and that universe has become intrinsically tied to HBO. Which is exactly why what Lanterns just did in the U.S. registers.
The show itself
Lanterns is a modern Green Lantern update. Intergalactic law enforcers John Stewart and Hal Jordan unite, defending Earth while investigating a murder mystery set in the American heartland.
House of the Dragon, for its part, takes place about 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones, telling the tale of 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.
