After Creature Commandos kicked off the rebooted DC Universe canon in 2024, the franchise had its true coming out party last year. Superman ushered in a new era of DC movies, earning widely positive reviews and $618.7 million at the worldwide box office (becoming 2025’s highest-grossing comic book film in the process). On the TV side, Peacemaker Season 2 was also well-received (save for a polarizing finale), so the DCU got off on the right foot. All that momentum came screeching to a halt earlier this summer when Supergirl bombed at the box office, causing people to wonder if the franchise was doomed. In need of a rebound, Lanterns has arrived to get the DCU back on track.
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As of this writing, Lanterns has a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with 32 reviews submitted thus far. Assuming that score sticks, Lanterns would be the third DCU TV project to earn a critics score in the 90s. The rating is also several percentage points above Superman:
| Title | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
| Creature Commandos | 95% |
| Peacemaker Season 2 | 94% |
| Lanterns | 91% (only 32 reviews counted) |
| Superman | 83% |
| Supergirl | 52% |
The Early Lanterns Reviews Are Exactly What DC Needs Right Now
Rotten Tomatoes has yet to publish a Critics Consensus for Lanterns Season 1, but the show has received the aggregator’s Certified Fresh seal of approval. This means that even though the score is likely to fluctuate a bit as more reviews continue to come in (as a point of comparison, Peacemaker Season 2 has 149 reviews counted), there won’t be any drastic shifts in the final figure. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t declare a project Certified Fresh until a large enough sample size has been counted, so the odds of Lanterns taking a nosedive into rotten territory are virtually nonexistent.
As one might expect with a Rotten Tomatoes score in the 90s, several aspects of Lanterns are receiving a healthy amount of praise. Critics are impressed with everything from the show’s storytelling execution, thematic material, grounded approach to the Green Lantern mythos, and the chemistry between stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre. From the beginning, Lanterns was being compared to HBO’s hit drama True Detective, and it seems to have lived up to that billing. Much like how True Detective was elevated by standout performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, Lanterns benefits strongly from Chandler and Pierre bringing their <a href="https://comicvibe.com/5-character-deaths-that-ruined-once-beloved-tv-shows/” title=”5 Character Deaths That Ruined Once-Beloved TV Shows”>characters to life in captivating ways that do the source material justice. Even those who aren’t as high on Lanterns took time in their reviews to sing the praises of the two stars, so Lanterns could be an acting showcase.
There’s no sugarcoating Supergirl‘s box office; it’s made just $126.2 million worldwide. The “is the DCU dead?” discourse that blew up in the aftermath was somewhat understandable, but also a tad overblown. As DC Studios co-head Peter Safran said following Supergirl‘s opening weekend, the movie is just one step of a years-long plan they have in mind. Not only does the DCU have Lanterns coming out this weekend, the movie Clayface releases in October and Man of Tomorrow premieres next summer. There was always a chance that a year from now, we’d be looking back at Supergirl as just a bump in the road instead of a death knell for the DCU. The first step of that road to recovery was Lanterns being well-received, and that’s exactly what’s happened.
Hopefully, Lanterns will get fans excited about the future of the DCU again. The fact that Aaron Pierre is earning high marks is very encouraging; it’s already been confirmed he’s going to reprise John Stewart in Man of Tomorrow, and he’ll likely be the DCU’s main human Green Lantern moving forward. If people didn’t respond positively to his performance, that could have dampened enthusiasm for Man of Tomorrow, but instead it sounds like he could become a fan favorite. If audiences agree with critics on Lanterns, the DCU should be back in business.
Lanterns Takes Fearless Swings, But Trust Us, It’s Green Lantern Through and Through (Review)
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