DC’s First Lanterns Trailer Confirms Green Lantern is Repeating the DCU’s Biggest Superman Mistake

The DC Cinematic Universe has only begun to blossom with Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, and Superman. Following Supergirl this summer, Lanterns has been one of the DCU’s biggest question marks concerning how it might take shape, and it fortunately now has a teaser trailer that was released not long after it was announced and subsequently leaked.

This trailer confirms that HBO’s Lanterns show will be far more rural than intergalactic, as well as guarantees that John Stewart and Hal Jordan’s rookie-mentor relationship will be full of strain and discontent. It was obvious from the show’s reveal that Lanterns would be a desaturated interpretation in small-town Nebraska attempting to emulate the same tone as True Detective, but the sole Green Lantern costume that’s been shown so far is doubly concerning due to how terrible Guy Gardner’s was in Superman.

HBO’s Green Lantern Costume is… Brown?

More than anything, Lanterns’ first DCU trailer bludgeons audiences with the depiction of Hal as a jaded, weathered Green Lantern, and this portrayal apparently extends to at least one Green Lantern costume that is seen on a clothes hanger in a closet with other suits. This costume is markedly and primarily brown, not green (only on its shoulder pads and chest insignia, from what can be seen), and has thus inevitably ruffled feathers.

To be fair, it’s not confirmed whether this costume is Hal’s or another Green Lantern’s. The prevailing theory as to why it’s brown, though, is that it could be rusted or faded after what would have supposedly been decades of wear and tear.

True or not, Hal certainly doesn’t need a moth-eaten, discolored costume to convey that he’s antiquated when the script will already be doing so incessantly, based on the trailer’s dialogue between John and Hal.

The brown is debatably unappealing overall, and yet its color is not all that is troubling about it. Cloth or otherwise physical Green Lantern costumes have been a thing, but they’re nowhere near as interesting as Green Lantern costumes being light constructs from the rings these characters bear, anchoring them in sci-fi fantasy.

The DCU Has a Big Mountain to Climb

Of course, with John and Hal being likely to wear civvies exclusively in Lanterns, we’d be lucky to see anyone wearing a costume regardless. Remarks from John and Hal in this trailer shed a tiny bit of light on the DCU Green Lantern lore we might get, but Guy’s involvement in the Justice Gang and previous establishment in the DCU make it odd that Hal would suggest he’s the only human.

If this brown costume is the one that Hal wears, much less the one every Green Lantern wears, it will rival Guy’s Justice Gang costume as one of the most divisive we’ve seen in live-action. If nothing else, it is quite fearless for Lanterns to reveal this version of the costume before any other when there is barely any context to derive from it.