1 Year After Superman, James Gunn's DCU Finally Sets Up Its Endgame

Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Lanterns episode 1

Thanks to the release of Lanterns, it’s possible that James Gunn’s DCU is finally starting to reveal the bigger picture when it comes to Gods and Monsters. 2025’s Superman was our biggest and best introduction into this world with established heroes, metahumans, and aliens, and a world already working to reconcile with it all. Now, Lanterns may have just kicked off a major piece of the overarching narrative for the new DC Universe.

In the new HBO Max series starring Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, Lanterns sees the veteran and trainee investigating alien murders in the small rural town of Rushville, Nebraska. Clearly inspired by shows like True Detective, the first episode alone has confirmed that while the show has begun fairly grounded, it’s very much on an upward trajectory of cosmic proportions. Keeping that in mind, the premiere also suggests larger stakes in motion we might not yet fully comprehend in the grand scheme of the DCU itself.

To put it simply: if Lanterns is telling a more self-contained alien murder mystery, that’s awesome. It already has all the right pieces in place to make it one of the DCU’s most intriguing projects yet. However, I feel like there are very strong odds that the aftermath of this new series could serve as a major stepping stone for Gods and Monsters, the DCU’s first confirmed chapter of projects.

The DCU’s New Lanterns Series Has Arrived With Some Major Reveals & Mysteries

Overall, the premiere of Lanterns wastes little time establishing its core mystery in Rushville, Nebraska. Investigating alien murders in 2016 when John was training under Hal, the region is revealed to be particularly important as it’s also where the dying Green Lantern Abin Sur crash-landed decades earlier in 1986, choosing Hal Jordan to serve as his successor. Ever since then, Hal has been monitoring the location.

Additionally, Lanterns’ premiere ends with a jump to 2026 where Hal Jordan’s dead, frozen, and ringless corpse is shockingly discovered by John Stewart and Sheriff Kerry Kane. To add to the major mysteries, we learn that 2016 saw William Macon protecting a region of land on behalf of an unknown employer with a large millitia seemingly trained to specifically take on extraterrestrials.

By design, the full picture has yet to materialize after this first episode of Lanterns, though it will no doubt become clear by the season’s end. That said, a few key moments make it hard to shake the feeling that something much bigger is being set up for the DCU’s future as well.

Lanterns Kicks Off A Big Mystery About Earth In James Gunn’s DCU

One of the premiere’s most interesting clues about a bigger overarching DCU plot comes from Hal. While training John Stewart in 2016, Hal provides some fascinating details about how he got his power ring and what happened when he first encountered Abin Sur and became an officer of the Green Lantern Corps.

Sent hurtling from his bed to Nebraska in a giant green bubble, Hal confirmed he wasn’t afraid when asked. Chosen by Abin Sur before he died, Hal reveals that he’d later come to suspect that the crash was no accident. After all, Earth is apparently considered a “s***hole backwater planet” and that The Guardians of the Universe never wanted any Lanterns coming near Earth, let alone a human joining their ranks. As such, Hal confirms that his gut has always told him that something was coming, hence his constant monitoring of Rushville in the years following his initial recruitment.

On the one hand, this could simply be foreshadowing the immediate events of Lanterns and its future episodes. The alien murders, Macon’s militia, and the alien disguised as a human whom Hal interrogated (before he blew himself up to conceal his mission) all suggest that a major extraterrestrial conflict is approaching Nebraska, one where humans will no doubt get caught in some kind of alien war.

However, the fact that the series takes the time to establish that Earth may very well have a hidden cosmic significance in the DCU could be a big deal and feels important. Potentially, it could even be one of the first planted seeds for a bigger story James Gunn intends to tell in the DCU’s first chapter (God and Monsters). It’s already been established that Earth is home to aliens, metahumans, powerful government agencies, and increasingly strange supernatural phenomena. If Earth also does indeed have some hidden cosmic significance, Lanterns could be the perfect project to explain why in its aftermath.

In essence, while Lanterns could end by explaining the importance of Nebraska, perhaps it will also end by leaving us with new questions about Earth overall.

Is The DCU Finally Teasing Gods and Monsters’ Overarching Plot?

Hal Jordan and John Stewart on Alien Planet in Lanterns SDCC Trailer

Not only does Earth likely having a hidden importance fit well with the existing DC Comics mythology on the page, but some of the tensions seen in Lanterns arguably have ties to plots seen in the DCU previously as well, particularly when it comes to aliens.

Lanterns’ premiere has already shown some pretty heavy anti-alien sentiment. Macon’s militia looks determined to “protect Earth from anyone not born on it.” As such, that attitude could very much be extended to aliens not currently in Nebraska…like Superman and his cousin Supergirl. If public fear of aliens continues to grow, the impact could be seen DCU-wide. Likewise, government responses are just as important. As seen in past projects like Superman and Peacemaker, organizations like ARGUS and its director Rick Flag Sr. are growing increasingly concerned with metahuman and extraterrestrial threats and their role in geopolitical affairs.

As such, Lanterns looks primed to add another piece to that overarching narrative, and the beginning of a much larger storyline for the DCU. It could very well be the project that truly starts laying out the stakes for Gods and Monsters in earnest considering the “shitstorm” Hal Jordan believes is on the way. Could that just be in reference to the events to come in Lanterns? Sure. But a greater significance for Earth being kept hidden for some reason feels way too perfect as the DCU’s greater overarching plot.

Just over a year after Superman, James Gunn’s DCU may finally start showing us where it’s all headed with Lanterns.

New episodes of DC Studios’ Lanterns release Sunday nights on HBO Max.