Lanterns did everything that condemned Snyder

Hero killed in the first episode, Green Lantern resolving the rifle parade and critics calling everything mature. It’s Lanterns, the HBO series from the James Gunn universe. And the SnyderVerso channel released on Tuesday, the 29th, a 24-minute video with the question that no one asked: why was all this a crime when Zack Snyder did it?

For those who have fallen now: Snyder directed Man of Steel, in 2013, Batman vs Superman, in 2016, and his Justice League, in 2021. In October 2022, Warner handed DC over to Gunn and Peter Safran, and Snyder’s universe was closed. Lanterns premiered on HBO Max on August 16, and the final episode will air on Sunday, October 4.

The process begins in June 2013. Comic book writer Mark Waid left the theater angry with Superman breaking Zod’s neck and wrote on his blog that Superman doesn’t kill, period. The phrase became law. So much so that in 2025 Variety, praising Gunn’s Superman, still called the dark tone “Zack Snyder’s ambitious mistake”.

But the video was to check whether this rule existed before it. Christopher Reeve’s Superman threw Zod into the abyss in 1980. John Byrne’s Superman executed Zod in the comics in 1988. And the first Batman story, from 1939, ends with a criminal falling into a tank of acid.

Here comes Lanterns. Hal Jordan appears dead at the end of the first episode. In the fifth, John Stewart fights him in a motel, takes down the villain with a shot from a sniper rifle and takes the ring off Hal’s finger. Rotten Tomatoes summarized early reviews as “a mature, grounded mystery.” And when Green Lantern fans complained about Hal’s death, Gunn responded on Threads with a “sorry if you don’t like it.” And it went further.

But if you want the DCU to take the exact trajectory of whatever your favorite comics continuity is, that’s probably not going to happen.

James Gunn on Threads, 09/21/2026, according to Bleeding Cool

Now think with me. Making his version of the character is exactly what Snyder did, and that’s why he heard for ten years that he had never read a comic book. His fans, when they complained, were called toxic. Hal’s got a “sorry” across the board.

On the 28th, Gunn confirmed that Sunday is the “season finale”, but HBO, which pays the bill, has not yet renewed the series.

The video doesn’t say that Lanterns is bad. It says the rule has changed. If the rule was never for the hero to kill, nor to be dark, nor to be faithful to the comics, there is only one left: if it’s Snyder’s, it’s wrong. And time is taking that one down too, one Sunday at a time.