Reports of Lanterns's Death Have Been (At Least Slightly) Exaggerated
The fate of Lanterns has still not been officially decided, according to prospective season two showrunner Christopher Cantwell. That's in spite of a Variety report that originally suggested the acclaimed series had been cancelled.
The Variety article featured a number of minor factual errors in its initial state, and has since been updated, with one change being that Lanterns had not "yet" been renewed, rather than that it had not been renewed at all. Those changes appeared after Cantwell, known for his work on the AMC series Halt and Catch Fire, invoked that series in his comments on the Lanterns/DC Studios situation.
On BlueSky, Cantwell posted (as reported at Comic Book Club), “Dear Internet: I haven’t heard a fucking thing. People sometimes wonder what future seasons of Halt and Catch Fire would’ve been. They would’ve arrived at social media and AI and the characters would’ve killed themselves… Nothing’s cancelled. Calm down.”
Elements of the Variety story appears to be part of a coordinated campaign to manage negative responses to Skydance's apparently-political move to dismantle James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Studios. Over at The Beat, Heidi MacDonald does an admirable job of breaking it all down.
Lanterns is undoubtedly a show that would have been unlikely to be greenlit (no pun intended) under Skydance leadership. The series centers the Black experience in a way that few high-profile shows and movies do, and its criticism of the white establishment made right-wingers on social media anxious, while Jeremy Latcham says he wants to make DC projects for the masses.
The fact that it was a big success for HBO/HBO Max could certainly help a second season happen, especially if – as CBC's Alex Zalben speculates – part of the new Skydance/DC approach is to focus on quantity over quality. If you're hoping for more Lanterns, one of the best things you can do is probably to buy the Blu-ray when it hits the stands on February 9th.
