UPDATE 10/4: The finale has aired, and it goes out with a whimper. Fans are split.
UPDATE 9/28: DCU fans think Gunn’s “Season finale, correct” reply under this post confirmed a Season 2. The HBO boss said different.
James Gunn is back on Threads hyping Lanterns, and this time he put a number on it.
“I’ve seen Lanterns 500 times and even I’m excited for next week’s finale,” the DC Studios co-head posted following Sunday’s Episode 7. The post picked up 9,000 likes and more than 400 replies within hours.
Five hundred times.
Gunn watched this show 500 times, by his own count, and 500 times he let it be exactly what it is: divisive woke garbage that destroys beloved characters and spits in the face of longtime fans and the creators who built them.
None of it slipped past him. That is Gunn’s DCU.
What Gunn Watched 500 Times
Episode 6 confirmed Hal Jordan is dead, with John Stewart digging up the body to take the ring.
Sunday’s Episode 7 goes further. The Hal construct reveals that Hal’s father took his own life, that his grandfather likely did the same, and the construct now believes Hal did too.
The episode also says Hal was never really a hero. He only had no fear because his family was messed up. The show already did the same thing to John Stewart and his parents.
Hal Jordan was created by John Broome and Gil Kane in 1959. John Stewart was created by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams in 1971.
This is what more than 50 years of those characters gets you under Gunn.
Gunn saw every frame of it 500 times and put it on HBO anyway.
‘Sorry If You Don’t Like It’
This isn’t Gunn’s first Threads session on Lanterns.
After Episode 6, he spent a day replying to the backlash over Hal’s death, telling one fan “sorry if you don’t like it” and another that the DCU following the comics is “probably not going to happen.”
The writers weren’t hiding it either.
Episode 3 writer Vanessa Baden Kelly told Collider she repeatedly said in the writers room that the Green Lantern ring is “sexist,” and that some writers in that room knew nothing about Green Lantern going in.
That is the show Gunn watched 500 times.
This Is Gunn’s DCU
Lanterns is the pattern, not the exception.
Supergirl exited theaters as the lowest-grossing DC movie ever.
HBO boss Casey Bloys says no Lanterns Season 2 is in development.
Lanterns co-creators Tom King and Damon Lindelof are both out at DC, per CBN’s insiders, who described Gunn’s DC as “pitched and greenlit when woke was popular” and DC Studios as “a ghost town.”
CBN’s Paramount insiders also say the board “hates Gunn” and is “well aware of the backlash to Gunn’s DCU, including Lanterns and the Supergirl bomb.”
Creature Commandos never charted on Nielsen, Peacemaker basically lost half its audience, and don’t forget that the head of Netflix confirmed Gunn’s Superman underperformed. And there’s zero hype for Clayface.
Gunn’s contract expires in 2027 after Man of Tomorrow.
The Lanterns finale airs October 4. Gunn says he has seen it 500 times already, and nothing he saw made him change a thing.
