James Gunn teased new Lanterns footage on social media on May 17, setting up a full trailer for the DC series that arrives on May 18. The brief look showed Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart leaping over a car and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan throwing up a green shield to stop a laser fired from space.

The new footage lands after the first Lanterns trailer drew criticism in March 2026 for barely showing any Green Lantern powers or constructs. This time, the footage makes the point fast: there is power in the series, and it is not hiding it.

That is the message the show’s creative team has been pushing for months. Chris Mundy said, “It’s a Green Lantern show, so there’s green,” and added that the production was built to look grounded and real, with scenes shot practically in places. The show’s look has been one of the main talking points around the project since the first trailer surfaced.

Mundy also said the series moves between two eras. In scenes set in 2016, Hal and John investigate an alien-related shooting in the small town of Rushville. A separate storyline unfolds in 2026 after the events of Superman, giving the series a split timeline that reaches across the DC universe’s present and recent past.

That structure is part of why the teaser matters today. The earlier trailer left some fans worried that Lanterns was leaning too far into grit at the expense of the comic-book spectacle that defines the Green Lanterns. Gunn’s May 17 tease, and the footage behind it, look like a direct answer to that criticism: the show is still grounded, but it is finally showing the ring powers viewers expected to see.

The full trailer will arrive on May 18, with Lanterns set to premiere on HBO and Max on August 16. For now, the question around the series is less about whether it will have enough green and more about whether the grounded style can hold together once the ring lights up for good.