Ready for DCU’s Lanterns season 1? Here’s every movie and TV show to watch

Think of Lanterns as a Midwestern true-crime story with power rings. The show opens on a grisly case in rural Nebraska, with two Green Lanterns tracing a murder to something much bigger and more Earthbound than you’d expect. And because James Gunn ’s DC universe is a “reboot with a memory,” a handful of recent projects do real groundwork for how this world works before Hal Jordan and John Stewart show up with badges and constructs.

Start here: Creature Commandos

The first released project of the new DCU, the animated Creature Commandos is the cleanest on-ramp. Amanda Waller assembles Task Force M, and Rick Flag Sr. leads a pack of monsters, soldiers, and other misfits on missions regular operatives can’t touch. Beyond the monster-of-it- all, the series quietly lays out how the DCU treats continuity.

Key idea: this isn’t a hard reset. Familiar faces and performers carry over, while specific events from the old era are reshaped or tossed. Flag Sr. turns up again in live action, and Waller’s fingerprints are still all over metahuman ops. That political and institutional scaffolding is the backdrop Lanterns will live in, even as it zeroes in on a body in a field.

Mind the canon: Peacemaker

Both seasons of Peacemaker sit right at the messy seam between the DCEU and Gunn’s DCU. Season 1’s finale originally featured a Justice League cameo; Season 2 rewires that continuity knot in-universe. The new season’s recap and dialogue swap the Justice League for the Justice Gang, and other small tweaks smooth the handoff to the new canon.

Gunn has said the bulk of the story stays; the details that no longer fit get edited. That’s the DCU playbook: not starting from zero, but expecting you to accept that some history has been rewritten. It also widens the view of metahumans, government reach, and how everyday people talk about superheroes — all relevant context when a pair of Lanterns start asking questions in Nebraska.

Set the stage: Superman

James Gunn’s Superman is the first theatrical film of the new DCU and the clearest statement of the world Lanterns drops into: heroes and villains already exist, politics and corporations have opinions about them, and Clark Kent is navigating all of it in public.

• David Corenswet — Clark Kent / Superman
• Rachel Brosnahan — Lois Lane
• Nicholas Hoult — Lex Luthor
• Nathan Fillion — Guy Gardner (Green Lantern)

The movie also introduces Guy Gardner, offering an early look at how the new DCU interprets the Green Lantern Corps and its personalities. Lanterns itself centers on Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart, but seeing Guy in play first helps set the tone for how space cops fit into an already-busy Earth.

A rough patch: Supergirl

Supergirl shifts the Kryptonian lens. Unlike Clark’s steady public hopefulness, Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor‑El carries a harder edge, shaped by loss and a long simmering anger. It expands the DCU beyond Metropolis and shows that not every corner of the new continuity will be received the same way.

Supergirl opened to about $38 million domestic and $68 million worldwide.

With a reported production budget around $170 million before marketing, that’s a commercial stumble for DC Studios — not irrelevant to Lanterns, but a reminder of the franchise ’s current tightrope. The film still matters as cosmic texture for a universe where aliens, myth, and metahumans are normal facts of life.

Carryover that matters: Blue Beetle

Ángel Manuel Soto’s Blue Beetle arrived at the tail end of the DCEU, but Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is one of the survivors officially carrying into the DCU. His story — a kid bonded with an alien scarab that turns into an advanced suit — is intimate, family- rooted, and culturally specific, a useful counterweight to gods and Corps.

Gunn has previously called Blue Beetle the first DCU character, and Maridueña is set to reprise Jaime in Man of Tomorrow, the planned Superman follow-up slated for 2027 .