From its trailer, HBO Max’s Lanterns appears more like a clone of season one of fellow network show True Detective than a superhero series along the lines of fellow network show Peacemaker.

There’s very little in the way of showing off Green Lantern’s powers, but a lot of “rookie cop gets schooled by grizzled veteran” energy in the clip, which stars Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart. There’s also a Men in Black feel to the clip, with Jordan representing the old and busted and Stewart the new hotness.

In the clip, Jordan is driving Stewart around when John complains that in two months of training, he hasn’t yet worn the Green Lantern Corps ring.

“Don’t get hung up on the jewelry, Junior,” Hal tells him. “You’re just a fuckin’ substitute teacher. You’re not ready to get up in front of the class till the ring says you are.”

But in the next shot, we see Jordan place the ring on the dash, open the driver’s side door, and roll out of the car just as it plunges over the edge of a cliff. We later see Stewart joining Jordan at an outdoor cafe.

“I could have died,” Stewart says as Jordan applauds.
“You want me to train you; I’m training you,” Jordan replies.

Then we see Jordan and Stewart roll into a small town where things are decidedly not right, and Bruce Springsteen’s haunting “State Trooper” plays. We see the two walk into a meeting room full of townsfolk with cowboy hat-wearing men on the stage as awkward silence prevails. Kelly MacDonald plays a sheriff hostile to interfering outsiders.

“This is my town. You’re a big shot. Noted. But stay the fuck out of my way.”

We see guns drawn on our hero in a diner, random scenes of massive destruction, and Stewart explaining how his daring plan isn’t the stupidest he’s ever come up with.

Though the Lanterns are intergalactic peacekeepers who wear rings that give them the power to create green light constructs of any shape or size, we don’t see much of that here. We do see Jordan taking off in flight, and finding his old and battered Green Lantern uniform, but nothing too “super” is revealed here.

Lanterns also stars Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner; Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Ulrich Thomsen as Sinestro; Nicole Ari Parker as Bernadette Stewart, John’s mother; and Jason Ritter. The series comes from co-creators and writers Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King. Mundy wrote for the most recent season of True Detective so the comparison with that show may indeed be apt.

As of this writing, HBO says Lanterns will premiere in August.