Lanterns pulled 9.3 million global viewers in its first three days on HBO and HBO Max, according to Warner Bros. Discovery. Marvel’s Agatha All Along posted the same 9.3 million figure on Disney+, but that number covered seven days, not three.
The gap in reporting windows makes a clean comparison hard to pin down. Disney has not released a three-day count for Agatha All Along, and Warner Bros. Discovery has not released a seven-day count for Lanterns. What the public record shows is that Lanterns reached the same viewer total in fewer than half the days it took Agatha All Along.
Streaming view totals accumulate over time. They never fall retroactively, so any three-day slice of a seven-day number sits below that final total. There is no way to calculate Agatha All Along’s exact three-day count from the public data, but the seven-day ceiling means Lanterns closed the same distance faster, whatever the true smaller number turns out to be.
The platforms have also converged in scale since Agatha All Along’s September 2024 premiere. Warner Bros. Discovery told investors in its first-quarter 2026 earnings call that HBO Max passed 140 million global subscribers and is on pace to hit 150 million by year’s end. Disney stopped reporting exact Disney+ subscriber figures in its own quarterly filings. Deadline’s read on the current numbers places the two companies “in the same realm.” Two years ago, when Agatha All Along launched, Disney+ carried a larger subscriber base than Max by most published counts. That gap has closed.
Lanterns’ three-day figure also outpaced The Penguin (5.3 million over four days), IT: Welcome to Derry (5.7 million in three days), and True Detective: Night Country (2 million on night one), and landed just behind A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ 6.7 million three-day debut. It is DC Studios’ largest series premiere on HBO Max to date.
James Gunn’s role in the show’s development has become part of the story. Showrunner Chris Mundy told The Hollywood Reporter that Gunn was “off doing Superman” while Lanterns came together and left the writers’ room largely alone. Season 2 has not been greenlit. Mundy said he is six weeks into breaking a potential second season with Halt and Catch Fire co-creator Christopher Cantwell, with a pitch to HBO expected soon.
Whether the 9.3 million holds through the rest of the season, or fades the way Peacemaker Season 2 did after its own strong debut, will show up in Nielsen’s numbers next month.
Does a faster climb to the same number settle anything, or does the real test start with episode two?
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I watched the first episode of Lanterns and will definitely see where it goes after the setup. TBD on whether wokeness will be more than the whiff so far.
The absence of Gunn's trademark goofiness is a big plus in my book, with the bits of humor more organic. If anything there is almost bit of a Snyder grittiness to it.
I think it benefited from some benign neglect.
Lanturds, Gagatha On A Dong... both are garbage shows.