Yep, CGI is still the toughest part of Lanterns — even with its True Detective setup

If you thought the most difficult bit about making Lanterns was whipping up all those cosmic Green Lantern powers and space nonsense, you’d be wrong. Turns out the biggest headache for the HBO series’ visual effects crew had nothing to do with glowing emerald constructs or interplanetary flights. It was something altogether more grounded, but in a way, even trickier.

Lanterns is pitched as a detective drama that just so happens to involve Green Lanterns, so you might assume the team spent their days dealing with giant energy fists smashing through Saturn’s rings. But the series’ VFX producer Eddie Bonin recently explained that the real workload snuck in from a different direction entirely. Here’s Bonin, speaking with ScreenRant about those unexpected challenges:

When asked about the hardest aspect to crack, Bonin said, "Unexpectedly, there was just a lot of work."

It’s not that they didn’t plan for the sci-fi set pieces — the constructs, the space vistas, all that green. But Bonin made clear that much of their job was handling digital touch-ups audiences would never even spot. The little things, the seamless fixes that keep the show looking sharp without drawing attention. Some shots that look perfectly ordinary are, in fact, hiding a ton of invisible VFX work behind them.

Bonin highlighted how tricky it was managing this plethora of background enhancements, saying it wasn’t just about what they’d prepared for, but filling in every extra gap the show required:

Bonin explained, "Just the volume of work outside of what we were studying for, preparing for, and just filling in the gaps everywhere else."

The expected stuff — alien cities, power rings doing their thing, a Lantern whizzing about the galaxy — is what made it into the sizzle reels. The real graft went into the stuff no one ever points at and says 'Ooh that’s CGI.' In truth, that’s probably how you want it for a show trying to keep one foot in detective realism and the other out in DC’s cosmic wilds.

The Team and The Numbers

Lanterns isn’t just one studio’s handywork — there were ten VFX studios onboard, including Digital Domain, Image Engine, and Spin VFX. Greg Steele headed up the production VFX, working alongside Bonin. Showrunners Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King brought in a cast featuring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre to deliver that blend of hard-boiled cop drama and metal-tights heroics, which aired on HBO every week.

The series didn’t exactly sneak out, either. It launched on 16 August 2026, and managed to rope in a whopping 9.3 million viewers worldwide in its first three days.

9.3 million viewers tuned in globally within Lanterns' first 72 hours.

Critics were also fairly chuffed — at the moment, Lanterns holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 90 critic reviews. New episodes continue on HBO and HBO Max every week through to 4 October, if you’re playing catch-up or want to see just how many invisible digital flourishes you can spot.