'Lanterns' Finally Fixes One of Superhero TV's Most Frustrating Problems

Published Sep 9, 2026, 12:45 AM EDT

Kendall Myers is a Senior Author with Collider. As part of the TV and Movies Features team, she writes about some of the most popular releases before, during, and after they premiere. In three years, she has written over 900 articles with topics ranging from classic sitcoms to fantasy epics.

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 4.

Superhero stories have become a staple of film and TV over the last few decades, but historically, the genre has struggled in one distinct way. Women too rarely play leading roles, and if they don’t, they’re usually sidelined. That’s not to say there are no good examples of female characters in superhero media, but there are few to choose from. While Lanterns star Poorna Jagannathan spoke about the issue in an upcoming interview for Collider Ladies Night, she also emphasized that the DCU’s latest show does something different for the superhero genre.

*Lanterns *primarily follows Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) as they investigate suspicious events in the small town of Rushville, Nebraska. Yet, even with two male characters leading the story, the series doesn’t fall into the superhero genre’s most common trap. From Jagannathan’s Zoe to Jasmine Cephas Jones’s Bernadette Stewart, *Lanterns *features complex women who play vital roles. In doing so, the DCU series proves the genre’s division between men’s and women’s stories is pointless.

The lack of women in the superhero genre has been discussed many times, but this goes beyond that. Jagannathan described the problem as “binary,” saying that** **“women’s stories are told in the women’s superhero [stories], and the men’s don’t.” While her explanation is simple, the truth appears throughout both DC and Marvel’s onscreen universes. Often, the women in male-led superhero content are designated as romantic interests or supporting characters. The result is a genre where women never get the narrative spotlight they deserve.

In the former DCEU, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) was set up as a fascinating character in her own film, but her next appearance in** Justice League was far less remarkable, despite her being one of DC’s most iconic superheroes. Meanwhile, other women in the franchise, except Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), have limited significance to the stories they appear in. Reserving women’s stories for female-led projects significantly reduces the number of interesting characters in the genre. Worse, **it creates a major divide between male-led and female-led projects.

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