Shortly after Lanterns' premiere, HBO Max announced that "Pilot" drew 9.3 million viewers worldwide in three days. Hailed as one of HBO's biggest series launches, it wasn't long before we learned that the controversial third episode, "OutKast," had scored 10 million viewers worldwide.
The issue with streaming viewership is that we have very little context. Is 10 million viewers worldwide actually good? To use another Damon Lindelof series, Lost, as a comparison, that drew over 18 million viewers in the U.S. alone for its pilot episode on ABC (this was in 2004, long before the days of streaming).
Nielsen has released three weeks of streaming Top 10 charts, and as it counts all episodes of a series together, we get a better idea of Lanterns' performance in North America.
Neither the premiere nor the first and second episodes combined made it into the August 17— 23 and August 31— September 6 charts, and it wasn't until the third chapter dropped that it did finally show up. During those first two week-long periods, Lanterns was viewed less than Modern Family (455 million minutes watched) and then American Dad! (480 million minutes watched).
By week three, Lanterns made it to #8, with 500 million minutes watched. However, to beat NCIS and The First 48, it needed three full episodes and a few hours of episode 4's viewership on the night of September 6.
Despite being #1 on HBO Max, it seems the reality is that, when compared to other every other series out there, Lanterns was unable to outperform the likes of Bluey and SpongeBob SquarePants.
This doesn't necessarily mean Lanterns is a "flop." Creature Commandos never charted on Nielsen, and Peacemaker Season 2 only managed to reach #10 after the finale aired. Lanterns took three episodes and three weeks to chart, which is a solid result, but this does rather put that cumulative 10 million number in context.
Lanterns being on the acquired chart somewhat muddies the water, but it would still end up in a similar spot on the originals chart. As of now, we don't know whether viewership is going up, down or staying the same; there's also nothing to really compare this to, as Disney+, for example, has never shared specific global viewership numbers for its MCU content, meaning Lanterns could be demolishing those shows or falling short.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Lanterns has 93% from critics and 74% from audiences. The DCU series has an overall rating of 7.8/10 on IMDb and a "Generally Favorable" 72 on Metacritic.