Lanterns success on HBO shows the limits of Rotten Tomatoes audience scores
Audience scores are fundamentally broken.
HBO’s Lanterns was a critical hit, and audiences watched the series in record numbers. The DCU show also has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score in the entire burgeoning franchise. That fact illustrates the problems with the Rotten Tomatoes audience score metric in 2026. Too many people can meddle with a title’s score, trying to sabotage a show or movie. Fandom circles have discussed this problem as it has increased in volume since 2020. Lanterns is just the latest example of how the audience score has been devalued because of “review bombing.”
Lanterns sits at 91% on the Tomatometer among critics — a very high score for a comic book adaptation in 2026. The audience score metric, or Popcornmeter, tells another story. The HBO Max series only has a 67% rating among viewers. Rotten Tomatoes isn’t an exact science. Internet commentators have used the tool as a cudgel for a decade or more. Audiences still use Rotten Tomatoes scores for a movie or TV show viewing guide despite those flaws.
Rotten Tomatoes audience score might not be towering for Lanterns. However, the HBO series has raked in viewership. Week-over-week growth can be hard to come by in TV’s streaming era. Lanterns averaged 13.9 million global viewers, and that number is still growing, according to HBO. People kept tuning in, and pushed the finale to an impressive 10.5 million global viewers in its first three days.
Will the Rotten Tomatoes numbers spell doom for Lanterns?
Fans expect HBO to announce Lanterns Season 2. Viewership increased every week; the lingering specter of unhappy fans endures. Lanterns did not follow every scrap of Green Lantern lore to the letter while adapting the property. That fact has some fans lukewarm about the series. Their presence could explain some of the tepid response on review sites like Rotten Tomatoes.
The concept of review bombing emerges in light of these numbers. The third episode of Lanterns focused on John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and his familial upbringing. His mother and themes of systemic racial inequality played a huge role in that chapter of the story. Those themes would linger in Lanterns until the finale. In the Internet climate of 2026, the fact that IMDB lists the third episode of the series plummeting in viewer score raised a lot of eyebrows.
It might not matter with such concrete viewership numbers. HBO could follow up with a quick renewal. Rival studios like Disney and Prime Video usually announce quickly when they smell a hit. Other series are rarely so lucky in the modern TV environment. Early in a show’s run, a coordinated effort like the one that befell Lanterns could sink a show before it finds its footing. For now, it looks like blue skies ahead for Pierre and whatever Lanterns Season 2 would be about.
Unfortunately, the problems that have plagued Rotten Tomatoes audience scores stick around too. Audiences are adjusting to bad actors rendering review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB unreliable for entertainment assessment. Metacritic usage has gone up in the years since 2020. Audience scores there fall victim to similar potholes like the one we found with Lanterns. All of these issues are examples of the turbulent media climate of 2026
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