HBO Max's New #1 Show Officially Proves The Binge Model Is Broken

Published Oct 9, 2026, 12:41 PM EDT Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more. Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics." HBO Max's new reigning most-watched series shows how the popular binge model for streaming shows is actually broken. HBO Max's slate of TV shows makes for one of the very best among all the many streamers. From HBO originals to HBO Max releases, the streamer has projects like House of the Dragon, Hacks, The Last of Us, And Just Like That..., Peacemaker, Task, and many more. That said, HBO Max is not one of the streaming services that goes to the binge release model a lot. Sure, the streamer has released all episodes of some of its shows at once in the past, as was the case for animated series like Close Enough and Infinity Train, but the majority of HBO Max's shows opt for the weekly release format. While the norm for regular TV, streaming services like Netflix have made the binge model the default for the medium in many viewers' minds. Global hits like Stranger Things, Squid Game, Wednesday, You, and many more have adhered to that model and found success. However, if a show does not immediately respond in viewership, its cancellation chances increase, and we know how that goes for Netflix. Higheror Lower? Choose the movie with the higher Rotten Tomatoes score. That is why HBO Max's weekly release format needs to be looked at more carefully by streaming services, and there are many examples that show why that is the case. Chief among them now is HBO Max's new #1 series, DC's Lanterns, which kept growing throughout season 1, teaching a lesson to other streaming shows. Lanterns Became A Huge Hit Through Its Weekly Release & Streamers Should Take Note Lanterns is the latest release in James Gunn's DC Universe, with Clayface soon set to grace the silver screen on October 23. The weekly release format has proved itself the perfect one for Lanterns, allowing it to grow as a global hit. After debuting on August 16, the Lanterns season 1 finale aired on October 4. A few days after this 8-week period to attract as many viewers as possible, Lanterns is still the #1 HBO Max TV show worldwide and in the United States, according to data from FlixPatrol. Would the show have been as successful as a binge? Lanterns had a lot riding on it, as it was the first live-action Green Lantern project since the 2011 movie starring Ryan Reynolds, which did not leave a good impression. As such, from the start, the sci-fi detective series had to go up against the character's live-action baggage. With an intriguing mystery at the center of its story, as Hal Jordan's death was revealed at the end of the Lanterns premiere, the show created a storyline that kept fans invested and coming up with several theories week-to-week. Had Lanterns season 1 been a binge release, talk would have died down sooner. In cold numbers, the Lanterns season 1 premiere amassed 9.3 million viewers worldwide in its first three days, according to official HBO and HBO Max data (via The Hollywood Reporter). As per Deadline, the Lanterns season 1 finale rose to 10.5 million viewers globally in its first three days, the best total for the series in that timeframe. Not only that, but Lanterns' earlier episodes have continued to grow in viewership, with HBO confirming that the Lanterns premiere is now getting close to the tall mark of 30 million global viewers. Lanterns dominated social media for eight weeks with memes, theories, and debates that made it more popular. Had the new DC series released all of its episodes at once on HBO Max, it might have met the same fate as Nicolas Cage's Spider-Noir. That Sony Marvel series on Prime Video became an instant global hit with a near-perfect 92% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and a stellar 90% audience score. However, Spider-Noir was canceled after a single season, with Deadline noting that it did not have the staying power of Prime Video shows like Off Campus and Reacher, something that Lanterns has shown it has on HBO Max, with season 2 in early development. As such, Lanterns shows how the binge model might be broken. Release Date August 16, 2026 Network HBO Showrunner Chris Mundy Cast Aaron Pierre John Stewart Directors Alik Sakharov, James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Patel Writers Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson Franchise(s) DC Universe Creator(s) Tom King, Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof