As someone who’s been a Green Lantern fan for over 15 years and was incredibly let down by the Green Lantern movie, I’ve been intrigued by the upcoming DC TV show Lanterns, which will delve into the Green Lantern mythology in the DC Universe franchise. Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre will respectively star as Hal Jordan and John Stewart, but every casting that’s been announced since then as concerned brand-new characters. That is, until today, as it’s been revealed that Lanterns has cast its Sinestro, and I’m excited to see this baddie antagonize Hal and John in the DC Universe.
Ulrich Thomsen from The Blacklist and Counterpart has been selected to play Thaal Sinestro in Lanterns, per Deadline. Thomsen will be the second actor to play Sinestro in live-action, following Mark Strong in 2011’s Green Lantern. Similar to his comic book counterpart, Thomsen’s Sinestro is described as “ruthless yet undeniably charming,” and his “manipulative nature drives his enduring obsession with his former mentee, Hal Jordan.”
Introduced in 1961’s Green Lantern #7, Sinestro was once a member of the Green Lantern Corps who trained Hal Jordan how to wield the emerald light of willpower. However, because he used his power to instill fear, which included ruling his homeworld Korugar as a dictator, he was kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps and banished to the antimatter universe, but he would eventually return wielding the yellow light of fear. He would later create the Sinestro Corps so that Yellow Lanterns could instill fear across the universe.
Because the Green Lantern movie depicted the origin story of Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordan, Mark Strong’s Sinestro spent nearly all of his screen time as a Green Lantern Corps member, though the mid-credits scene did show him putting on his yellow ring for the first time. Alas, since Green Lantern 2 never happened, we’ll never follow up with that moment. In contrast, given that Lanterns will see Kyle Chandler playing Hal as an experienced and grizzled Green Lantern veteran, I’m hoping this means that Ulrich Thomsen’s Sinestro has been wearing his yellow ring for a long time.
Beyond that, I’ll be curious to see if Sinestro will serve as Lanterns’ main villain or if he’s causing trouble on the side and not tied to the show’s greater threat. Either way, I’m excited to see Thomsen’s Sinestro make life hell for Chandler’s Hal and Pierre’s John, as I would expect nothing less from the character. Although, now that I think about it, I suppose there’s also the chance that circumstances could necessitate Sinestro eventually needing to work with those two if there’s a sinister force bad enough that requires his “obsession” and grudge to be put aside. It’d be an ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ sort of thing.
Lanterns doesn’t have an announced release date yet, but it’s expected to arrive somewhere around the same time as Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which comes out on June 26, 2026. After first airing on HBO, episodes will be available to stream with a Max subscription.
