Lightning strikes on DC transmission lines can easily cause a malfunction in main protection with high sensitivity such as traveling wave protection. Before the main protection is activated, a reliable distinction between lightning interference and short circuit failure will effectively improve the security of main protection and guarantee the security and stability of DC systems. However, for the VSC-HVDC, the existing lightning interference identification scheme is inadequate in terms of speed, and finds it difficult to recognize the lightning strike/fault before the main protection activates. Also the action performance under the random interference such as sampling abnormality needs to be improved. To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a novel lightning interference identification criterion acting with high speed and safety. First, this paper reveals the characteristics of the reverse line mode traveling wave, according to the characteristics mentioned, and proposes a relative change rate of wavelet entropy criterion and fit coefficient criterion based on linear fixed function. These changes collaborate to deal with different lightning strikes and faults in the field of lightning strike non-fault scenes and the lock of the main protection. They thereby effectively enhance the security of primary protection. Based on simulation in PSCAD/EMTDC, the method can identify lightning interference in 1 ms within all the lines, and is provided with good anti-bad data interference ability. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51907069).