Lanterns is such a weird show both tonally and in terms of story. We’re five episodes in and I just can’t connect with this narrative or its heroes in any meaningful way. Spoilers ahead.
I don’t blame the actors for any of this. Kyle Chandler is the breakout star here as the much-maligned Hal Jordan, Earth’s one and only Green Lantern. Aaron Pierre does a solid job as his stoic counterpart, and the rest of the supporting cast, from Poorna Jagannathan to Kelly Macdonald to Garret Dillahunt and the rest.
There’s just something off about this show. It’s hard for me to get invested in the mystery. Zoe being the Manhunter was incredibly obvious. What’s less obvious is why everyone hates Hal Jordan. I can accept that the Guardians’ motives are part of a larger mystery, but what’s up with John Stewart and his deeply troubled parents? Why are they so certain that he doesn’t deserve the ring?
In the end, when John takes the ring from Hal, leaving him beaten in the motel, he goes to Laura Linney’s Guardian and tells her that Hal did everything in his power to keep the ring, including betraying himself and his oath, and he probably doesn’t even know why he wants it anymore. Then John places the ring on the counter and says he doesn’t know why he wants it anymore, either. He just felt empty taking it from Hal.
I’m confused. First of all, how exactly did Hal betray everything he believed in to keep the ring? I’m pretty sure the only oath he broke was going to talk with Sinestro, which was an attempt to find out more about the Manhunter – aka, just doing his job. At this point in the story, all I see is Hal getting screwed over by everyone and reacting accordingly. John feels “empty” because he stole the ring, which wasn’t his to take. As Hal points out, “it chose me!”
Episode after episode, the show keeps telling me that these relationships and conflicts are emotionally significant without doing the work to make them feel significant. What ought to have been an emotionally devastating episode ultimately fell flat.
John’s deep resentment and anger toward Hal simply don’t add up, and the entire confrontation in this episode felt so contrived. Sure, John should be mad at Hal for leaping out of the car and (accidentally) leaving him to burn to death. I’m sure he would have pulled him out if he’d been there when it caught on fire.
Naturally, Zoe, aka the Manhunter, lets John burn so that she can make a deal with him. She’ll heal his charred body and take the ring after Hal is dead, and all he has to do is lie to the Guardians and say the Manhunter is dead. Of course, we know Hal won’t die because we already know he dies in the 2026 timeline, so that kills some of the tension.
The rest of the episode is an elaborate showdown. Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor of The Wire) and his alien assassins attack and strike an uneasy truce with Hal, who lies about Macon being the Manhunter to buy himself time to capture Zoe so he can take her to the Guardians. He also tells John that Lanterns don’t kill. The plan is to capture and deliver, though he can’t promise what the Guardians will do to Zoe once they have her. Macon, meanwhile, has learned the language of the alien people hunting Zoe and pretends to be the Manhunter.
We get a couple funny moments as Antaan reveals that the Manhunter would have “coitus” with the most powerful person to help gain their trust and loyalty. Does that mean William Macon had relations with John Stewart? Antaan wants to know. Hal, not wanting to admit that John is more powerful, claims that it was he, in fact, who had coitus with Will Macon. “I always saw you as heterosexual presenting,” Antaan replies. “When you’ve seen as much of the universe as I have,” Hal replies, “It’s less about preference and more about opportunity.” This show has its moments. It’s just too bad they’re almost all Hal’s lines.
The aliens attack Macon and Antaan questions him before killing him and ripping his heart out to see if it crystallizes. He then heads toward where Hal is trying to get away with Zoe in a helicopter to suicide bomb them, but Hal whips up a Green Lantern tornado in the nick of time. Much fighting and chaos ensues and Zoe gets away when they topple a tower filled with darkness.
Hal heads back to the motel to charge his ring (they really run out of juice fast!) and here he and John get in their big fight. John is very, very angry at Hal, which I could understand if it were just over the car incident, but this is clearly something that runs much deeper. Hal, on the other hand, continues to point out that the ring chose him, the Guardians are manipulative and if they can take it from him, they can do the same shady crap to John.
The only good part of this was John faking Zoe out. He left Hal and the destruction as bait, and when she’s there, feeling smug and victorious, we cut to John with his sniper rifle (I guess he got it, after all?) and he pops her right between the eyes.
John actually didn’t take the ring when he beat up Hal and set up the trap for Zoe, so he comes back to the motel and takes the ring after she’s dead. He takes the lantern charging station and Zoe’s heart, and heads through town. A bunch of militia guys surround him but none of them open fire and Kerry Kane, the sheriff, breaks it all up. He meets the Guardian after and gives back the ring which, I suppose, could be how it goes to Guy Gardner next, though based on Hal’s death scene in the pilot, maybe he gets it back after all of this . . . ? I’m not sure.
I completely skipped the opening of this episode, as I wanted to dive right into all the stuff that I found so confusing and baffling about the character dynamics. The episode opens many years earlier when Kerry Kane first arrives in Rushville in a broken-down car, pursued by two Gotham hitmen. She’s saved by Zoe who kills one of the hitmen and sends the other back with Kerry’s pinky to prove she’s dead. She then enlists Kerry’s help, telling her that someday men will come to take her. Kerry now owes her one, so she’s bound to her the same way Will Macon is, though not as devotedly (for her it’s more of a show, and she warns Hal later that his presence in Rushville will make Zoe become a remorseless enemy, killing civilians to draw Hal out if she has to, which suggests Kerry has seen more sides of the Manhunter than we have).
I really like Kelly Macdonald but she is the least Gotham character I’ve ever seen, and having “young Kerry” look a little more goth with piercings and a different hairdo doesn’t change the fact that she acts like someone who just stepped off the set of Fargo. It’s little details like this, and just the weirdly disjointed storylines, that leave me so cold. The Will Macon / Zoe romance, for instance, is so underdeveloped. He gives his life for her, thanking her for the extra time, but the show barely explores their lives together.
This show has so many moving pieces but nothing connects them or grounds them or weaves them together into a cohesive story. It’s very strange. A lot of people respond to my critiques with dismissive stuff like “You just want more action” or “It’s a deep show and you clearly don’t like deep shows” but this was an action-packed episode and I still felt kind of bored. I’m not sure what’s deep about it and so far nobody has explained it to me, either. I’m just perplexed. And unimpressed. Three episodes left, and I still don’t care what happens.
All the relationships and plot threads leave me unsatisfied. Will/Zoe supposedly have this profound relationship, but we barely get to know it; Kerry owes Zoe her life, but almost all of that relationship’s emotional weight is dumped into a single flashback; John’s troubled relationship with his parents is clearly supposed to explain something fundamental about him, but we don’t really know what; the Guardians’ hostility toward Hal is supposed to feel ominous, but because their motives remain opaque it often just feels arbitrary. These are all potentially good ideas individually but the show keeps failing to weave them together. The spaces between these ideas keep getting filled by elaborate and often compelling fan theories, many of which I’ve enjoyed more than the show itself. Not a good sign.
All the action in the world won’t help if there’s nobody to root for, and right now I’m mostly rooting for each episode to end. After all, the only character I really like in this show already has his fate sealed.
Watch my Episode 5 video review – or rant, as it were – below:
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