I think we can all agree that Green Lantern deserved another shot at live action. The last time DC tried, we got the 2011 Ryan Reynolds movie, perhaps best remembered for its CGI costume and Reynolds making fun of it ever since. 15 years later, DC Studios has decided to try again, trading the cosmic spectacle of the Green Lantern Corps for an HBO murder mystery in small–town Nebraska. What could go wrong? Quite a bit, apparently.
The premise of Lanterns is promising: Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), a veteran Green Lantern, investigates mysterious occurrences in Rushville, Nebraska, alongside John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), a younger man raised specifically to replace him. Their investigation leads to a Manhunter—a shapeshifting alien hiding among the townspeople—and a grander extraterrestrial conspiracy.
And for just one episode, Lanterns is fantastic. The pilot establishes compelling mysteries and a fascinating relationship between its leads. Chandler and Pierre have great chemistry, and the familiar veteran–and–rookie dynamic gains an intriguing complication: What happens when someone raised to replace a hero finally meets him?
It’s essentially a perfect pilot. Unfortunately, no subsequent episode ever comes close.
Lanterns’ most persistent problem is its extraordinary talent for telling us things its events don’t support. For example, characters repeatedly insist that Hal is a terrible person. The Guardians want him replaced, Rushville despises him, and his funeral is a joke because nobody attends. He even serves ten years in prison for reckless endangerment. But what exactly has he done wrong? When the devastating battle of Rushville plays out, Hal spends the battle creating shields and pulling people from the wreckage while the Manhunter fires space lasers, destroying the town and slaughtering innocents. He’s the only person onscreen trying to save lives. Not to mention that the town was already marked for destruction before he arrived, threatened by another group of aliens with a 48–hour ultimatum, so Hal can hardly be blamed for bringing disaster to Rushville.
Now, I can believe that a traumatized community would irrationally blame someone, but Lanterns treats Hal’s culpability as settled fact, despite repeatedly showing us the opposite. It’s especially upsetting considering just how charming Chandler is as Hal. He’s funny, self–assured, occasionally ridiculous, and endlessly likable. His smile, reactions, and effortless banter make him someone I’d happily watch do just about anything. More importantly, his actions consistently demonstrate genuine concern for others. He wants to apprehend the Manhunter rather than execute it, protect love interest Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) and her Manhunter son, Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard), and prioritizes saving civilians during Rushville’s destruction.
I kept waiting to understand why everyone hated him. I never did. And that’s a serious problem when the show’s supposed hero is John.
There is a fantastic idea at the center of John’s characterization. His entire upbringing has been devoted to replacing an established superhero, a psychological foundation I’ve never seen elsewhere. The designs imposed on him by his parents—particularly his mother—are genuinely horrifying. It’s an unsettling, compelling story about someone distinguishing his own desire to do good from the standards imposed on him.
The show expects us to celebrate John’s ascension even as his actions become increasingly difficult to defend. He resents Hal, repeatedly assaults him, eventually desecrates his grave to retrieve the ring, and waterboards Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) for information. Yet none of these actions receive the moral scrutiny they deserve.
Most egregiously, while Hal rushes to recharge his ring during Rushville’s climactic battle to save civilians, John attacks him and steals it—then simply snipes the Manhunter. In a season about why John deserves this extraordinary power, his defining act isn’t saving the people Hal was protecting, but violently taking the power from the person protecting them.
I actually had the opportunity to ask Lanterns co–creator, writer, and executive producer Tom King about this at New York Comic Con:
“Do you think that while John was taking the ring from Hal during the battle of Rushville, civilians were dying in the background offscreen?”
King thought about it for a moment. “Yes,” he replied. That response confirmed my biggest frustration—not only did the writers fail to consider the implications of their characters’ actions, but Lanterns treats this as a triumphant moment in John’s journey toward becoming a hero.
It doesn’t stop there. It’s revealed that Hal was murdered by his girlfriend, sheriff Kerry, who shoots him in the head while he describes how he loves her and just wants to protect her family. And guess what? John simply lets her go, because apparently holding her accountable “isn’t what Hal would have wanted.” Personally, I don’t consider covering up the murder of an innocent man particularly righteous. Even if Kerry must live with her guilt, she could (and should) certainly do that from prison.
The show also expects us to sympathize with the Manhunters—beings described as genocidal monsters responsible for unimaginable destruction—because they have families and occasional emotions. Humanizing villains is perfectly fine, but being nice to your football teammates doesn’t erase the fact that you broke one of the galaxy’s most dangerous criminals out of prison. From John’s mother to the Manhunters, Lanterns mistakes sympathetic motivations for justified actions, while condemning Hal despite his demonstrably heroic behavior.
I also want to absolve Pierre—he is not the problem. He’s a compelling performer, especially opposite Chandler, but he’s left playing an apathetic, power–hungry opportunist instead of a young man becoming worthy of extraordinary responsibility.
The telling–not–showing doesn’t end there. We’re told a squad of alien warriors are supposedly experienced in fighting Manhunters across the galaxy, but they rely on ordinary assault rifles and unsuccessful suicide bombing. We’re told Noah breaks Sinestro out of the most secure prison in the galaxy, but never shown any technology or abilities that would allow such a thing. We’re told about the Manhunters’ horrific crimes, but never see one. We’re told the Guardians want John to replace Hal, but never shown why.
And briefly, this is supposed to be a Green Lantern show, but one could be fooled otherwise. Every alien can conveniently disguise as a human, a costume is worn in one singular scene, and the ring is always out of power. Seriously, there are more Green Lantern constructs in one scene of Superman than in this entire series. Lanterns takes a superhero whose only limit is his imagination and somehow makes a show with remarkably little of it.
On the ring, we’re told it’s one of the most powerful weapons in the universe (despite it always running on fumes). But when Hal wants to charge into the Manhunter’s compound, John warns him about four sniper towers and advises to sneak in instead. Are we serious? In just the previous episode, Hal swooped into a situation, captured a dangerous target, and demolished his compound. In the following episode, his shields withstand enormous space lasers. Yet four human snipers are a threat? The writers are simultaneously showing the ring as weak, telling us it’s strong, and contradicting themselves from one episode to the next.
This matters because the entire series hinges on our understanding of who deserves to wield that power. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a storyline where Hal dies and John replaces him; adaptations should be free to change their source material when those changes serve the narrative. But imagine if John initially admired Hal, gradually discovered his mentor had become careless, and ultimately had to take the ring because Hal refused to protect civilians. Suddenly, John’s decision would be heroic, Hal’s downfall tragic, and their conflict morally coherent. Instead, the series gives Hal the heroic behavior, gives John the ring, and asks us to celebrate the succession anyway.
Lanterns isn’t deliberately telling a villain’s origin story, though it might have been more interesting if it had tried. The writers seem convinced they’re portraying a young man overcoming his upbringing and becoming worthy of extraordinary responsibility, but the actions they actually put onscreen tell us something else entirely.
What’s most appalling is that the series treats its ending as a victory. John’s mother, whose obsession with raising the next Green Lantern has caused him so much harm, gets everything she ever wanted. John embraces her, claims the ring, and fulfills this destiny. Meanwhile, Hal—the man who spent his life saving people—rots in the ground, his reputation destroyed, his funeral unattended, and his murderer walking free. That is unequivocally not a happy ending. It’s unjust. And the fact that Lanterns apparently can’t tell the difference is deeply upsetting.
I hoped DC would finally give Green Lantern the live–action treatment he deserved. Instead, I watched its most likeable character get shot in the head, its supposed hero make indefensible decisions, all while insisting I had witnessed a heroic passing of the torch.
If this is John’s heroic origin story, I’d hate to see what he does as a villain.
