Lanterns - Season 1, Episode 1, "Pilot" - Review & Recap

⚠️ Spoiler Alert: This review may contains spoilers. ⚠️

I went into HBO's Lanterns wanting to like it. Green Lantern is a corner of the DC Universe that has so much potential, and putting Hal Jordan and John Stewart at the center of a grounded mystery sounded like a great way to approach the material.

Let me start with Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan. I loved it when it was announced! I love seeing Chandler take on the ring in this episode. I'm stoked to see how he develops the character more. This is not young Hal learning to use a powerful ring, this is an aged version who has little patience for anything that gets in his way.

Next up, John Stewart played by Aaron Pierre (Krypron, The Morning Show). I didn't really have any opinions on his casting when first announced, other than using John Stewart and Hal Jordan at the same time was an interesting choice. After this first episode, I think he's a great actor to depict this version of the Green Lantern.

Unfortunately, the premiere almost lost me right out of the gate.

The opening flashback to 1996 worked for me. I liked the atmosphere, the mystery, and especially the first interview with Hal Jordan. It immediately felt like we were being dropped into something bigger without being told exactly what was going on.

Then we get the scene designed to establish that John Stewart is brave.

And I'm sorry, but I thought it was silly.

I understand exactly what the show was trying to accomplish. We're meeting John Stewart, and we need to quickly understand the kind of person he is. He's courageous. He's willing to put himself in danger. He's going to do the right thing when everyone else might hesitate.

That's all important.

But the execution didn't work for me at all.

And because it happens so early in the premiere, it immediately put me into a negative mindset. Instead of getting sucked into this world, I found myself questioning the storytelling choices. That's not where you want me to be five minutes into your first episode.

Then we jump ahead to 2016.

I'll admit that I wasn't thrilled with the early relationship between Hal and John, either. Again, I understand what they're doing. Hal doesn't want John there. The Guardians of the Universe want John there. So Hal is basically stuck with a partner he didn't ask for.

That's a perfectly reasonable setup.

I just didn't particularly enjoy watching it at first. It felt like the tension was forced. Hal's hostility toward John felt like another obstacle I needed to get through before we could actually get to the story I wanted to see.

Thankfully, once Lanterns answers the warning, "there's hail in Rushville, Nebraska," which we find was a warning sent by way of a hologram Hal (back up consciousness), the episode finally starts clicking. This is where the premiere won me back.

Once Hal and John actually start investigating the incident in Nebraska, Lanterns becomes a much more interesting show. The supporting characters begin entering the picture, the mystery starts developing, and suddenly I'm not thinking about the things that bothered me earlier. Ironically, this also sets up a world where it's less superhero and more detective.

It also helps that this supporting cast is fantastic.

Jason Ritter has always been one of my favorite actors. Yes, you can make all the famous-family and nepotism jokes you want. I don't care. I remember enjoying him all the way back in Freddy vs. Jason, and I've liked watching him ever since.

Then there's Garret Dillahunt. Dillahunt is one of those actors who instantly makes something better for me. I first really remember noticing him in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and then I absolutely loved his comedic turn in Raising Hope. He's become one of those actors where I'm happy whenever I see his name pop up in something. I also recently discovered he's a legitimate nerd who started reading and collecting comics back in the 1970s. That just makes me like the guy even more.

Two others were also standouts: Kelly Macdonald as local Sheriff Kerry Kane and Poorna Jagannathan as Zoe Macon. Both add another layer to the mystery and help make this small Nebraska community feel like something more than just the location where our Green Lanterns happen to be investigating.

Chris Coy's Waylon Sanders also deserves some credit in his limited appearance. Sanders is the center piece to everything that happened in Nebraska, but local law enforcement and the Lanterns disagree on what he is and how to proceed with the investigation. Not surprisingly, Hal wins out, while John watches from the sidelines. But as things unravel, it's not obvious who is in control because Sanders does an amazing job antagonizing Hal. More importantly, those interactions begin revealing something about Hal Jordan that I think could become one of the most fascinating parts of Lanterns. This is a guy who has been incredibly powerful for a very long time. And it shows.

Hal is arrogant. He's emotional. He's impatient. He's accustomed to being able to take control of a situation, and he doesn't handle it particularly well when someone pushes back. When Hal finally loses control, there are consequences.

The explosion, and Hal's ability to contain it, gives us a glimpse of just how powerful he is, but it's the reason the situation escalates in the first place that interests me more. We're not simply watching the experienced Green Lantern teaching the rookie how everything works. We're watching a guy whose power may have allowed some of his worst personality traits to grow unchecked. Remember Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner in Superman?

That gives John Stewart's presence much more purpose than I initially thought it had.

After the Hal instigated explosion in Nebraska, Lanterns jumps forward again, this time to 2026.

I'm still not sure how I feel about all the time jumping.

On one hand, it works. It allows the writers to move all these different pieces around the board without spending multiple episodes slowly getting everyone into position. We get to see how events from the past affected these characters and how those consequences eventually lead us to where they are today.

On the other hand, we're already dealing with a complicated mystery. Constantly jumping between different periods adds another layer of confusion to a story that is intentionally withholding information from us. That's where Lanterns occasionally crosses the line from "intriguing mystery" into "Okay, what exactly am I supposed to understand right now?" The ending certainly gives us plenty to think about and sets up a lot for the rest of the season.

Maybe too much.

I don't know that the premiere ever gives us enough time to breathe and digest everything we've just learned before throwing another piece of information at us.

And that brings me to Damon Lindelof.

I have a love/hate relationship with Damon Lindelof.

Prometheus. Watchmen (2019). Best examples I can think of in regard to the highs and lows that Lindelof has bee associated with, respectively. If you're familiar with his work, you probably know what you're getting yourself into, which is why I don't hand over my trust to him telling a story completely.

Watching the Lanterns premiere, I couldn't shake the feeling that this is a show designed to be watched more than once. There are moments that feel like they're probably going to mean something completely different once we know the entire story.

That's cool.

Sometimes.

But it's also a little annoying.

Maybe Lanterns will work much better as a binge once the entire season is available. Maybe we'll finish the finale, immediately go back to Episode 1, and suddenly notice 50 things that were sitting right in front of us the entire time.

I can appreciate that kind of storytelling.

But sometimes I'm just a normal nerd who wants to sit down, watch an episode of television, and enjoy a good story developing in front of me.

I don't necessarily want homework.

Lanterns is a very mixed bag for me after this first episode.

There are things I didn't like. The early attempt to establish John Stewart's bravery felt silly and immediately got the premiere off on the wrong foot for me. I wasn't crazy about the initial Hal/John dynamic, and the multiple time jumps occasionally make an already complicated mystery harder to follow than it needs to be. I'm also not enamored with this version of Hal Jordan. He's not goofy arrogant as Fillion's Guy Gardner, but he's definitely the cynical version of Jordan that has seen years of bad shit.

But here's the most important part. By the end, I wanted to watch episode 2!

Once Lanterns gets to Nebraska and embraces the investigative side of the story, it becomes considerably more interesting. The supporting cast is excellent, the central mystery has my attention, and I'm especially intrigued by this version of Hal Jordan, a tremendously powerful man whose arrogance and emotions might be just as dangerous as whatever he's investigating. I also really enjoyed the lack of a typical superheo origin story. Instead we just get a chat at a bar. And finally, I enjoyed how the Lanterns used the ring, including with humor (dollar bill for a jukebox), lack of experience (bubble wrap in car crash), and of course necessaity to save the day (bubble to contain bomb explosion).

I started the episode worried that I wasn't going to like Lanterns. I ended it frustrated, intrigued, confused, and wanting to know what happens next.

For a mystery series, maybe that's exactly where they wanted me.

I just hope future episodes give us a little more time to enjoy the ride instead of making me feel like I need a corkboard, a box of thumbtacks, and 300 feet of red string just to keep up.

Check out the trailer for Lanterns:

https://youtu.be/4trSu7ji0oU?si=Rf178qMA1Z6c4gQd