Lanterns Season 1 Episode 5 Pops Off, and It Is Glorious — Review

Lanterns has not positioned itself as your typical superhero show.

No archenemy, no weird power glitches, and no over-the-top superheroing.

But it is still a superhero show, and we watch them for the spectacle.

In Lanterns Season 1 Episode 5, “Lights Out,” the wheels fall off, chaos descends, and the future seems uncertain.

The hour features a blowout in multiple senses of the word. After keeping their cold war in the dark, Hal and John finally let their real feelings for each other be known. 

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Hal struck first in Lanterns Season 1 Episode 4 by crashing John’s rental and leaving him to die, but now the trainee gets his moment.

Their relationship is at the core of this story, exploring how power corrupts and changes people.

Since he became the lantern, Hal has built his entire identity around it. He knows nothing apart from that ring.

It’s impossible to tell who he was before everything happened, and he’s just holding on because that’s the only thing he knows how to do.

John thought it was a position of glamour to wield that much power, and he had been positioned to take it since he was a child.

But they never told him what to do with it, and if becoming Hal is what awaits him, then he doesn’t want it.

This is where John deserves a lot of credit because I had dismissed him as a baby in a grown man’s body in Lanterns Season 1 Episode 3.

But here, he challenges all these notions by displaying a kind of independence and impartiality that I never thought he was capable of.

Most superheroes have a clear-cut case of a bad guy that needs taking out, and the audience is usually on their side, but this was a murky affair, if I’ve ever seen one.

John has some respect for Hal, even if they are competitors in some sense; he’s seen the humanity in Zoe; his parents are always screaming in the background; and the guardians are not to be trusted.

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He makes the right choice at every turn, and I just don’t think many people could have done what he does in this episode.

I kept thinking, “oh he’s not about to do that,” and then he goes and does it.

Part of it is because television has conditioned me to expect certain outcomes, since that’s how the story keeps moving.

But John seems like he’s burned down everything, and I don’t know where we go from here. It’s a bit unsettling, but also quite exciting.

The picture is now clear: the guardians are the bad guys; they’ve always been.

And we’ve seen this thing play out in the real world.

Law enforcement is tasked with protecting people from really depraved entities, so they created more depraved entities to avoid dealing with moral and legal questions that arise.

But then those depraved entities — think police task forces or hit squads — become uncontrollable, and now another depraved entity is created. It is a never-ending cycle that John aims to end.

And I love that very much.

The prospect of one man going against a powerful force like the guardians is more exciting than the chaos that reigns in this episode.

Based on Lianna’s reaction to John deciding the ring is not worth it, they won’t take kindly to that.

Some things still don’t make sense, and I hope that’s where Lanterns Season 1 goes from there.

One of them is why the ring chooses someone. It seems like that’s the only bottleneck in whatever plan the Guardians have in motion.

The level of patience they display, from when John was a child to now, isn’t something anyone exercises freely.

Also, I have a feeling that the manhunter business is far from over. Something about Noah’s place in the narrative feels unsettling, and I think it will have huge consequences.

But that’s a story for another episode. 

Gut Check

“Lights Out” delivers more than a study of what it means to wield a lot of power without understanding it. It also delivers on pure brainless entertainment as the manhunter fiasco comes to a head.

It is anchored by excellent performances from Aaron Pierre, Kelly McDonald, and Poorna Jagannathan.

I still don’t understand how the ring and the lanterns work, but I will always be for a storyline where things are blowing up.

The episode also features a favorite part of Lanterns for me, as the show explores race through the eyes of aliens.

I disagree with Zoe that race is an adversity people should overcome. Sure, it might give someone a unique perspective, but I don’t think it justifies the suffering. There are other ways to gain an advantage, and racism is simply not one.

It’s like when slavery apologists say the practice was good because it had some benefit or another, when even that benefit, like religion, does not stand up to scrutiny.

Overall, the episode feels like a reset, even though the war is far from over, and I’m so ready for that.

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Intrusive Thoughts

• “John had a little coitus, but candidly? Well, I was Macon’s main target.” A narcissistic straight man’s ego knows no bounds.

• “When you experience the pleasures of the galaxy as much as we have, it’s less about preference and more about opportunity” is a statement that should come from an intergalactic rapist.

• Something about hearing humans beep is so funny to me; like, are you fucking beeping?

Over to you, Lanterns fanatics. What did you think of this explosive hour? Can the show maintain its momentum after these events?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.

Say something in the comments, share if you like, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.

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