Lanterns Works to Shine in Uneven Series Premiere — Review

Critic’s Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

3.5

Superhero shows were a staple of the past.

Viewers — myself included — were obsessed with these characters who can do things that we can’t.

But when you’ve watched some superhero save Earth for the 50th time, it starts to lose its charm.

TV has evolved beyond the noble superhero model, and a show like The Boys succeeded because it offered a different perspective.

Lanterns, HBO‘s new DC series, succeeds because it balances a superhero story that feels human without the savior complex attached.

The pilot episode introduces Hal and John, two intergalactic cops — or at least one of them is — who discover a threat heading for Earth.

As someone with no background information about Lanterns, the concept feels a little silly.

A guy has a ring that emits green light and can conjure up anything. It is also charged using a lantern.

I struggle to understand what exactly happened here and who these people are. It feels like I’ve been dumped straight into the middle of a universe whose rules I don’t understand; a simple 60 Minutes segment doesn’t do the job.

At least with superhero shows of the past such as The Flash, The CW made a point of explaining how Barry Allen got his speed powers.

It repeated it at the beginning of every episode, which became nauseating, but the audience was in on the concept.

So the main struggle for most of the episode is buying into this superhero, a toned-down version of Soldier Boy from The Boys — cynical but with his heart in the right place.

This is one of Lanterns’ secret weapons — the crude superhero.

I don’t think I could stand another one of those who are always on a mission to save Earth, making them seem detached from the very thing they’re coming across as saving.

Hal Jordan is rude, curt, brash, and careless. He’s just a guy who happens to have some special powers but would totally grab a beer with you.

That’s essentially what makes him work, but the genius lies in pairing him with John, who smoothes out the rougher edges of Hal’s character.

The second secret — or not-so-secret — weapon the show has is how human it feels.

Media about aliens often concentrates on the different and the weird, forgetting something very important: the human.

The arrival of aliens would be a perfect opportunity for us to interrogate what it really means to be human.

Lanterns does this by introducing concepts of colonization through the view of a rural American.

It’s an interesting direction that shows the show is willing to wade into political discourse that usually alienates a section of viewers who never like hearing “The Great Unproblematic America” criticized.

Lanterns Season 1 Episode 1 picks up speed in the second half when Hal has his sights on someone who he thinks is an alien, but no one believes him.

Suddenly, everything falls into place.

The mundaneness of how everything is playing out starts to make sense. Instead of tentacles and mind control, Lanterns uses humanity’s uniqueness to separate aliens from us.

There’s the mass shooting without emotion, the rural truck driver with no strong opinions about Barack Hussein Obama in 2016, or the millennial without any knowledge of Harry Potter.

The interrogation scene with Waylon is what sells me on the show, just when I was starting to feel that it was boring.

Hal’s “rude” demeanor becomes a powerful weapon when he calls out Waylon’s surface-level knowledge without missing a beat.

In a lesser show with a nicer main character, Hal would probably leave the interrogation room to inform everyone that he thinks Waylon lied, using some softened language about political opinions.

It helps that Chandler has a strong scene partner in Chris Coy.

He is one of the best character actors I’ve ever seen, and there’s a reason why HBO keeps hiring him.

He can play a scared truck driver in one moment whom you are convinced is just a guy from Kimball, but when the jig is up, the alien goes scorched-earth on humans and delivers a threat that changes everything.

I’m just sad we won’t see Coy in more episodes, but I’ll catch him in the next one.

By the end of the episode, I’m comfortably excited for the next episode and to learn everything there is to know about this ring and its lantern because I’m still not sold on the superhero powers side of things yet.

Gut Check

The premiere tests my patience a bit because it feels like it’s trying to do too much at once. This is a common problem with many pilot episodes where they don’t just let things breathe.

However, it successfully creates a lot of interest in seeing how things play out.

Intrusive Thoughts

• Despite it being messed up in some sense, John’s relationship with his father is a bit sweet.

• Jason Ritter really left the Matlock set, grew a mustache, and got down to business.

• I love the subversion of superhero tropes, but please can we put Aaron Pierre in a tight superhero suit, for science?

• Writers really used to saddle a superhero with a human love interest and call it a day.

• The year 2026 seems to be bringing a subtle Hollywood migration to stories about “America’s heartland.”

• Waylon’s mockery of humanity could not have come at a better time than when I’m struggling to wrap my head around the existence of world hunger and starvation. 

Now’s your turn to chime in. Are you familiar with these characters, or are you as uninitiated as I am? What did you think of the pilot episode?

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

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