Lanterns
Pilot
Season 1Episode 1
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
HBO’s latest DC series wastes no time dropping the Green Lanterns into a small-town mystery with world-altering stakes.
Photo: John Johnson/HBO
To say that Lanterns is True Detective by way of DC kind of gives the game away, but it really is the best way to describe a mystery two-hander of clashing superhero leads, whip-smart dialogue, and gradual reveals unfurled by a carefully moving camera. The second-best way is as a western noir, but the third way is as a spiritual cousin to HBO’s Watchmen series, whose showrunner, Damon Lindelof, created Lanterns and serves as a writer on its first episode alongside co-creators Chris Mundy (fittingly, of True Detective) and comic writer Tom King. It’s refreshing to watch a comic-book show that dives headfirst into its mythology — rather than a season-long buildup to a costume change. Granted, save for one image on a TV screen, no one wears a Green Lantern mask or outfit in the Lanterns pilot, but the wheels of its story have been in motion for decades by the time its premise unfolds.
The result is a gritty saga that, although it starts off somewhat grounded, sets the stage for a cosmic mystery through entertaining twists and turns and has a gruff texture that isn’t limited to its heroes’ frequent F-bombs. It begins in 1996, with a young John Stewart — a future Green Lantern in various popular comics — watching Earth’s first Lantern, the brash, charismatic Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), reveal himself to the public on 60 Minutes after a decade of superheroism. The mysteries begin to mount practically from minute one, when John’s father returns home in his army uniform and tests John’s mettle by shooting an apple off his head with a handgun. The young tyke repeats Hal’s “no fear” credo from the television and embraces his father, who, it appears, has a greater purpose for him in mind.
First things first: Is John’s father training him, from a young age, to be a Green Lantern? It would be an ambitious plan, given Lanterns are a designation granted by alien beings. Before we have the time to ponder this, the image dissolves to an adult John (Aaron Pierre), a military sniper, training at a boxing gym in 2016, where he’s picked up by none other than an aged, trash-talking Hal. Whatever happened in the intervening 20 years has led to Hal’s “big, blue” alien bosses picking John as a potential successor, even though no galactic sector (Earth is designated No. 2814) has two Lanterns at a time.
In the few months that Hal has, seemingly reluctantly, trained his driven new protégé, he hasn’t once let him try on the ring that gives him his powers of flight and construct creation. In fact, it seems like Hal, a former hotshot pilot, is trying his best to get on John’s nerves, but the steely youngster keeps responding with a patient “Yes, sir.” That is until Hal props his supernatural trinket on the dash before tumbling out of his car on a hillside, forcing John to grab it and save himself as he plummets to possible death. It’s a test, of course, and John thankfully passes, but it leaves him peeved enough to call his dad and explain the situation, as though he were updating a commanding officer.
It’s also here that we get the series’ first big twist on the comic mythos. As John walks several miles to catch up to Hal (who takes pictures with adoring fans at a taco stand), a holographic construct of a younger Hal emerges from the ring and briefly interacts with John. In the comics, a Lantern’s ring has several powers in the ballpark of creating physical objects out of light and pure will, but none of them to date — save for John, in one specific story — have been able to store someone’s consciousness. In the show, this appears to be a routine part of their function. The hologram (or “Halogram,” as John later calls it) reveals the protocol therein: Hal is meant to have uploaded a copy of himself like a diary every week, but he hasn’t done so in about a decade.
The Halogram also has a message for the real Hal, based on news from nearby: “There’s hail in Rushville, Nebraska.” Upon receiving the coded news, the real Hal grabs the ring and urgently flies off to the designated destination. John, amusingly, stands in a TSA line to board a flight so he can follow. But what exactly awaits them in Nebraska that has made Earth’s cockiest hero suddenly give a damn? Well, that’s the episode’s larger mystery, and while we’re no closer to solving it by the end, it’s more than compelling enough to engender curiosity.
Upon arriving in the rural town of Rushville, John catches up to Hal only to find him waiting quietly in the bleachers of a college football field, as local sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) investigates an apparent mass shooting of rival fans. However, something doesn’t add up, and much like Will Smith uncovering a physics-loving little girl as a secret threat in Men in Black, Hal begins laying out various clues to support his conclusion: that the people killed weren’t people at all, but extraterrestrials.
Kerry understandably plays the jurisdiction card — this isn’t the last time it comes up — but as the surviving suspect flees the scene, John gives chase and helps the cops capture him, only for Hal to concoct a hilarious, harebrained ploy to get some face time with the possible perp. At a local sports bar, he plays an annoying song on the jukebox ad nauseam in the hopes of someone attacking him so he can be arrested for the night and jailed alongside the aforementioned figure. As the song repeats and repeats, he and John have a much-needed sit-down that involves Hal explaining not only how he first got the ring — it chose him when the alien Lantern Abin Sur crash-landed nearby and died — but also his theory that a supposedly “backwater” planet like Earth (specifically, small-town Nebraska) likely wasn’t the venue of a random accident but rather something intentional yet to be discovered.
Comic readers (or anyone who’s seen the terrible Ryan Reynolds film) will be familiar enough with Abin Sur and the Lanterns’ method of succession, and while newcomers might be left a little adrift, the dialogue is snappy and florid enough to conjure colorful images, even if the show doesn’t present them just yet. Hal is arrested, per his plan, as John meets and sleeps with a mysterious woman, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan), and uses Hal’s ring to light her cigarette after the fact. Hubba hubba.
Zoe’s introduction is also step one of a pretty funny set of small-town reveals, the next of which is the defense attorney who comes to Hal’s aid in court the next morning, Billy Macon (Jason Ritter). Billy, it turns out, is Kerry’s husband, and his father William Macon (Garret Dillahunt) has offered to bail Hal out in exchange for dinner with the celebrity hero. However, upon arriving at the sprawling Macon compound — funded by William’s secret benefactor — Hal and John discover a militia in training, but they enjoy their meal and company nonetheless. It’s here that John learns that Zoe happens to be William’s wife — it’s a small town; everyone is connected — but despite a knowing side-eye from William, the mysterious cowboy offers to pressure Kerry into letting Hal interrogate the subject after all.
William has a “mutual interest” with Hal, or so he claims, in the form of wanting to protect his home from aliens at all costs. It’s wrapped in nativist, xenophobic sentiment, but it does in fact align with Hal trying to learn more about why Rushville might be the center of alien activity and how this might be related to his own origins as a Lantern. When he finally sits down with the aforementioned suspect, Waylon Sanders (Chris Coy), he gets a straightforward backstory about Waylon’s trucking and love of football. It’s clear as day to John and Kerry outside the interrogation room that he’s no extraterrestrial — that is, until Hal gets around his rehearsed answers and opts for a more general quiz.
That Waylon is unfamiliar with Harry Potter is odd, but not unheard of. However, that Hal asks him — a white, rural Nebraskan — about his opinions on then-President Obama (“Barack Hussein Obama,” Hal stresses) yields only a factual response about him being the 44th American president. “Holy shit,” mumbles Kerry, in a particularly funny moment of realization. Waylon doesn’t come clean per se, but he hints at an important, vengeful mission surrounding some kind of war as the reason for his subterfuge. And, lest Hal discover more, he also detonates a bomb fused into his skeleton, which Hal heroically contains within a ball of green energy from his trusty ring.
That’s about the last bit of information we get this week, so tune in next time to … Hold on. The episode isn’t quite done, despite leaving off on an explosive note. It’s now 2026, and a bearded John is seen driving through Nebraska once again, past what appears to be the snowy ruin of the Macon compound. He catches up withKerryat the same football field as before and even asks after her son as they walk up the bleachers, toward some bit of evidence out of frame. John asks if she’s called anyone else yet. She hasn’t. The camera then reveals Hal’s dead body, frozen in a seated position, with what appears to be a bullet wound through his forehead. John inspects Hal’s finger. The ring is nowhere to be found.
It’s a shocking conclusion, to say the least. Even if you’d been privy to the leaks about Hal’s fate at the end of the episode or you picked up on it while watching the pilot — given the presence of his hologram backup, and his repeated insistence that he refuses to die and pass down the ring — it’s quite upsetting to see Chandler’s firecracker Hal survive an explosion only to come to such an apparently simple demise somewhere down the line, while still seemingly in search of answers.
What happened in the ten intervening years? Will the show jump forward entirely, or will its structure accommodate these two separate timelines as the mystery unravels, making it essentially a superhero season of True Detective? Who killed Hal? What brought him back to this sad, lonely spot after an entire decade? We’re probably pretty far from finding the answers, but as of now, the questions are incredibly riveting.
(1) Money. In order to feed the jukebox, Hal conjures a $20 bill. It probably won’t work in a transaction with an actual person — the bill is made of light and will eventually dematerialize — but for the purposes of the machine’s sensors, it’ll do.
(2) A bottle opener. Hal hands Kerry a beer and tries to show off, but she isn’t impressed. In fairness, she’s pretty stressed about what her father-in-law wants with Hal. Hence the beer.
(3) A lighter. Not technically a construct at all, but it appears the ring can heat up just enough to light a cigarette. Pretty smooth, John. Pretty smooth.
(4) Hal himself. It’s wild to think the comics haven’t yet gone the route of copying someone’s entire consciousness into the ring. But this is a pretty promising way to open up the series’ world, especially in Hal’s absence.
Lanterns Series-Premiere Recap: True Detective Comics
