Lanterns

HBO Max

Season 1 Episode 1

Pilot

After a fatal shooting, Green Lantern Hal Jordan and new recruit John Stewart set out to prove it was an extraterrestrial event.

I am a longtime and fairly obsessive fan of the Green Lantern and the world of its characters. My favorite Green Lantern is the one I grew up with, John Stewart. So when I heard that there would be a series featuring John Stewart and Hal Jordan in a buddy cop style series, I was on board.

The first episode starts with a young John Stewart watching Hal Jordan reveal himself to the public and the implications of that to him. It immediately gets tense when John’s father arrives and there is an interaction that I was not expecting and frankly, didn’t particularly feel was necessary to illustrate that the boy was without fear and that his father was trying to teach him that lesson.

The story transitions into three separate timelines and that is significant when it comes to the end of the episode and what that means for the rest of the series. I like the framing of that moment and how events that happen when the series jumps to 2016 will lead to that outcome. In 2016, John Stewart is an adult and has been partnered with Hal Jordan to learn how to become a Green Lantern. Unfortunately, Jordan is not the mentor John was expecting and his reluctance to give up the mantle leads to a lot of the tension in the series.

Kyle Chandler does a great job as the aging Hal Jordan who is struggling not only with the mantle of the job, but also the inevitability of losing it. He plays the character as jaded and uncaring with a loneliness that you want to see explored in the series. Aaron Pierre takes on the role of John Stewart who is incredibly skilled and determined but lacks any kind of personality. I got no sense of who John is as a person in this first episode as he seems relegated to reacting to Hal’s behavior and choices.

During one of their “training” sessions, Hal abandons a moving car while leaving John with the ring as the car heads towards a cliff. This would have been a great moment to see the power of the Green Lantern and the imagination of John Stewart, but I think the writers are holding that moment for something significant, or at least I hope they are. John receives a message from a copy of Hal’s consciousness inside the ring and when the message is delivered to the actual Jordan, it causes the man to fly off towards a small town in Nebraska.

The first episode does a lot of interesting things in setting up the mystery, conflicts and grounded nature of the series when John finally arrives in Nebraska and discovers that Jordan has become part of an investigation into a mass shooting. A shooting he believes has alien origins, but the local sheriff is skeptical of.

Kelly Macdonald plays sheriff Kerry and she clashes with both leads. She is an interesting character throughout the episode as she has close ties to other elements within the town that could both hurt and help Hal’s investigation. There are a lot of secrets within the town and those are teased by the town’s richest benefactor William Macon, played by Garret Dillahunt.

There are a lot of plots being teased as well with the alien angle, Macon’s welcoming of the Lanterns and subsequent cagey behavior. I left the episode with a lot of questions about what this season will bring and how all these elements are connected, which I enjoyed. The story is definitely grounded with the only exposure to the power of the Green Lantern ring being small constructs and one scene towards the end of the episode and I hope that there are more, but I get more of a True Detective vibe from the series versus a science fiction adventure.

The first episode of Lanterns sets up an interesting and dense world for its characters. There is some interesting tension to be had between the characters, but its pacing is slow at times and you don’t get a sense of the characters beyond Hal Jordan. I’m hoping there is more to John Stewart, my favorite Lantern, in the upcoming episodes after the end of this one because I am invested in this series and want to see more.

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