Two episodes in and Lanterns already makes its case. It’s different from any Green Lantern story you’ve read or seen before in the best of ways, and proves why comic book adaptations don’t need to follow their source material to the letter.
Lanterns centers on Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Lantern-in-training John Stewart, as they investigate a series of murders in a small American town while figuring out how to make their mentor-mentee partnership work. Its second episode just aired a few days ago and already expands on the show’s scope with the introduction of the shapeshifting Manhunters as well as long-time Green Lantern villain Sinestro. Despite the expected comic book lore-dump, it doesn’t feel like anything we’ve seen in a while whether it be from DC or Marvel.
Early reviews have compared Lanterns to another HBO hit, True Detective, and while that’s an easy reference to make, what really sets Lanterns apart from any other superhero project out there is its tone.
“I think it walks that fine line,” says Aaron Pierre, who plays John Stewart. “This is a testament to the phenomenal writers’ room. It walks that fine line of perfectly including the Green Lantern lore, and also having infinite access points to anybody who might not have the faintest idea of what the superhero genre is about, what DC is about, what the Green Lantern Corps and lore is about. It’s available to everyone, and I think that is one of the most beautiful and special things about this show.”
There’s a lot going on in Lanterns that works, from its stellar casting to the inspired yet grounded writing. “I can say that having watched what I’ve seen right now, I really like the tone of it. It’s hard to get a tone set, and this one, although it hits a lot of different spots, I think it works, and I think that’s really, really a credit to everyone working together on this thing,” says Kyle Chandler (Hal Jordan). “It all came together, and I think it lays out really nicely like that. The tone was really important to figure out what it’s going to be when we started.”
Chandler brings a lot to this show, some entirely unique from anything he’s done before. With Hal Jordan, he subverts the roles he’s had across his celebrated career, from his breaking out as Gary Hobson in Early Edition to playing the greatest TV coach of all time as Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights, as well as playing father-figure types in Super 8 (still JJ Abrams’s best film to date BTW), to come across as a brash, unapologetic, and maybe even unsympathetic mentor.
His portrayal of Jordan is more jaded than the comic version and is a far cry from Ryan Reynolds’ comedic-at-best and cringe-at-worst interpretation in 2011’s Green Lantern. “I’ve been very fortunate to be doing this for a while,” Chandler tells Rolling Stone Philippines. “So, if we’re talking about other roles [I’ve done] and everything, there’s a lot to take from, but it’s also given me the chance to explore a lot in the world. Every part of your life is part of who you are, so you bring it to a role. When I first read the script, it was not lost on me that there was so much available to do, whether it be the humor, the darkness, playing the pathology of the character, playing a lonely character; I had everything.”
That pathology Chandler mentions is complemented by Pierre’s portrayal of Stewart. Pierre has a commanding physical presence which he balances with the earnestness and eagerness of his youth. His John Stewart is arguably the most accessible and relatable version we’ve seen yet. While this isn’t the first comic book character he’s played (he was Dev-Em in the Superman-spinoff show Krypton), he still considers this opportunity career-defining. “It was a dream realized,” he says. “To have the opportunity to embark on this journey with this particular character, I was over the moon. I still feel over the moon today, just as much so as when I first found out that I was going to be portraying John Stewart.”
Stream new episodes of Lanterns on HBO Max every Monday.
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