By Dsn Skip Allen

“Lanterns” started off with a handful of mysteries, but the biggest was with the death of Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). Hal did a lot of damage to Rushville, Nebraska, before he died. In the form of ruining the town benefactor and his wife. Hal was good at ruining things, so he kept at it. He knew the penalty he would have to pay if he poked the bear too many times. What he didn’t know was he was going to find love in the form of the town sheriff Kerry Kaine (Kelly McDonald) and he had an apprentice who wouldn’t stop until he came to a conclusion to the mystery that kept going in circles. It’s hard for Hal to trust others, but he had to figure out what was really going on in this sleepy Nebraska town.

Flashbacks once again confuse the overall story. Tom King is well versed in Green Lantern lore, but the viewers aren’t. He’s putting a lot of in-depth comic book lore into the story. Eight episodes should have been enough to make a quality Green Lantern story. Instead, it’s more confusing than ever.  He even introduces Yellow, but most people won’t know what that means either. It’s Sinestro’s color after he was ostracized from the Green Lantern Corp, which represents Fear, but it’s such a subtle reference that no one will know about it except hard-core Green Lantern fans. This show is too inside baseball.

Hal has made a lot of enemies before this show existed, and as it progresses, those enemies start to come out of the woodwork. Even his friends could potentially become enemies in the right situation.That’s how complex this show is. Characters play each other against each other, which makes it harder and harder to follow along with the series. Going back to Manhunters, I think the creators of the series needed an intangible villain they could throw away at the end of the eight episodes. Keep the good characters they can build a second season around with a bigger budget. That’s a good theory if it worked. It doesn’t, though. It just made things not make sense before the final reveal of who the main villain truly was.

James Gunn and Peter Safran wanted to put out the word to writers, directors, and all creative people to come up with ideas for DC Comics characters and pitch them to the men in charge. “Lanterns” were already in development before they took over, but they liked it so much that they tried to fold it into what they were doing with the other main characters like Superman and Batman. Fans only had the Ryan Reynolds film to go off of regarding Green Lantern. That wasn’t a good amount to digest for fans of this long-time DC Comics character. Besides animated versions. The ratings of this series are through the roof with 19 million viewers per episode. So it doesn’t matter what I say. I think this show is too inside baseball for most viewers, but they don’t care. They are enjoying it anyway. I’ve been teetering on liking or disliking the show all season long. I just don’t know what the point of this series is besides trying to tie it into the overall DC Studios plan.

I wanted to like this series more than most because I was such a Green Lantern comic book character fan. I gave it the benefit of the doubt. After seeing the final episode, I couldn’t live with myself if I gave this show a glowing review.  It’s convoluted, goes in circles, and doesn’t do these great characters justice. Now, if this was something new and original, I may have felt differently, but it’s not. It’s based on an IP that deserves better in my humble opinion. The “True Detective” aspect was fine for a while, but it got old very quickly. The layered story only worked so long. The various time periods made things harder to follow along. The acting from the entire cast was very good, but there wasn’t enough Green Lantern to go around for my liking. Obviously, everything is subjective, but this show had a lackluster final episode, which in turn made the series okay but not great, unfortunately. 

All Eight Episodes of Lanterns Can Be Streamed Currently On HBO Max

🌟 🌟 ½ stars