Spoiler-free, as always!
Given that modern Green Lantern comics are a rollicking space opera featuring the titular space cop using their immensely powerful ring to fight menaces even more terrifying than the ones we have to deal with IRL on Earth, such as an entire spectrum of power ring corps on an emotional spectrum, it is not too surprising that a lot of comic fans have decried HBO's more grounded Lanterns series, some calling it a travesty for the way it depicts one of its two characters: the original Silver Age GL, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler).
And you know what? Fair enough. If you tuned into the first live action series expecting a sci-fi buddy comedy in space, you were bound to be disappointed. If you were looking for a show picking up where animated predecessors like Justice League or Green Lantern, where the Hal and his traine/ replacement John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) have a barely masked antagonissm towards each other, you were bound to be a little bit put off.
Or if you were anticipating a focus on adventure and wer then forced to 'settle' for an unsettling, time-jumping procedural featuring a deductive infiltrator investigation and murder mystery, one of which takes more than a decade to resolve, your disappointment makes sense to me. I see you.
I don't see you closely or super clearly though, because I really liked Lanterns.
I will not outline much of the plot becuase dang, they take their time playing this one out, and they pack a few great twists along the way, but I feel they tied things up, both logically and emotionally by the eighth episode and season finale.
They answer some great lore-type questions along the way, too, like "who is the real Green Lantern of sector 2814?" and "wait, how can there be more than one?", but that feels almost incidental.
The real story is about personal growth and courage, and the role fear has to play in that. As well as the role race has to play in fear. This prespective caused more than a few people to step off the fan train, calling the series woke and saying race politics has no place in a superhero adaptation.
This, despite the fact that when the character debuted in 1972, he was clearly an anti-authority figure committed to black empowerment, not unlike the Black Panther Party spokespeople of the day. And Neal Adams even had to fight to give John Stewart a darker skin tone than black characters had up until that point.
Taking a lot of cues from HBO's True Detective series in terms of tone and pacing, there is more than enough galactic scale and science-fiction shenanigans to differentiate it from other shows, even if they are a bit selective about overtly using the power ring and it's constructs a little sparingly. Chandler's arrogant crusty, worlde-weary test-pilot superhero has been critiqued as being too much of an asshole, but two things about that:
1) a lot of fighter jocks, especially test pilots, will tell you that ego is at least as big a part of their makeup as willpower (the core requisite of being a Green Lantern) and a lot of people will register that level of confidence as arrogance and yeah, potentially assholery.
2) there are times when John Stewart is every bit as much an asshole as Hal, and Pierre carries off the balance of fearlessness, frustration and ambition with considerable aplomb.
To tell you much more runs the risks of spoilers, which I will not do, so I will say this: Lanterns also has a similar feel to producer Damon Lindelof's brilliant Watchmen (2019) series, if you have any interest in a mature approach to questions like how do we determine the character of people carrying unimaginable power as well as what sort of tasks could challenge such individuals, then don't listen to the haters, many of whom are misguided and simple, but some of which are racist and oughta know better.
Even if you are not that big on superheroes at the moment, check out Lanterns quickly before they announce season two and recap the finale in the headline or something else daft, and let me know what you think of it.
The contrast of darkness and light might entrance you, as it has me.
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