HBO’s Lanterns wasted little time proving that its take on the Green Lantern mythology is willing to make some dangerous moves.
The DC Studios series opened by establishing veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, alongside Aaron Pierre’s younger John Stewart. Their uneasy partnership sits at the heart of a mystery that brings the cosmic world of the Green Lanterns down to Earth.
But the premiere’s closing moments dramatically change the equation.
After spending much of the story following Hal and John in 2016, the episode jumps ahead a decade. John returns to Rushville, Nebraska, where he makes a disturbing discovery: Hal appears to be dead, his body lying in the snow and his powerful Green Lantern ring nowhere to be found.
It is an unusually dramatic development for a character with Hal Jordan’s history in DC Comics, and one that immediately gives the series another mystery to solve.
Chandler has embraced the surprise, describing the moment as the kind of storytelling blow that catches viewers off guard. Rather than treating Hal simply as an untouchable superhero icon, Lanterns presents him as a complicated veteran whose relationship with John helps drive the drama.
That relationship may prove particularly important as the season continues. John begins the story as the less experienced Lantern, but the apparent death of his mentor places him in a very different position.
It also leaves plenty of questions hanging over the series. What happened to Hal? Why is his ring missing? And how do the events of 2016 connect to what John discovers ten years later?
Lanterns was created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King, with Mundy serving as showrunner. The eight-episode series combines Green Lantern mythology with an Earthbound crime mystery rather than relying exclusively on the large-scale space adventures traditionally associated with the characters.
The cast also includes Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
Whatever answers are coming, the premiere has already made one thing clear: Lanterns is not treating its most recognizable characters as safe.
