(series review) [STREAMING] - Lanterns - Episode 5

 

The thing about trailers for later episodes as a sneak peek or news of characters appearing in other media before a show they are currently in has finished airring, is that it takes away the stakes. It’s the prequel trap—when you already know a character survives to make it to the "sequel," every life-or-death scenario loses its punch. You’re just along for the ride because you know for a fact nobody important is dying. 

The main character here is not going to die. But this show is more than John not dying. This show is a what happened to Hal Jordan? Does John Stewart get the Green Lantern ring? Who are the bad guys? Why is Guy Gardner (yeah, why....) and what is it about this town that it has a big mystery surrounding it, what is it hiding and if the Guardians are involved somehow, how are the Guardians involved? This show is questions after questions, a relentless engine of answering one question only to hand you two more.

​The episode starts with a slow burn for the first ten minutes before kicking into overdrive and letting all hell break loose. As Laura Linney’s character states so accurately "I believe the appropriate word to describe today's events would be: shitstorm!"

​Hal leaves John locked in the car while he goes hunting for the Manhunter. With the timer expired, the entire town goes on high alert. Precision orbital beams start vaporizing the town to protect the cover-up, leaving Hal and John on desperate but separate, high-stakes missions—forced to navigate the chaos while their trust in each other completely erodes.

(series review) [STREAMING] - Lanterns - Episode 2

The last episode was great, and the show delivered its serious tone, with few jokes but plenty of mature themes and content, extremely well. In that pilot, we get little bits of information about Hal, the Green Lanterns, the town, John and the story that is slowly unfolding. The pacing was great and, by the end, the mystery was even better. So, considering where we left things, it was going to be very interesting to see where this second episode takes us.
Well... it doesn't disappoint.


We kick off this episode with Hal waking John up and sending him on an errand to fetch his things. Whilst John is off doing that, Hal continues his own investigative work, only to run into some trouble of his own. Meanwhile, John's seemingly simple errand doesn't exactly go to plan either, and he finds himself dealing with his own issues before he can make it back to Hal.
And this is where Lanterns continues to impress.

The second episode gives us more information about the Green Lanterns, the characters surrounding Hal and John, and the mystery at the centre of the story, but it doesn't feel like the show is dumping information on us just for the sake of it. Instead, we're getting small pieces of the puzzle while the investigation continues.

What I particularly like is that the show isn't rushing to give us answers. There is a real sense that something much bigger is happening underneath everything we are seeing, and the slower, investigative approach works incredibly well.

Two episodes in and Lanterns is doing exactly what it needs to do. The mystery is getting deeper, the characters are becoming more interesting, and I'm genuinely invested in finding out where this is all going.

So far, James Gunn's DCU is looking pretty damn good

(series review) [STREAMING] - Lanterns - Episode 1

If you have been alive long enough, or have followed these comic book movies since the late '90s—or, better yet, since just before Christopher Nolan decided to take on Batman Begins—you would know that Warner Bros. has attempted to kick off a DC universe since Marvel started doing it successfully. DC had to wait until Nolan completed his trilogy before they finally started with Zack Snyder.

If you have been following me for any measure of time and have read what I have said regarding DC, you would know that Warner Bros. fumbled the bag trying to play catch-up to Marvel and completely messed up the DCEU. Now that James Gunn is running this new DCU, he seems to have a plan in place and, so far, so good.
He has split it into live-action and animated. Superman was good, Supergirl was OK, Clayface looks interesting, and do not forget Peacemaker. They fumbled the bag with the second-season theme song, I think, but the season itself was actually decent.
So, other than another season of Creature Commandos, Lanterns is now here and, honestly, it's actually very good.
We're told this show is going to be something along the lines of True Detective. After watching this first episode, I can already see why. This isn't simply a comic book show; it's a True Detective murder mystery wrapped in DC mythology, coming from the people behind Watchmen. Meaning... this is GOOD!!!


We start with a flashback of John Stewart as a child, watching TV with his brothers before his father gets home. What initially seems like a reprimand is actually John being taught not to fear.
Flash forward 20 years, and John is met by Hal Jordan, who is training him to become a Green Lantern. When news breaks about something going down in Nebraska, the two come across a school's football field with several dead bodies.
Trying to figure out what is going on, they start looking for answers and discover that a man on a ranch in the town seems to be preparing for something. He also knows just a little too much, while saying very little.
Then we jump another 10 years into the future.
John is back in Nebraska. Back at the school.
And there is another dead body.
And this is where Lanterns gets very interesting.