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Lanterns

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Photo: John Johnson/HBO Max

Lanterns, HBO’s new series about DC comics superhero the Green Lantern, is full of uneasy negotiations. Some of them are deliberate, the surface text of this adaptation: Its two lead characters, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), are in an awkward mentorship dance, with the former stuck training the latter as a backup Green Lantern. Jordan doesn’t want a partner, and Stewart doesn’t respect Jordan. Jordan is a slapdash, instinct-driven smart-ass; Stewart is hyperserious and responsible to a fault. They sidle around each other, trying to stay cordial and usually failing.

If Lanterns provided a steady surrounding frame for these two superhero figures, the tension between Jordan and Stewart would feel the way it’s probably intended to feel: like a buddy-cop dynamic, with two strong personalities struggling to find the middle ground between them. But especially in the early episodes, Lanterns itself seems unmoored, with one foot in the comic-book superhero world and another in the world of grim prestige drama. It’s as if Jordan and Stewart are yanking the show back and forth between them, with Jordan dragging it over into wry wisecracks and big green-glowy spectacle and Stewart pulling it into the land of traumatic childhood flashbacks and high-minded considerations about the burden of expectation.

As the series develops, it settles a bit, particularly toward the later episodes when it seems more fully committed to a particular track. But it is nevertheless haunted throughout by the sense that it could flip at any moment and that none of the characters are quite sure where their feet are underneath them. How political should this show be? How goofy? How grimly realist? Lanterns keeps providing answers, but those answers keep changing. — Kathryn VanArendonk, “Lanterns Is a Mess, But at Least It’s Not Dull”

  1. Episode 2 Episode 2
    Lanterns Recap: Weekend at Jordan’s Despite being in the middle of investigating an alien conspiracy, Hal and John are awfully laid-back during their errands and side quests.
  2. Episode 1 Pilot
    Lanterns Series-Premiere Recap: True Detective Comics HBO’s latest DC series wastes no time dropping the Green Lanterns into a small-town mystery with world-altering stakes.

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