The only reason I was interested at all in the TV series “Lanterns” was because of SDCC and that ring. I love my ring, but I’m not sure if I love the TV series. Just seeing the two episodes isn’t enough to determine that. I need at least three to get into the groove and soak up the atmosphere and writing and see then when I see how the season ends, I’ll know whether the setup was good and the journey worthwhile. Like the ring I got at the Lantern Training Center, this series is made for adults or mature audiences.
From what I can tell from the first two episodes, the Lantern Training Center doesn’t really set you up for the series. We waited in line for our allotted time. We got separated into groups. We got tested on how well we understood the initial directions. Then we had tasks. Entering the dark environs of a small town bar, we did get some hostility but we also got to hear that song, “Brand New Key,” by Melanie. That was a hit in 1971 and you might know it as “The Rollerskate Song.” That does figure in the first episode. And we did get to shoot at apples, but not in a William Tell style.
How you feel about the series, might depend upon your interests. My husband didn’t like any of the characters. I found them hard to relate to, but I also like watching murder mysteries and procedurals about homicides. The first episode doesn’t seem to start that way, but that’s why I didn’t write about it. That’s how it ends.
Episode 1: Pilot
Is this the pilot or does the title refer to a pilot?
The first episode starts in 1996 with three African American teens watching TV. It’s “60 Minutes” and a report on Hal Jordan who stopped a meteor at Victoria Falls (an actual place on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa.
It’s the first “heart-to-heart” with a superhero. Does he get nervous? “I don’t get nervous,” Hal Jordan claims. He’s in his Green Lantern outfit, too.
The reporter asks, “What do you want the world to know about you?” What we learn is that Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler, hiding all of his charm) was an Air Force test pilot. He was “a regular person like you” and after a meeting with the alien Green Lantern Abin Sur and being granted the ring. The ring is connected to a force known as Starheart. The power rings grant powers that come from imagination and the electromagnetic spectrum of emotional willpower. What? The catch is that you have to be fearless and the ring has to be charged like your cellphone, every 24 hours by touching it to the lantern. Imagine how farfetched that idea was in the 1940s, but now one can charge cellphones and toothbrushes by just touching.
The reporter notes, “In many ways, Hal Jordan was born for the role he would eventually play.” His father had also been an Air Force test pilot “who died tragically in a crash when Hal was just eight.” There’s only one test, Hal Jordan claims: “Are you afraid?” He wasn’t because “every kid’s worst fear is losing a parent. Once that happens, there is nothing to fear any more.”
The Lanterns are “like beat cops” of the intergalactic variety, but the problem is that local police enforcement don’t recognize their authority.
John Stewart (Cairo Cash) has been trained by his father in ways to overcome fear such as having an apple shot off of his head. Don’t try this at home and don’t let your impressionable kids watch this episode or kids will be losing more than apples because foreseeably not everyone will hit the apple.
Remember, William Tell, the legendary folk hero of Switzerland and the subject of the famous “William Tell Overture” by Gioachino Rossin, was forced to do this by the evil Austrian Governor of the cantons of Uri and Schwyz, Gesler. In Rossini’s 1829 opera, in Act 3, Gesler has the son, Jemmy, seized and decides that William Tell must shoot an apple from Jemmy’s head or both of them will be put to death. Jemmy encourages his father and refuses to be tied up. William Tell draws two arrows from his quiver and hides one. After singing an aria, he draws his bow and shoots the arrow through the apple. Although William Tell has succeeded, Gesler becomes enraged. When Gesler notices the second arrow, William Tell admits the second arrow was for Gesler. Gesler has both arrested and plans to execute them. Both son and father survive, but their house burns down. Yet Gesler dies and Switzerland is a better place for it.
Now, is Earth and John Stewart better off because of this training? Unlikely.
In 2016, Hal Jordan arrives late and hungover (as we listen to the song “Boogie Shoes,” but that doesn’t trouble his trainee, the adult John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). All of the youthful eagerness seems lost in the adult John Stewart. Hal’s been gone for two weeks, and claims he was on Pharon 4, a “shithole of a planet that was on the verge of a civil war.” War averted and the hangover is the result of the ensuing celebrations. John Stewart is testy that he’s been in training for two months and hasn’t worn the ring. “Don’t get hung up on the jewelry, junior,” Hal warns. “You’ll wear it when it choose you.”
John Stewart replies, “I thought the point was that the Guardians chose me.”
Hal Jordan gives John a test that involves a car being driven off a cliff and using that ring. By now, KC and the Sunshine band’s “Get Down Tonight” is playing while I’m wondering: What does the expense accounts look like? John Stewart calls his dad, claiming Hal Jordan tried to kill him, but his father tries to calm him down, telling him to stay the course. Hal told John Stewart to meet him at a taco stand three miles up the road.
Then things get weird. John gets a message from Hal’s younger consciousness that materializes before him and asks, “Am I dead?” because John Stewart is wearing Hal’s ring. “Did I do something to piss you off, ’cause if I did, I’m sorry.” That utterance hits John Stewart as odd. Still the newly materialized Hal asks, “Who are you and why are you wearing my ring?”
When John Stewart identifies himself as Hal’s trainee, Hal is puzzled. “Lanterns don’t have trainees in their own sector,” Hal notes. John Stewart corrects him, “They do now.” Hal then asks what year it is: 2016. Then Hal says, “I’m a backup of Hal Jordans’ consciousness, combined with the sentience of the ring, I’m here to give myself a message.”
We learn that “Lanterns are required to be uploaded weekly for posterity’s sake, in case something happens to us. I should have taught you this.” Hal Jordan has been lax on the weekly part. He was last uploaded ten years ago. The news is: “There’s hail in Rushville, Nebraska.” Then, he disappears.
What does it mean? As soon as Hal hears the message, he tells John to pay the bill and, with the ring now back in his possession, flies off. John has to get on an airplane and drive (so the music of “No Fun”). When John Stewart arrives, he sees the whole town is at a stadium. He asks for Hal Jordan. The boss, the sheriff, isn’t happy. Hal had a six-hour head start, but things are still not settled. Hal explains there are two counties involved and small towns move slowly.
The current Hal butts heads with the Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald). John Stewart surveys the scene and tells Hal it looks like Rushville scored a game-winning field goal because the kicking block is still out there, but the fence is broken. John Stewart guesses that the home fans rushed the field. A few visitor fans wandered onto the field. Because this is Nebraska, more than a few of the fans were carrying. The four dead are all wearing visitor sweatshirts. However, John Stewart doesn’t understand why this has anything to do with aliens.
Hal tells “junior” to take a deep breath because this is his job and his territory as long as he’s alive and he doesn’t plan on dying anytime soon. Hal tells John Stewart to do what he feels is right, but that ends up making the suspect run.
Hal wants to interrogate him, but since Kane won’t let him question the suspect, he uses “The Rollerskate Song” to annoy the locals, hoping to be jailed with the suspect, Wayland Sanders. He hands the ring to John Stewart and a local woman notices and chats John Stewart, the “space cop” up while the locals fight and have Hal Jordan arrested. John Stewart follows the woman to her truck and they have sex.
Hal Jordan ends up in court before an unsympathetic judge and represented by Billy Macon (Jason Ritter), who, he later learns, is Kane’s husband. Hal does get bailed out by Kane’s father-in-law, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt). Invited to a barbecue dinner hosted by William Macon, Hal learns Kane and Billy Macon have a kid, Noah, who is interested in football. William Macon bailed Hal Jordan out because he’s worried about aliens. “I’m not an isolationist crackpot,” William Macon claims.
There’s more complications revealed. John Stewart learns the woman he met and had sex with in a car is Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan), William Macon’s wife. That anonymous sex already gave me the icky for the John Stewart character and Hal’s reaction didn’t help.
Eventually, Hal will be allowed to question Waylon Sanders (Chris Coy) and Wayland is an alien who now caught commits suicide using a biometric detonation device embedded into his body, but because Hal is able to use what’s left of his ring’s power, no one else dies.
In a time jump to 2026, we see John Stewart returning to a wintery Rushville and Kane showing him a dead Hal, sitting silently with what looks like a bullet through his head and when John Stewart wipes the snow off of his hand, we see that Hal is without his ring.
No sign of Nathan Fillion yet. We do know that 14 aliens are able to medically pass as human. Noah is an all-state quarterback now.
Episode 2: Trust Fall
So who do we trust? Is Hal really dead? Does anyone ever die in superhero stories? I don’t know yet in this Lantern universe what the rules are.
This series totally plays on fear. “Time to get up junior?” As a woman, I fear someone creeping into my bedroom while I’m asleep. Don’t these guys get better training? They are staying at a small motel.
After waking John Stewart with a bucket of water, Hal reminds John Stewart that they have four dead aliens on the football field and one that “blew up half the police station.” Just remember, that’s not much since it is a small town.
Hal asks John Stewart to fly after giving him the ring, “Think fly.” All that John Stewart gets in a small, chirpy green bird. Even when John Stewart returns the ring to Hal, the bird remains, buzzing Hal. The ring is at 5%. Hal tells John Stewart to take the bird and bring it back alive and to feed Earl. What Earl is, we don’t know.
In 2016, Hal sends John to Coast City, to his house.
Still in Rushville, Hal re-examines the stadium, Home of the Pioneers. The metal detectors are still up and on. He walks through, but nothing sounds off despite his metal belt. He removes the Toyota front grill from his car and with the steel jack, goes through the metal detector. Nothing. What do they detect? He calls the sheriffs department, but no one picks up. Where is everyone? He uses his powers to get a bird’s eye view, but the ring’s power is so low had can’t levitate for long. The people are all at a meeting. Now he realizes that there’s a “metal detector” at the community hall. When he enters, everyone stops talking. “Are you talking about me?”
Kane is at the mic and informs him the question the town is facing: should there be a football game on Friday. “Would that be traumatizing or could it help pull the community together? The coach “wonders what we’re teaching ’em if we just pack it up and forfeit” even though he admits they are all shook up from the shooting deaths of the four aliens and the suicidal explosion at the sheriffs department.
Hal sits next to his lawyer who informs in that he convinced the judge to drop the assault charges. The Lantern accounting department will be glad to know there will be no legal bill. “The good news is you’re free to go back to Coast City or anywhere else you feel like going for that matter,” says his attorney.
Hal asks his attorney, “Did your wife tell you that aliens was chirping about vengeance before he blew himself up?” Further, while Hal ended up on that field because of a “gut feeling,” he wants to know why William Macon, his attorney’s father, knew to target the four aliens. “You don’t shoot people because of a gut feeling,” Hal concludes. Because they are talking, Kane asks that Hal leave, although it was Kane’s husband, Billy Macon who started the conversation. He’s about to say more, but he gets a phone call.
John Stewart can’t find the key which is hidden in a fake rock. John Stewart is surprised at how big and posh, Hal’s house in Coast City is. It is supposedly in somewhere in California and fans will know that bad things can happen in Coast City, like the total destruction in the second Warworld, but now things look pretty good…from the outside. After saving a kid, a rich father bought Hal Jordan a house. However, although he’s lived in the house for eight years, Hal Jordan has no furnishings. He doesn’t hang up pictures. He has a bed. He has his Green Lantern suit. Lantern is in a voice-activated box that says, “Greetings Hal Jordan. To access the vault, please confirm identity.”
Using the speaker phone feature on John Stewart’s cellphone, Hal opens the box, “Mogo doesn’t socialize.” The box is a pocket dimension. John Stewart must reach in to get the Lantern. That’s not unlike what happened to the teams in the bar at the Lantern Training Center.
Hal finds and feeds Earl, a carnivorous plant, raw beef and bison.
The mystery of the metal detectors leads to Hal taking out the alien bodies out from the Rushville morgue while on the phone with John Stewart. There’s full frontal male nudity involved. Imagine driving with a car full of dead aliens. He drags the corpses through a metal detector which is actually an alien detector. Now that’s advanced technology.
Back in California, just as he’s locked up Hal’s house, some dudes use a stun gun and zip ties to kidnap John Stewart. They put him in a van. With the help of his bird and fisticuffs, he escapes on to a highway. He runs and his bird follows as they run against traffic, but somehow the black van catches up with John Stewart.
Back in Rushville, Hal Jordan is stopped by Kane, with those dead alien bodies. That’s the thing he wanted to talk to Kane about. Kane had previously said that Hal Jordan had jurisdiction if the incident involved extraterrestrials which it obviously does. Kane says, “Congratulations, you’ve caught up to me.” Hal Jordan knows this all has something to do with William Macon, Kane’s father-in-law. Kane warns him that with his questions and his attitude, he’s not going to have a good meeting with her father-in-law. She wants to do the talking, because “the fact is, Macon hasn’t done anything illegal,” but you know that’s not going to happen.
I didn’t notice before, but the entry gate to William Macon’s ranch says, “Study the Past.” While initially, the two ranch hands don’t seem to be welcoming, Hal Jordan sees that William Macon is on his way there. William Macon tells Ha, “You know I’m a fan of your work, but I’m confused as to why you’re still in town. Four aliens are dead. Their accomplice blew himself up, and yet you linger.”
Hal just says is straight, “I think you’re hiding something on the property that you don’t want me to see.”
William Macon reminds Hal, “I had you as a guest here just the other day.”
Yet Hal replies, that was “because you wanted me to prove that fellow in custody was an alien.”
William Macon agrees because that’s exactly what Hal did, but then adds, “Like I said, I’m a fan of your work but your work here’s done.”
Hal Jordan isn’t having it and continues, “Now I don’t want to disparage your small little town, but I’ve been all over the galaxy and I don’t think I’ve ever seen technology quite that sophisticated (as the alien detectors).”
William Macon reminds him, “I told you, people who walked this land before me, they got caught flat-footed when the settlers came in an colonized ’em. I’m not about to make that same mistake again.” No, he’s going to make another mistake.
There’s a reference here to Keyser Söze, the main antagonist in the 1995 film, “The Usual Suspects.” The film is told from the perspective of Roger “Verbal” Kint, who was one of two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked in the Port of Los Angeles. Through flashback, Kint (Kevin Spacey) tells the story of how he and his cohorts ended up in the boat and how all the events were orchestrated by Keyser Söze. Kint is physically disabled petty con man and he’s being questioned by US Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) in the office of LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin (Dan Hedaya). The other survivor, Hungarian mobster Arkosh Kovash/Ákos Kovács (Morgan Hunter), is being questioned by FBI agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) at the hospital in hopes of learning what Keyser Söze looks like. The job was supposedly arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite) representing the mysterious Turkish crime lord Keyser Söze. In the end, Kujan belatedly realizes that Kint is really Keyser Söze when the sketch artist’s facial composite from Arkosh Kovash’s description arrives via fax at the police station, but Kint has already left custody. The audience sees that Kint was only affecting a limp and his supposedly crippled hand relaxes into a more natural position as Kobayashi picks him up and they drive away.
Hal Jordan wonders if there is a Keyser Söze, and that’s something John Stewart will also begin to ponder later. Now, Hal Jordan is demanding, asking, “Do all cowboys have that NDA?” He wants to know about what other technology has on that compound, but William Macon warns him that if he trespasses, the man in the tower will shoot him. That might seem “unneighborly” but in Rushville, Nebraska, it apparently is legal. Hal Jordan gets shot.
From there we switch to John Stewart waking up in a rundown building being questioned by a bald man, Antaan, “May I ask you a question about the bird, John Stewart? It’s a wildly impressive construct, but how does Hal Jordan continue to project it from such a great distance?”
John Stewart says, “He’s not projecting it; I am.” And yet, Antaan notes, John Stewart is not wearing a ring. What Antaan really wants to talk about is the Manhunters. But Hal Jordan hasn’t told John Stewart about such things and John Stewart quickly deduces, these guys are aliens. The aliens don’t want to torture John Stewart; they want to recruit him.
John Stewart replies, “You don’t tell someonewhen you want to recruit them. You have to be more subtle.”
Antaan says, “We don’t have time for subtlety, John. One of the most dangerous beings to ever exist knows it has been found which means right now it is preparing its brutal response…You think the Green Lanterns came first? You really don’t know? That makes things much easier. I don’t have to change your mind. I just have to stamp it.”
But is “stamp it” the correct phrase? Maybe he means “imprint” or “enlighten.” John Stewart doesn’t believe he needs to be enlightened.
Antaan still explains, “There was a time of chaos in the galaxy. Then the Manhunters came. We don’t know where they came from, just that that they were synthetic. And able to build new bodies, which meant they could take the form of any species and embed, undeterred within any society. This ability to build allowed them to invent technologies far beyond the limits of the planets they inhabited. They were brutal. They were deceptive. They carried out what they called ‘justice.’ Entire species were lost. And then, as mysteriously as they arrived, they were gone. At least we thought they were gone. In reality, one of them remained on our planet, passing as one of us as he quietly engineered a holocaust. Have you ever been deceived by someone you loved? Then you’ll understand when you experience what he did to us.”
The little green bird chirps in excitement. Using a device that they touch to his head as they hold him down, they force John Stewart to experience what it is like “when a Manhunter destroys your people…Do you see it?” John Stewart’s eyes roll back and he’s obviously suffering. And then it is over, but “the effects of our collective loss will remain with you for some time.” Then Antaan explains that the Green Lantern took the Manhunter into custody and guaranteed he’d be executed. Antaan and his people believe that the Manhunter is still alive. They discovered that he was hiding in Rushville, but they don’t know who in Rushville. When they tried to discover who it was, they were themselves discovered and killed.
Because they cannot enter Rushville undetected, they need John Stewart’s help. The bird is proof that he can achieve the impossible, but he had 48 hours. Once he does, John Stewart is to contact them.
Back in Rushville, Hal Jordan is awakening in the hospital, realizing that he was shot. He’s grumpy and sore. Kane has been waiting for him to wake up, but she asks about Sinestro. Using the Internet, Kane has figured out that Sinestro “It’s not exactly top secret. It says here, ‘He was a Lantern, attempted a coup, killed one of the bosses.It also says you were the one that took him down.”
Hal Jordan insists, “I don’t talk about that.”
She replies, “Except that you do, in your sleep.”
At this point, Hal Jordan realizes he’s been restrained, for trespassing. and says, “In the name of Tom Osborne…” Thomas William Osborne was the head football coach for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers for 25 seasons (1973-1997) and retired with an amazing 255-49-3 record, 13 conference titles and three national championships.
Kane won’t release Hal Jordan until he listens to her “because every time you don’t listen, you steal bodies or storm my father-in-law’s compound, and don’t let me do the talking, what you’re really doing is cutting my legs straight out from under me. I’m the sheriff. If you don’t follow my lead, your’ legitimizing this idea that Macon is the seat of power and trust me, you do not want to help push that narrative. This is my town. I have worked my ass off to earn people’s respect, and I can’t have you undermining that.”
While Hal Jordan admits she is right and apologizes, and swears on Tom Osborne’s life, he reminds her about jurisdiction. But Kane’s been trying to hold this town together. “The others were dead. I assumed because Waylon didn’t set off the alarm, he wasn’t an alien. I was wrong.”
Kane apologizes “for trying to obstruct” Hal Jordan, but “I just didn’t want Billy’s dad insurrection the shit out of everyone and getting them all paranoid about invasion.” Yet even she wonders why Hal Jordan remains in town. He tells her “Something is off here. I can feel it.”
Kane says she wants him gone because “everything feels like it’s about to explode for no good reason.” She says, if she needs him, she would call.
When Hal Jordan checks out, he asks her where she was from. She’s from Gotham and “moved here on a whim.” There’s something wrong. The hospital is big. The equipment seems new and unused. And there are no patients.
Elsewhere, at a small cafe, John Stewart pulls in with his bird to have some decaf and notices that Zoe, William Macon’s wife, is there at a booth. He eventually does join her. John Stewart isn’t into adultery, but Zoe is glad he didn’t know. Zoe admits that her husband is weird, “deeply so,” but he provides her with a lifestyle that she enjoys. She explains, “White men have the privilege of being eccentric. White men with money? They can do whatever the fuck they want. Play cowboy. Build castle.” She likes the security. She says she’s with her husband because she loves him and he loves her, but also asks “Hey, how’s your White man?”
John Stewart believes Hal Jordan “wanted me out of the way so he sent me to fetch his things.” He also admits he wonders if he can trust him.
Zoe tells him, “If you have to ask the question, then you already know the answer.” Zoe drops him off at the motel and he finds Hal Jordan sitting outside drinking.
Hal Jordan gives him both the Lantern and his suit and tells John Stewart he might want to check the fine print on the insurance policy of his rental car. It is missing the front grill and has alien goo on the seats. He’s angry but contains himself and asks about the Manhunters. Then John Stewart tells Hal Jordan about this abduction and the 48 hour threat. Hal Jordan now believe that Abin Sur must have brought the Manhunter to earth and the Manhunter killed him.
John Stewart reminds Hal Jordan, he could be anyone in town. Then John Stewart remarks they told him “to create a living thing, let alone keeping it alive while not wearing the ring, is so advanced that it’s practically impossible, but I figured that couldn’t be true, ’cause if it was you wouldn’t at lest given me a hoorah.”
Hal Jordan gives him a begrudging “Hoorah,” but quickly gets back to business: the 48 hours. Hal Jordan wants to know what the bird means, believing it “must be pretty deep.” John Stewart replies that is is “just a bird” and disintegrates it.
Hal Jordan quickly changes into his suit and takes off to a fortified complex somewhere in the galaxy and meets with Sinestro to talk about the Manhunters.
Sinestro tells him, “If one still existed, it’d be the second greatest threat you’re currently facing. So why don’t you tell me about John Stewart? The song “Human Condition” plays “Addiction’s a disease so, I get a pass. I wanna feel something again. She takes my hand and she asks me to dance. Nothing really matters if you don’t have romance. I wanna feel something again.”
So what is the greatest threat for Hal Jordan? Midlife crisis? John Stewart? Learning to share his feelings? Love?
On the merchandising side, I wonder if DC will make smaller rings, if they will make rings that glow after being charged on a green lantern hub. Yes, I love my ring but I saw that smaller sizes weren’t offered and I also love gadgets.
The SDCC activation got me excited. The ring got me to the press panel in Los Angeles and I even watched the first two episodes. Bravo marketing department. And you made it a murder mystery which for me makes it even better. Yet alas…still no sign of Nathan Fillion.