Lanterns

Let’s address the headline first: “early buzz ahead of premiere” is two months stale. The premiere happened. The buzz was right. Moving on.

What Lanterns understands — and what almost no superhero television understands — is that the powers are the least interesting thing about the people who have them. This is a murder mystery that happens to star two Green Lanterns, not a Green Lantern show that happens to include a murder. The distinction is everything. The ring is in the pocket for most of every hour, and the hours are better for it.

Chandler and Pierre are the engine. Chandler’s Hal Jordan — arrogant, aging, dying, impossible to love and impossible to look away from — is the best work he’s done since Friday Night Lights, and I don’t say that lightly. Pierre’s John Stewart is all coiled watchfulness, a rookie who’s seen too much already. Their dynamic inverts the buddy-cop formula: the veteran is the liability, the rookie is the moral center, and neither of them would say so out loud. The car scenes alone justify the subscription.

The Hal Jordan death controversy deserves a clear-eyed take. Killing — or apparently killing — your flagship hero in the premiere is a massive swing, and the fan backlash was predictable and, frankly, earned by fifteen years of waiting for a live-action John Stewart done right. But here’s the thing the angry threads miss: the show made us care about a difficult man in five episodes, then made his death matter to the story instead of treating it as a twist. The younger-Hal-through-the-ring device in the back half is the payoff — John finally gets the teacher he needed, too late, which is the most honest thing this show has said about mentorship. Gunn’s “sorry if you don’t like it” was graceless. The storytelling wasn’t.

Fillion’s Guy Gardner — the same magnificent jerk from Superman and Peacemaker, now with HBO-level profanity and actual screen time — is the pressure valve the show needed. He’s somehow become the character who’s appeared in the most DCU projects. Nobody predicted that. Everybody’s enjoying it.

Deductions: a few episodes lean too hard on the safety net — the mystery’s middle stretch circles rather than deepens — and the show occasionally mistakes withholding for tension. But the finale is three days away, the table is set, and this is already the most confident thing DC has put on television in years.

Grade: A−. The minus is for the mid-season circling. The rest is the real thing.