There’s a telling moment in “Trust Fall,” Lanterns’ second episode, where Hal Jordan has to recharge his ring. As every comics fan knows, the process involves the Green Lantern holding his waning super-jewelry up to its power battery—shaped, in keeping with GL’s long-ago origins, like an old-timey railroad lantern—and reciting an oath: “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!”
Rousing and corny, the oath is a holdover from a simpler time in comics consciousness, when Green Lanterns were upright and not at all embarrassed to wear tight-fitting space jumpsuits in public. Here, Hal Jordan, dressed down in dusty jeans and leather jacket, receives his lantern in a Rushville motel parking lot and, turning away from the waiting John Stewart, speaks his mandatory oath in a rushed mumble, the once-rousing battle cry tossed off in something that sounds awfully like embarrassment.
Superheroing in Lanterns is likewise presented almost apologetically, at least on the surface. Elements treated with their appropriate reverence in standard superhero fare—origin stories, the unveiling of super abilities—are here deliberately undercut. Hal tells John about getting his ring from dying Lantern Abin Sur over whiskey shots, while his every ring-powered takeoff and landing sees Chandler channel something akin to sheepishness at doing something so showy. Later in the episode, as a wounded Hal prepares to reveal the tragic backstory of his and the Lantern Corps’ betrayal by former mentor turned nemesis Sinestro, an unimpressed Kerry cuts him off with a recitation of Hal’s Wikipedia page. As William Macon impressed upon Hal last week, “The whole world freaked out when you showed up.” But Hal showed up a long time ago, and the world has, it seems, moved on.
All the True Detective/prestige-drama pretensions of this newest entrant to James Gunn’s DCU suggest a Hal-like aversion to standard superhero wonder. But this episode lays in hints that we’re not to take Hal’s outward cynicism at face value. Confronted with the uncomfortable possibility that the Guardians Of The Universe may be behind the current alien threat in Rushville, Hal’s immediate response is a defensive, “They wouldn’t do that.” We’re set to learn more about the Lanterns’ all-powerful, deeply problematic supervisors, no doubt, but Hal’s isn’t the response of a man who’s abandoned his faith completely. Similarly, Lanterns’ place in the evolving DCU is already proving less of an outlier than it at first appears.
First off, there’s John Stewart, perhaps the most upright and gung-ho potential Green Lantern in the universe. The former Marine follows Hal’s orders, even if they’re as seemingly demeaning as flying (commercial) to Hal’s Coast City mansion to fetch the power battery. “Christ almighty, unclench,” Hal snaps in response to John’s watchful obedience. But Pierre hints at the unimpressed impatience under each impassive “Yes, sir,” the long-ago awe of the young John illicitly watching Hal’s first TV interview coloring every disappointed sigh and averted glance.
But when John, wandering through Hal’s cavernously empty house (a gift, Hal says, from a grateful millionaire) comes upon Hal’s Green Lantern suits, his wonder returns—along with ours. Starved as John (and we) have been for a jolt of old-school comics energy, the sight of the super-suits (carefully packed away in Hal’s closet like so much dry cleaning) feints toward giving us what we want. John lingers over the handsome suits—all leather and solid fabric with just the hint of grandiose space-faring functionality—before dutifully fetching the lantern from a secret pocket dimension (password, “Mogo doesn’t socialize”). Hal is sure to deflate the moment by complaining about how hard it is to take a piss in those things, but John’s choice to bring one back to Rushville along with the lantern hints at his wish for Hal to step up to some overt super-heroism, despite all appearances.
Meanwhile in Rushville, the sheriff uneasily presides over a town meeting to try and contain the growing unease over the Lanterns’ continued presence, provoking the uninvited Hal to break out some practiced folksy provocation. “I’ve got about 30 seconds of patience left,” Kerry states, with Hal’s “I only need 40” summing up their relationship perfectly. While it’s clear that there’s more to Rushville than meets the eye (everyone is more uneasy with Hal’s presence than even Hal’s deliberate rascally provocations can account for), Kerry eventually agrees to chaperone him for a follow-up interrogation of her father-in-law, whose armed guards remain stubbornly unimpressed by Hal’s bluster (and magic ring).
The confrontation between outwardly civil good old boys Jordan and Macon (the latter perched unconcernedly on his horse) goes about as well as Kerry expects, with Hal’s brash disrespect (“Do all cowboys have NDAs?,” he sneers at Macon’s unwillingness to explain who’s funding his militia) concluding with one of the compound’s sniper’s winging Hal with a rifle shot. (Hal’s loosey-goosey relationship to his superpowers remains a telling detail—despite his depleted ring, Hal charges in, counting on bluster and willpower to carry the day.)
John, similarly, has skills to fall back on. Which is good, since he’s waylaid (after an extended chase that allows Pierre to show off John’s physical prowess, ring or no) on his return to Rushville by some goons who prove suspiciously strong. Finally introduced to their boss Antaan (The Wire’s Paul Ben-Victor, as clipped and measured as ever), the stalwart John prepares for torture, only to be apologetically zapped with some sort of memory/exposition gun. The captors are aliens (duh), the alien hiding in Rushville is something called a Manhunter, the Manhunter destroyed Antaan and company’s home planet, and John and Hal have 48 hours to find and kill the shape-shifting thing before (cue ticking clock plot) the aliens blow up the entire town to do it themselves.
It’s back in Rushville that the wounded (in body and pride) Hal and John share grudging notes—and where Hal quickly recharges his ring, disdaining the Green Lantern suit packed alongside. Pierre makes John’s simmering irritation bristle with a new suspicion that there’s more to Hal’s crusty non-mentorship than he’s letting on, as he dutifully relates everything the aliens told him, despite their orders not to. “I report to you,” is John’s terse explanation for not keeping what turns out to be a whopper of a secret, as he reveals that the intruder they’re looking for is a Manhunter. “Where did you hear that word?,” Hal asks, clearly taken very far aback. As John repeats the aliens’ claim that it was the Guardians (through the dying Abin Sur) who hid the Manhunter in Rushville, Hal holds his tongue… before secretly suiting up and blasting with unthinkable speed to an icy prison planet, where, in Hannibal Lecter-style security, none other than Sinestro stands, seemingly waiting for him.
It’s the first time we see Chandler in the suit, and the first time he looks like a guy accustomed to whizzing around the galaxy, his purposeful strides toward Sinestro’s cell filmed in Dutch angles like the comic-book panels that have been waiting for nearly two hours to burst out of Lanterns. But when Hal sees his former mentor (Banshee’s Ulrich Thomsen, sonorously malign even under Sinestro’s understated red tint and villainous mustache), Hal’s confidence slips, perceptibly. Sinestro, brushing aside Hal’s query about Manhunters, pries open Hal’s protective armor expertly, instead asking about John Stewart. If, as Sinestro says, the Manhunter in Rushville is merely “second-greatest threat” Hal’s facing, then Hal’s face registers the truth that John is the first.
Stray observations
- • John’s also tasked with feeding Earl, a sentient, ravenously carnivorous plant creature lurking inside a monogrammed greenhouse on Hal’s grounds. Earl’s no Itty, but I did enjoy John’s easy camaraderie with the meat-scarfing little monster.
- • And while Hal may have sprung Earl on the unsuspecting John partly for a goof, there’s again the echo of a more whimsical, engaged Hal Jordan in how assiduously he looks after the alien thingy.
- • We find out that Kerry’s originally from a troubled, far-off city named Gotham.
- • Hal’s promised flying lesson sees John unable to achieve liftoff. (Pierre does some fine physical comedy as he steels himself for the thrill that never comes.) Instead, John inadvertently manifests a small green bird construct that accompanies him throughout his ring-less journey, much to Hal and then Antaan’s bewilderment. Not sure how I feel about this “chosen one” narrative building around John, but we’ll see.
- • I do like how the li’l bird keeps flapping and pecking bravely at John’s captors, even managing to draw blood. Which makes John’s dismissive erasure of the bird—seemingly to spite Hal—genuinely unnerving and a little sad.
- • John and Zoe have an accidental meeting at the local diner, where the enigmatic older woman continues to hint about the nature of her relationship to William Macon and Rushville. Again, not sure how this subplot slots into the wider narrative, but the law of economy of characters (and the presence of an actress as formidable as Poorna Jagannathan) means there’s more to Zoe than we know. Plus, her line, “White men have the privilege of being eccentric” aligns her and John further.
- • As a rule going forward in these reviews, the long and convoluted (and often contradictory) comics backstory of the Green Lanterns will come into play when I feel it’s especially relevant. (Believe me, I have nerd-cred for days.) Otherwise, I’m taking Lanterns’ on its own terms.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.