There’s no doubt that Lanterns was a big success for DC and HBO. The series successfully restored confidence in James Gunn’s DCU after the failed it was Supergirl. It also created a new central hero, Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart, paving the way for the new Green Lantern will appear in Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow.
Although HBO has yet to officially greenlight Lanterns season 2, it appears that work is already well advanced on writing the next season. That said, the prospect of more lanterns makes us feel mixed emotions. As much as we want more from the show, we also recognize that it needs to change profoundly in Season 2. Here’s why Lanterns can’t just offer more of the same when it returns.
Can the Lanterns function without Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan?
Most Lanterns fans would probably agree that the show’s biggest selling point throughout Season 1 was the dynamic between Pierre’s John and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan. Watching idealistic young John clash with temperamental and grizzled Hal never gets old. The DCU’s casting game has been truly on point thus far, and nowhere is that more true than with the two Lanterns protagonists.
There’s only one problem: the show killed half of this very important equation. The series premiere ended with the revelation that Hal had been murdered in 2026. Thanks to frequent flashbacks and the presence of Hal’s holographic backup (or “Halogram”), season 1 still managed to feature the character prominently in most episodes.
But that probably won’t be the case for season 2. The season finale results in Hal’s final death when John finally claims the ring for himself and recharges it. The act of becoming a Green Lantern purges all traces of Hal’s consciousness from the ring. John has now embraced his heroic destiny, but that leaves him without his grumpy mentor to move forward.
This is a major issue for the series. Once again, the central conflict between Hal and John was a huge driving force of Season 1 and the main reason to tune in each week. As things currently stand, the series was a little late in episode 6 when Chandler walked off stage. How can the Lanterns hope to move forward when Chandler will likely be completely out of the picture? How can he fill this void?
Given how stoic and collected John is, he really needs a partner who can act as a foil and fill those quiet spaces with emotion. If Hal Jordan can no longer play this role, then someone else must take on the challenge. Perhaps that involves making Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner a more active member of the cast. I would definitely like to see this dysfunctional relationship explored now that John has effectively fought his way to take control of Earth’s jurisdiction.
Or maybe the show needs to flip the script and make John a mentor to another Lantern wannabe. Comics certainly have no shortage of potential candidates, from Kyle Rayner to Jo Mullein to Simon Baz. Given John’s status as a Lantern who embraces fear rather than suppressing it, I’d be particularly interested in seeing him guide Jessica Cruz, a Lantern struggling to overcome her crippling anxiety disorder.
It’s also worth pointing out that the show left itself some gaps when it came to bringing Hal back. On the one hand, much has been made of John’s ability to create constructs that persist even when he’s not wearing the ring. Is it possible that the halogram continues to exist even after the ring itself is purged?
On the other hand, Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) specifically tells John in Episode 8 that he knows a way to resurrect Hal. This revelation never came to fruition, but it could be a seed for season 2. Some fans have speculated that Sinestro was working to establish his Yellow Lantern Corps and intended to resurrect Hal as host of the fear entity Parallax. It would certainly be interesting to see Hal return not as a grumpy elder statesman, but as a full-fledged villain leading the war against the Green Lantern Corps (something that actually happened in the comics).
One thing is clear. However the revamped writers’ room chooses to move forward with Season 2, they can’t just settle for the same formula that made Season 1 such a success. Either a new character must step in to fill the void left by Hal, or Hal himself must return in a very different form. As great as the Hal/John dynamic was in Season 1, the show can’t just move forward with more of the same.
From murder mystery to superhero adventure
On that note, the original Lanterns announcement turned a lot of heads when it was revealed that the series would not be a traditional Green Lantern adaptation, but a murder mystery set on Earth. Not everyone was excited about the prospect of a Green Lantern show that shares more in common with True Detective than the sci-fi-infused source material. And while Season 1 ultimately made a pretty strong case for this approach, there are still those who yearn for a more faithful Green Lantern adventure.
Season 2 must throw these fans a bone. It’s not enough to simply replicate the season 1 formula. The Lanterns can’t just pair John with a new intern and force them to unravel a conspiracy in another small town. This will only make the series obsolete and force season 2 to exist in the shadow of its predecessor.
And ultimately, the murder mystery of season 1 isn’t really where the show found its appeal. It only worked because this mystery provided the perfect vehicle for John to chafe against his upbringing and learn to be a hero who embraces fear rather than ignoring it. This arc is finished. Now it’s time to see what happens when John becomes the hero he was always meant to be.
This means that the series must rely more on the larger-than-life elements of Green Lantern that Season 1 so downplayed. Yes, we suspect the show’s philosophy will always reflect Hal’s line: “Knowing when to use (the ring) is the whole game, Junior.” But now is the time to let this ring shine a little more. We need to see the Green Lantern in action and explore his incredible new powers.
Certainly, this will present significant challenges for the series to overcome. As much as Season 1’s grounded, Earth-centric approach was a dramatic and stylistic choice, it was also a practical one. It’s not cheap to build a show around a cosmic superhero who can literally create anything his mind can imagine. There’s a reason why the show’s various alien characters have almost invariably chosen to disguise themselves as humans.
It’s enough to wonder if the path forward for this franchise shouldn’t be more television, but a pivot to a big-budget film. We will get a taste of it when Pierre reprises his role in 2027’s Man of Tomorrow. But for better or worse, John’s journey in the DCU appears to involve more small-screen adventures.
That means the season 2 writers will have to strike a delicate balance. They must find ways to grasp the magnitude of John’s new lot in life. He’s a Green Lantern in his prime, not a bitter, aging old fool turning over rocks in an isolated Nebraskan town. At the same time, the series must construct a storyline that is workable and achievable on an HBO budget. This is not an easy task.
Focus on Sinestro by Ulrich Thomsen
I suspect the path forward for Lanterns will involve elevating a minor character from Season 1. The time has come for Sinestro to abandon his role as series character Hannibal Lecter and fully come to the forefront. As it stands, I found Season 1’s lack of focus on Sinestro a little frustrating, but there’s definitely room to make up for lost time in Season 2.
As it stands, many details of Season 1 seem to revolve around Sinestro in one way or another. He’s formed an alliance of sorts with Noah (Shea Pritchard), a character who we now know is the last surviving Manhunter in the universe. Noah now seems stuck on the edge of a precipice, unsure whether to give in to his programming and wage war against the Guardians or become the force for good that John believes he can be. There’s also the aforementioned tease that Sinestro knows how to resurrect Hal.
Right now, the character is trapped in a very literal form of limbo, still marooned in the dead alien world where John and the Halogram found him. But that can easily change. Season 2 can and should explore what happens when Sinestro is finally freed and resumes his own campaign against the Guardians.
Season 1 hinted at a rich history between Sinestro and Hal. We know the two were very close, until the day Sinestro started an uprising against the Guardians and Hal was forced to subdue his former mentor. This act apparently broke Hal in a profound way, and he was never the same afterward.
But even though Sinestro is Green Lantern’s most important villain in the comics, there’s a lot the DCU still needs to delve into. This version of Sinestro is only beginning to appreciate the power of fear. We don’t yet know if he succeeded in forging a Yellow Lantern Ring, and even less if he is the spearhead of…
Gn entert
