Lanterns review lands on a blunt verdict: says the HBO/DC series is a bust, even with Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre leading the cast. The new DC Comics project leans on a two-timeline structure, but the opener is built around a mystery that turns into a shooting at Rushville’s football stadium.
“not even the almighty Green Lantern and his mesmerising protege can save this show from feeling a whole lot of meh,” the review says in its opening lines. It also calls Chandler “The ever-dependable” Hal Jordan and says Pierre is “Rising star and mesmerising screen presence” John Stewart, which makes the disappointment sharper because the setup has real marquee value.
2016 With Hal Jordan
2016 is where the mentor-mentee machinery starts. Hal Jordan is weary and lazy when it comes to teaching John Stewart, while Stewart is presented as a well-disciplined son of a marine who respects the chain of command. That pairing gives the show a clean engine: one man drifts, the other follows orders, and the friction is built into the relationship before the plot even moves.
1971 is the year the review uses to place Stewart in DC history, describing him as one of DC’s first African American superheroes. That detail is not decoration. It explains why the series is being watched as more than a simple ring-and-rescue procedural; the character carries history into a new TV format.
2026 in Nebraska
2026 is when the plot snaps into motion. Hal Jordan sends a hologram-Hal to himself with a mysterious message, then flies off to Nebraska. John Stewart follows by car and plane, which gives the story a chase structure before the investigation even reaches its first crime scene.
Four people are dead when Stewart gets to Rushville’s football stadium. Hal says the victims were aliens, but Rushville’s sheriff, Kerry Cane, says they were not and wants him to leave. That contradiction is the story’s real pressure point: the show is not just asking who died, but whether Hal is reading the scene correctly at all.
William Macon and the stadium
William Macon sits just behind that conflict. He is Kerry Cane’s father-in-law, and he works for an even bigger but anonymous man while taking care of a large ranch patrolled by a band of militia-type men. The review uses him like a pressure valve around the main mystery, a figure who widens the field without handing over the answer.
The opener’s set piece comes when Hal interviews a suspected alien from the stadium and tries to expose the suspect’s extraterrestriality by asking about Harry Potter’s school and Barack Obama. The review says the show gives roughly one set piece per episode, so the series is leaning on serialized mystery rather than constant spectacle. For a viewer deciding whether to start, that means the hook is the investigation itself, not a barrage of effects, and the early evidence here suggests the show’s best idea is also the one the review thinks it cannot fully pay off.
