Now what? If you have your audience asking that question right in the middle of the inaugural season of your show, I’m not sure if you’re doing something good or bad, but you’re certainly doing something unusual.
That’s the point we reached at the end of episode five of HBO’s Lanterns. The three-way war between aliens, Lanterns, and Zoe the Manhunter, with the fate of Rushville, Nebraska hanging in the balance, reached its bloody conclusion. So did the struggle for control of the Green Lantern power ring: John Stewart pried it from Hal Jordan’s still living hand, then delivered it straight to Lianna the Guardian, refusing to take this extremely shitty job after all. Sheriff Kerry Kane calls off a mob of angry villagers when they surround John, and that’s that.
Leaving the fate of your show so wide open so early in the proceedings is, by far I think, the boldest thing series co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King have done during the show’s shaky but promising run so far. In a way, of course, they’re just mimicking the structure of, you guessed it, True Detective Season 1, with its mid-season time jump from being primarily flashbacks to primarily present-day material, and its concurrent shift in the personalities and fortunes of the two main characters. But in both cases, the big mid-season climax only gets you so far. You still have to come up with something interesting for everyone to do afterwards.
So far, at least, Lanterns has done it.
I reviewed tonight’s Lanterns for Decider.
Tags: decider, lanterns, TV, TV reviews