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.

No, if Lanterns is to be saved it’s by John Stewart coming into his own. I want to see him reject the superhero-as-supervillain origin story assigned to him first by his parents, then by Lianna, then by Hal. If he’s going to be a Green Lantern, let it be on his own terms. Even if they replace him in the end — and if you’ve seen Superman, you have some hints as to whether they do or don’t — isn’t that better than just being a good little soldier all your life? As John tells Lianna, both he and Hal chased that ring so long, him to take it and Hal to keep it, that they lost sight of why they wanted it in the first place. John is the one who gets his sight back. 

I reviewed a complex episode of Lanterns with wild highs and lows for Decider.

Last week’s episode of Lanterns went way off course, but this week’s is back on track. No heavy-handed flashbacks that needlessly complicate the relationship between Hal Jordan and John Stewart. No awkwardly shoehorning vital points about race in America into a level of emotional abuse that would normally qualify as a supervillain origin story, not a superhero’s. (An early scene in this episode in which John is forced to smile his way through a nasty interaction with a couple of rednecks at a gun shop makes a similar point more effectively than turning his mother into Mommie Dearest.)

I reviewed this week’s Lanterns for Decider.

Three episodes in, and already HBO’s Lanterns needs its creative batteries recharged. That’s not a great sign. With its clichéd alien visitor, preposterous origin story, and domineering mother who’s somehow more cartoonish a character than the pink guy named Sinestro, this flashback-heavy episode feels like a major misstep. 

I reviewed this week’s not good Lanterns for Decider.

As someone who’s read a fair number of Green Lantern comics, it’s difficult for me to say whether a great big introduction for SINESTRO!!! means anything to anyone not familiar with the character and mythos already. But his presentation as “Hannibal Lecktor” to Hal Jordan’s Will Graham in (appropriately) Michael Mann’s Manhunter — the imprisoned killer whose capture both made this lawman’s reputation and broke his spirit — creates an instantly recognizable and compelling dynamic regardless. It’s not terribly original (neither is the Spider-Man 2 powers-on-the-fritz flying attempt by John) but it gets the job done.

Meanwhile, the core cast continues to exude charisma from every pore. Does it help that Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, and Poorna Jagannathan are all really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking? Yes, but they also all have an easy, convincing chemistry. This is true even of Chandler and Pierre as Jordan and Stewart, whose relationship feels like the former finding out just how far he can push things before the latter finally snaps. As always, I’m hoping a giant green fist is involved.

I reviewed this week’s Lanterns for Decider.

To put it into the context of superhero comics, Lanterns is very much a ’00s-style “superheroes-plus” story, the idea back then being that superheroes were unpopular, but other genres were not, so you just mash them together and enjoy the results. The plus in this “superheroes-plus” story is “a True Detective–style unlikely buddy cops in rural America murder mystery.” It’s the kind of slow, down-to-earth thing superhero fans reared on Bendis and Brubaker are likely to enjoy.

I reviewed the series premiere of Lanterns, which I liked, for Decider.