Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Lanterns Season 1, Episode 2!
Lanterns got a lot of things right in its pilot episode, but above all, the series benefited from the compelling chemistry between Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart. These two can barely tolerate one another at the best of times, and it makes for a hell of a lot of fun. But what happens when the follow-up episode splits this Dynamic Duo up for the majority of its runtime? As it turns out, these two characters are just as fascinating apart as they are together.
Episode 2 features some terrific Hal/John scenes as bookends, but for the most part, the emphasis is on the two men as solo players. While John carries out a glorified fetch quest for his grouchy mentor, Hal sets about digging deeper into the mysteries of Rushville, Nebraska. Needless to say, both men wind up discovering far more than they bargained for in the end.
Chandler continues to be pitch-perfect as this extremely onerous take on the iconic DC hero, but anyone this prickly really needs someone to serve as his foil. Luckily, Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) is able to slot into that role nicely. Her acerbic banter with Hal is every bit as entertaining as the core Hal/John rivalry. This episode also allows us to sympathize with both sides of that dynamic. We can certainly feel Kerry’s frustration as she deals with Hal’s nonsense (including pulling him over with a car full of lukewarm corpses). At the same time, Hal proves that he’s once again right to be suspicious that strange things are afoot in this sleepy town. His gut truly doesn’t lie.
One thing Episode 2 really gets across is just how much of a comedy Lanterns is, on top of being a gritty murder mystery where the costumed characters drop F-bombs with abandon. This installment is surprisingly, almost aggressively funny. A lot of that is thanks to Hal’s impromptu detective work, but credit also goes to John as he roams the halls of Hal’s empty mansion and meets “Earl” for the first time. Pierre is great at playing the calm, collected straight man while everything gets progressively more surreal around him.
I noted in my previous review that I wasn’t overly enamored with the actual murder mystery at play. Thankfully, this episode is able to add some wrinkles to said mystery, enough to spice things up a bit. For one thing, we discover that Kerry was a lot more keyed in on the alien situation from the get-go than she let on, and it’s increasingly clear that something is rotten beneath the small town facade. For another, we get a taste of the other half of the equation thanks to the debut of Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) and his men.
Granted, it’s a little frustrating that so many alien characters in this series are conveniently taking human form. It does make Lanterns feel a bit more limited in scope than I’d like. Even so, all the talk of rogue Manhunters and ruined civilizations does help elevate the conflict beyond just a simple small-town shootout. And I’m also enjoying how much these episodes are relying on subtle dialogue cues to clue us into the fact that these characters aren’t who they appear to be. There was the whole interrogation scene last week, and now the proximity/closeness exchange between John and Antaan.
Episode 2 ends on a particularly strong note, as Hal and John reunite at the motel. Their exchange is compelling. We watch as John silently wrestles with the question of whether he can truly trust Hal, and then throws caution to the wind and lets out everything he learned from Antaan. Maybe there’s hope for this duo after all.
Or maybe not. The episode ends with a hard pivot into more cosmic DC territory, as Hal finally suits up for the first time in 2016 and flies to Oa to pay a call on the incarcerated Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). We only get a few tantalizingly brief lines between the two characters, but I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing how this conversation plays out. Sinestro is easily one of my favorite DC villains, and the series can only benefit by leaning more into the larger-than-life trappings of the Green Lantern franchise.
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