Let’s say you’re a superhero and you’ve spent years wearing the “guardian of Earth” mantle. Would you willingly train a replacement rendering you obsolete? It’s like that veteran quarterback who is used to being the steady hand of the franchise. Then one day, the team brass decides to draft their eventual successor, even as they play at a relatively high level. In the pilot episode of “Lanterns,” the apprenticeship takes place on the same plane. There’s respect, but also contention on worthiness and fit. At least early on, the HBO show presents itself as a western, “True Detective” mashup that (thankfully) is not afraid to hide its otherworldly origins.
In fact, the show’s pilot episodes integrate groundedness and fantasy in a way that the world itself has accepted the presence of a super being or superpowered humans as normal. Writers Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King don’t overpower a viewer who’s not familiar with Green Lantern lore with too much; rather, they entice you with enough and hook you with the rural “Fargo-like” mystery this season is looking to tell. The pilot jumps around between three time periods; the first is 1996, where Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) reveals himself as Green Lantern in a television interview. A young John Stewart (Cairo Cash Lee) watches him intently, shrugging off any notion from his two brothers that he’ll get in trouble for doing so.
They don’t know each other yet, but they share the “no fear” credo Lanterns are supposed to embody. For Hal, it’s losing his father in a plane explosion. As he explains, after you lose a parent, it feels like any potential scary thing in the world is small. Not to mention, Hal was a test pilot himself, and that takes a certain taste for danger. John’s unshakability is not born of loss but cultivated through exercises by his father. Shooting an apple off of your son’s head is a bit extreme, but young John is unmoved by it. There’s even apple splatter on the shed from previous times.
The pilot episode doesn’t show us how the John/Hal apprentice relationship comes to be as we move into the 2016 timeline, but it’s there and rather contentious. Hal stresses that the ring has to choose you, as it chose him when the alien Lantern Abin Sur crash-landed on Earth one fateful night. That’s not the case with John — there’s a certain “you didn’t earn it the way I did” attitude from Hal. Credit to Chandler, who plays this role, balancing contempt for being a mentor with dry humor. He has an affinity for 1970s songs like KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight” and Melanie’s “Brand New Key” and a penchant for annoying his chosen apprentice. He berates him, then almost kills him in an intentional car crash. John, with his quick resolve, thinks of using bubble wrap to protect himself.
When we first see them together, John is very resolute with “yes, sir,” but the car crash was a bridge too far. A quick call to his father proves to be the pep talk he needs, but there are a couple of nuggets there worth nothing. It seems as though perhaps John Sr. wants this position a little bit more than his son. He also adds, “They are allowed to have tantrums; we’re not.” There’s a racial element in how John can act and how much he could push back against Hal’s ribbing.
The mystery begins when Hal’s consciousness comes out of the ring (with some funny riffing)—last backed up in 2006—noting that something is about to happen in Rushville, Nebraska. A mass shooting occurs in the small town, and Hal has a hunch aliens are involved in some way, shape, or form. The town also happens to be near where Hal first got the Lantern ring. How is this all connected? It’s one of the intriguing mysteries that connects to the bigger plot point at the end of the episode.
While in Rushville, Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) is not too eager to see Hal or John. It’s understandable why she would want to keep them out, given the potential media frenzy that would engulf the small southern town, so there’s a power struggle over jurisdiction. Hal can’t immediately prove an alien is at the heart of his shooting, so he concocts a funny plan to get arrested to be able to interrogate the suspect. John, well, he has some stuff to learn. While potentially blowing up the investigation, he also has time to hook up with a woman at the bar named Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan). Hal stresses how important the ring is, but takes it off and leaves it with John on numerous occasions. It’s also used to light cigarettes, open bottles, and counterfeit money.
It could get old using this power for extreme superhero business all the time. One would have wondered if Lanterns would use the ring for the most mundane purposes, and they do! It’s fresh and silly. Rushville is a small town, so there are many interconnected relationships. Billy Macon (Jason Ritter), the lawyer who represents Hal before the judge, is married to Kerry. His father, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), offers to front the bail money for Hal in exchange for a dinner meeting. As it turns out, William has a full compound with an armed militia. “Lanterns” exists in a world where Superman exists, so the public is used to heroes and threats from other galaxies. William presents himself to Hal as someone wanting the same thing: to protect Earth from an alien threat. It’s the same logic as someone Lex Luthor has, but with a southern xenophobic twang to it.
Hal gets the coast clear to speak to the suspect, Waylon Sanders (Chris Coy), but to what end? What does William want in return? During the best scene in the pilot, there are two interrogations: who Waylon actually is and Hal’s character. In an ingenious back-and-forth of dialogue, Hal breaks Waylon down quickly. If you don’t know that Harry Potter was at Hogwarts, ok. We can let that one slide. But being a Nebraskian in an election year with no desirable opinion about President Barack Obama is an immediate tell.
On the other side of the glass, the sheriff and John are talking about Hal. When asked about what he respects about Hal, John flippantly answers, “I don’t know, he’s fearless.” Sheriff Kane immediately tears down that notion, adding that having “no fear” is as honorable as Hal or the Lanterns make it out to be. If you don’t fear losing anybody, then is being fearless a front for being lonely? Hal has a devotion to the mantle, but it’s obviously wearing. Think about what he tells the waiter about wearing the suit. But nevertheless, he can’t let it go.
That brings us to the ultimate crescendo of the pilot episode in 2026. John and Sheriff Kane find Hal dead in the same bleachers, sans ring. What the hell happened to Hal? It’s a bold choice to kill off a major character this early in the season, but the time jumps will make sure Chandler is in the fold plenty. It’s not only the main mystery that is so intriguing, but it’s also the why and who of it all. Why Rushville of all places, and how does that connect back to Hal’s own origins as Earth’s guardian? Why did John not get the ring, and who could disarm a Lantern in a way that they could kill them in that manner? The pilot does its job in integrating many elements that might not work together into an intriguing premise that both fans of the characters and non-fans want to dive into further.
