There’s no doubt that Lanterns has been a big success for DC and HBO. The series successfully restored faith in James Gunn’s DCU after the misfire that was Supergirl. It also established a pivotal new hero in Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart, paving the way for the newly minted Green Lantern to appear in Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow.
While HBO has yet to formally greenlight Lanterns Season 2, it sounds like work is already well underway on writing the next season. That said, the prospect of more Lanterns has us feeling mixed emotions. As much as we want more of the series, we also recognize that it needs to profoundly change in Season 2. Here’s why Lanterns can’t simply deliver more of the same when it returns.
Most Lanterns fans would probably agree that the show’s biggest selling point throughout Season 1 was the dynamic between Pierre’s John and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan. Seeing the idealistic young John butt heads with the cantankerous, grizzled Hal never gets old. The DCU’s casting game has really been on-point so far, and nowhere is that more true than with the two Lanterns leads.
There’s just one problem - the show killed off half of that all-important equation. The series premiere closed with the reveal that Hal had been murdered in 2026. Thanks to the frequent flashbacks and the presence of Hal’s holographic backup (or “Halogram”), Season 1 still managed to feature the character prominently in most episodes.
But that likely won’t be the case for Season 2. The season finale delivers a final death for Hal when John finally claims the ring for himself and recharges it. The act of becoming a Green Lantern purges all traces of Hal’s consciousness from the ring. John has now embraced his heroic destiny, but that leaves him without his grumpy mentor going forward.
That’s a major issue for the series. Again, the central conflict between Hal and John was a huge driving force of Season 1 and the biggest reason to tune in each and every week. As it stands, the series lagged a bit in Episode 6 when Chandler stepped out of the spotlight. How can Lanterns hope to move forward when Chandler will presumably be out of the picture entirely? How can it fill that void?
Given how stoic and composed John is, he really needs a partner who can serve as a foil and fill those quiet spaces with emotion. If Hal Jordan can’t be that foil any longer, then someone else needs to rise to the challenge. Maybe that involves making Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner a more active member of the cast. I’d certainly like to see that dysfunctional relationship explored now that John has effectively muscled his way into taking over jurisdiction of Earth.
Or maybe the series needs to flip the script and turn John into the mentor to another aspiring Lantern. The comics certainly have no shortage of potential candidates, from Kyle Rayner to Jo Mullein to Simon Baz. Given John’s status as a Lantern who embraces fear rather than suppresses it, I’d be particularly interested in seeing him shepherd Jessica Cruz, a Lantern struggling to overcome her crippling anxiety disorder.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/lanterns-needs-to-become-a-very-different-series-in-season-2
