Despite a highly positive critical reception, Lanterns certainly has its share of detractors, and it's looking like the decision to kill off Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) in the closing moments of the series premiere may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fan pushback.
This past Sunday's third episode, "OutKast," presented a new origin for John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), and further muddied the waters when it comes to Jordan's heroism and worthiness of being chosen to wield the ring.
There also seems to be some disconnect between how a lot of fans view Stewart's parents (lunatics, basically), and how the show's writers are attempting to depict the characters.
John does make it clear to Laura Linney's Guardian that he knows his folks are "crazy" at one point, but is this really how they are supposed to come across?
"It's not my job to really judge characters," writer Vanessa Baden Kelly said in a recent interview with Collider. "That's what those characters decided to do, and that's what they did. We can judge them if we want to, but as a writer, I'm not going to judge them. In writing them and in the conceptualization of who they are and what that family was doing, we just wanted to present this idea, like Earl Woods, like Richard Williams, like Jalen Brunson's dad, like all of these people who, in the beginning, did things that we would be like, “Are you [frick]ing insane?” Did it work? And what about it worked? And how did that make them more exceptional than the people around them?"
Backlash aside, Lanterns is going from strength to strength when it comes to viewership.
According to Variety, episode 3 averaged 10 million viewers globally and 7 million viewers in the U.S. after three days of viewership. This marks a series high for the DC Studios/HBO Max show (the pilot episode has now attracted more than 20 million viewers worldwide), which ranks among the top five series launches in the platform’s history.
The decision to strip away a lot of the sci-fi elements of the comics for a more grounded, primarily Earth-based story does seem to have paid off.
Be sure to share your thoughts on Lanterns in the comments.
HBO in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. The pilot episode is co-written by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, who are co-creators for the series. Mundy serves as showrunner. The first two episodes are directed by James Hawes, with Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Alik Sakharov also tapped to direct. The series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, James Gunn, Peter Safran, King, Ron Schmidt, and Hawes. Based on the DC comic characters from Green Lantern.
The series stars Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
The series follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.