The season finale of Lanterns (the show hasn't been officially renewed for a second run, but season 2 is in early development) is now streaming on HBO Max, and "Dirt and Stars" proved to be about as polarizing as you'd expect for the final episode of a series that has divided opinion from the very beginning.
The hour did provide us with answers to the show's central mysteries (whether they were satisfactory is up for debate), and established John Stewart as a brand-new, "unsanctioned" Lantern who will protect the Earth while Guy Gardner handles the cosmos.
During an interview with EW, showrunner Chris Mundy was asked if Stewart can technically be considered a Green Lantern since he broke away from the Corps with a new lantern forged by the villainous Sinestro.
"It’s definitely something that could be addressed if and when the show moves forward. We thought of him as being Green Lantern of Earth, but of course he’s more or less blackmailing the Guardians at the moment. So it’s both an empowered and precarious situation all at once."
As for Sinestro and the lantern he created for Manhunter/human hybrid Noah Macon, Mundy confirmed that it was "a lantern of willpower but [unintentionally] infused with fear."
"We talk so much about fear in general over the course of the season, for obvious reasons. Part of John’s realization and even Hal’s through the Halogram was you need to accept it and embrace it a little bit. Don’t pretend like it doesn’t exist. True courage and true heroism comes from understanding things are frightening and then overcoming them. So it all was born of that. It became a physical manifestation of the thing we were talking about. There’s a Bernadette [Jasmine Cephas Jones] line in 103 where she says like, “Courage is just fear that said its prayers.” We bounced around and touched on it a bunch of different times over the course of the season. Hopefully not in a preachy way, but we tried to layer it in where we could."
A lot of persistent fan theories did not pan out, including the expectation that William Macon would turn out to be Black Hand, and Antaan and his alien allies would be revealed as Atrocitus and the Red Lanterns.
Mundy says these characters were never considered.
"No. We really didn’t. We wanted to keep it pretty clean. At the end of episode 5 when all the s--- is raining down in Rushville, there was some talk at a certain point — because the whole water tower, which was full of darkness, had gone — we had a scene in the writers’ room in our heads where that darkness was still encroaching on the town and various other Lanterns in the Corps. came and blew it away. That was the one time we would’ve seen the others, but we ended up not doing it just because it pulled focus from our guys at that point."
Finally, Mundy weighed in on the introduction of Amie Mackenzie as Carol Ferris. Is this setting up the Star Sapphires? Ehh, probably not.
"The funeral was going to be lonely. We needed it for the story we were telling, but that is the one relationship that had some resonance. In a strange way, we wanted someone to be there for Hal, other than just Kerry. And in a strange way, it almost showed how many other people were not there by having Carol there. It just felt right. She was always gonna be there, and we never really questioned it."
What did you make of "Dirt and Stars"? Drop us a comment down below, and check out some new stills from the finale.
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.