Lanterns Finale Review — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] I may not have gynocomastia, but I'm still going to lactate thoughts for you here on Lanterns, the newest DC show just wrapped up last night. So let's get your raw with the thoughts off rip.

[00:15] I liked the show overall. I thought there were some really good things about it, but I have a bunch of complaints as well. I don't think it's like an amazing show or anything,

[00:27] And I would actually say this is not even really a superhero show at all. It does have, like, a superhero skin by borrowing some characters, but it really doesn't want to be a superhero show at all.

[00:39] It kind of did what I expected it to do from the trailers that I was kind of worried about, where it just removes itself from superheroes to do its own thing with these characters. And, obviously, that's just the full frontal.

[00:53] I don't know a whole ton about Green Lantern or his lore. But what I do know is that that ring, that is like an extraordinarily powerful object capable of anything. A weapon of mass destruction.

[01:06] That ring gets used maybe like six times throughout the show, and only like two or three times during an action scene. Guy Gardner does more with the ring in his screen time in the superhero movie

[01:18] than John or Hal or Guy in this show do. And that's because it's not a show that's really wanting to be action-focused, or even, like, superhero-focused,

[01:30] which, I'm going to be honest, was a little disappointing to me at a lot of moments, because this show does build a lot. It has a lot of, like, really good building elements, a great foundation, but there's never, like, a big payoff,

[01:42] like a big climax or anything. Like, there is action that happens at the end, but it's super brief. It's very quick. It's fleeting. and it's wrapped up immediately.

[01:54] But anyway, we couldn't have been forgetting the meatballs because again, the focus is more so on the characters and the mystery that they build about this man-hunter in Rushville. So Hal Jordan is the Green Lantern and Hal received the ring

[02:07] after another candidate admitted to being afraid as he was being fucking abducted in the middle of the night with this green glow like fucking camera radiation swooping in there and scaring him.

[02:19] So he admitted to being afraid, thus the ring went to Hal, and that candidate never got over it, just filled with regret. So he and his wife, Bernadette, they then decide to train their son, John, to be worthy of that ring, to train him to live his life without ever knowing fear, to be truly fearless, to be the new Green Lantern so he can replace Hal Jordan.

[02:48] John Stewart does manage to catch the attention of the higher-ups and the ring itself, and thus Hal Jordan is tasked with training him, should anything ever happen to Hal. And Hal's a bit of a bad boy.

[03:00] He doesn't really get along super well with the top brass, so they're more than excited about the possibility of John Stewart replacing him, and Hal doesn't like that idea, so he never really trains John Stewart.

[03:12] Instead, he just kind of patronizes him, calling him Junior, and never really shows him the ropes or anything, but the two actually have great chemistry. I think they did a great job with the character interactions between them.

[03:24] Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, home run. He is the best part of the show. He plays this asshole that, like, he is douchey, but he gets the job done.

[03:36] And he does want to, like, protect people, protect the planet, and do his job. And he doesn't want to give up that job. And Jon Stewart is a man who knows nothing about fear, truly is fearless, cold, calculating, but still human.

[03:53] And he has gone through such a traumatic childhood, and throughout the show is coming to terms with what that means. It's a pretty deep theme that they explore, and I think they do a decent job with it. I think Jon Stewart is an interesting character that unfortunately gets done a disservice towards the end of the show.

[04:07] But for the most part, he is like this special candidate who's able to manifest even without wearing the ring. He puts the ring on, he can manifest even when he takes the ring off, which is unheard of. It's very impressive how Jordan notices this, and you can see, like, there is, like, a sense of jealousy,

[04:21] even fear of Hal, from Hal, about being replaced by this guy who might just genuinely be better than he is at this job. But he doesn't want to admit that. And thus, the two of them work together to solve this mystery of what's going on in Rushville,

[04:34] and there they encounter the Sheriff Carrie, and she becomes another pivotal character in this series. obviously I'm getting into spoilers here, here's your spoiler warning, they learn that there's a Manhunter in Rushville, and that's a huge deal, because Manhunters were thought to be extinct,

[04:49] and even one left alive is a threat to an entire species, so Hal and John have to work together to sniff out who the Manhunter is, because it can disguise itself as anyone, and then they need to find and destroy the Manhunter and I think as far as the mystery and detective elements go It mostly well done but it also so convenient that they get to just keep banging their head against the wall getting caught getting released and doing it all over again

[05:17] Like, Hal even getting shot from trespassing at some point, and they don't finish him off or anything, he comes back, does it all over again. like they just keep doing the same song and dance until eventually through trial and error

[05:29] and just constant failure they do piece it together who the Manhunter is someone that Jon Stewart's actually fucked the Manhunter is using Jon Stewart there and then that becomes a little bit of a thing

[05:43] but like overall I think the detective elements were pretty strong but they were mainly just carried by how good Hal and Jon's chemistry was and even up until the ending

[05:55] And Sheriff Carrie was a pretty interesting character, too, because she is wrapped up in this, and she knows who the Manhunter is, but out of fear for her son's safety and everyone in the town whom she does value their safety very much,

[06:08] she remains tight-lipped about it and tries to keep it under wraps and tries her best to just get Hal and John to fucking scram, skedaddle, get out of here. Like, she, until this final episode, was a pretty interesting character.

[06:23] I'm just going to fast-forward to the final episode, because I really do think that while some of the things I thought they sucked, there were some really bad choices that I didn't like from the finale in particular. The biggest one is what the fuck they were thinking with Sheriff Carey and the death of Hal Jordan.

[06:41] Now, Hal Jordan, he died before the finale, and that was another mystery about, well, who killed Hal? I mean, it's all said and done, it's been done and dusted. Why kill Hal Jordan? who was responsible for this murder, and that's what brings John back into the fold

[06:55] ten years after the events of what unfolded in Rushville with the Manhunter. And now, all of a sudden, Hal Jordan's dead. And John's the last one to really see him alive, and they got into a heated tiff, and John even punched him,

[07:10] and now he's been shot dead at the football stadium, where it really kind of all began there in Rushville. so that mystery gets wrapped up

[07:22] and it's revealed that there was actually another manhunter Noah, Sheriff Carey's son and Hal finds out about this because Noah saves Hal's wife after his house burns down

[07:35] and Hal tries to alert Carey like Noah the manhunter Sheriff Carey knows it's the biggest secret she's been trying to you know, keep under wraps

[07:47] and now that it's coming to light, she's starting to, like, break down, and she's getting kind of unhinged, but Hal Jordan's never being, like, unreasonable or anything about it. He's like, okay, we need to get out of here, we need to, you know, we need to get out of town,

[08:00] we gotta figure this out, you know, that kind of thing. He's not even saying anything crazy or anything off the rails and, you know, going rogue or anything. He's not like, I'm gonna go screw this fucking throat or something. Like, nothing like that, and yet Carrie is still, like, melting down

[08:12] until the point where it bubbles over with this rage because Hal just keeps talking about Noah, But again, not even like directly about Noah, just more like, what are they going to do about, you know, Noah being a manhunter? How can we, you know, what does this look like for us?

[08:25] Because Carrie and Hal are in love, and now this is a big deal. And it's clear, Hal does care about Noah. So he's saying things, they're not unreasonable or anything, they're not alarming, they're not threatening, and yet Carrie then turns around and shoots him in the head.

[08:38] Just fucking one-taps him, literally flicks like it's Counter-Strike, and just bops him. This is the sheriff. And she just murdered an innocent man. Her boyfriend.

[08:50] In cold blood. Like, the fact that Hal Jordan dies in this show, I don't think was, like, the worst decision, even though I think Hal Jordan was the best part of the show because the performance from Kyle Chandler was just fucking incredible.

[09:05] Narratively, like, it does make sense because it is, like, the passing of the torch to Jon Stewart becoming the new Lantern, even after initially, you know, declining it, which leads to Guy Gardner getting the ring

[09:17] and becoming the protector here. Like, it does narratively make sense. And I don't think Hal Jordan's kaput forever, especially with Sinestro revealing, like, there is a way to bring him back with the power of the ring and, like, the yellow lantern and such.

[09:29] So I don't think it's the last we've seen of Hal Jordan. So to me, it's not, like, a huge issue that Hal Jordan got world-starred. It's the way in which it happens and, like, how they get there.

[09:41] It's also really weird that they treat Hal Jordan's death like a joke, almost like he deserves to die, just because he was kind of rough around the edges with the way he interacts with people

[09:53] and, like, walls himself off from letting people actually, and he's not really vulnerable. So, when Hal Jordan does get murdered, his funeral is treated like it's supposed to be there as, like, a ha-ha moment,

[10:05] because nobody showed up. Ha, Hal Jordan's dead and not a single soul's there. Nobody at all. despite his decades of protecting people protecting the planet he went to jail for 10 years for what happened in Rush Girl He took the fall for all of it there which is actually a pretty emotional scene where Hal like I took the fall

[10:24] and John's like, you didn't take the fall, you fell. And it's like, yeah, Hal Jordan was rough around the edges, and they do establish that, but at the end of the day, he really was someone that was protecting this planet, protecting so many people for so, so long,

[10:38] and his death, what, no one cares? there's not a single person out there sad about it. There's not a single person out there that respects him. It's just this collective good riddance to the man that has

[10:50] countless times protected the people of this planet. That was just such an odd decision because no point throughout the show do you get the impression that Hal Jordan is a bad guy, like a villain. He's just kind of an asshole.

[11:03] Like, he is just someone that is putting up a wall because he doesn't want to let people in. and after his death and you and John gets to interact with the previously backed up Hal Jordan you get to see more of that side

[11:15] that is Hal Jordan and this was a hero even at the time of his demise it was a guy wanting to protect the people he cares about and just protect people in general like it's so weird that they would treat

[11:27] him dying like it's a fuck that guy moment that was odd very odd to me Sheriff Carey just losing it and shooting him in the head during what's not even really an argument or anything.

[11:41] It's just how, like, he's learning something, you know, universe-changing here. And he's being pretty level-headed about it. He's not being, like, aggressive or mean or rude, really. Like, he's being kind of loud, but not in, like, you know, a fashion where he's, like,

[11:54] pointing the finger at Carrie or, like, how are we going to kill Noah or anything like that? And yet she still snaps and kills him. She murders him as a man. And she is the sheriff of this town. and then John figures out that Sheriff Terry's the one who killed him Noah tried to take the

[12:09] blame for it but John is extremely wise and is able to really like sniff out the truth of everything which I do think is cool and fits his character like him figuring out the truth of that I think was very in line like I don't that's not something I'm criticizing by the way it kind of

[12:24] sounds that way but John is able to figure out it wasn't Noah that killed Hal Jordan it was Carrie and Carrie's like, I'll go turn myself in. And John says, I don't think that's what Hal would have wanted.

[12:37] Somehow I don't think that's what Hal would have wanted. And he's right. I don't think Hal would want her to turn herself in or anything, but this is a sheriff that just murdered a man in cold blood.

[12:49] That's kind of a big deal. Probably should go to jail for that, right? But then I guess you can make the argument that if she went to jail, then there's no one to keep Noah, like, grounded, which is more dangerous. But even still, like, again, I think the way in which Hal Jordan gets murdered by Carrie is quite the ass-pull that is, I think, just fucking silly.

[13:09] Like, I really do not think that was good at all. And also, it's just so frustrating in this show that they'll tell you things that happen without ever showing you. So Noah broke Sinestro out of one of the most secure prisons imaginable in the fucking universe.

[13:23] and now of course Noah is a manhunter so he has access to unfathomable technology but why not show that like you don't have to show him breaking him out like immediately but when Sinestro

[13:35] reveals that it or when they're talking to Sinestro and it's revealed that Noah was the one that released him from that prison that would have been a good moment to explain how the fuck he did that like that is a huge deal and they just say it

[13:47] instead of like show anything about it it would have been a really cool thing to see because throughout the show they keep driving home the idea of how dangerous Manhunters are. We never see it. There is nothing Zoe does as a Manhunter

[13:59] that was particularly impressive. She dies from just a normal bullet, just a normal snipe from John, that is just fucking, damn near 360 no-scopes her. She never did anything, like, extremely impressive

[14:11] even though they have explained that she was responsible for the extinction of an entire race prior to this. Noah again, talking about how dangerous Manhunters are and, like, the plans of how become president and he has his finger on the button

[14:23] that kind of stuff but we never see Noah do anything besides just like use a portal and go into fucking sand on a different planet the planet that Zoe was responsible for killing with the sphere gas and stuff so like they tell you how scary they are

[14:35] but they never show you anything so to me it never really feels like a big threat and when you tell me that Noah's done this huge thing I would have loved to see it how what does that look like it would have been a good opportunity to bring a bit of action

[14:48] or something to this which again I know it wasn't the focus, but still, it is a superhero show. You are using superhero characters, and you're not using, like, the most exciting elements of it. Like, I do think they have good detective foundation here.

[15:01] Like I said, I think the mystery and the way in which it's solved, for the most part, they'll tension effectively, the characters are pretty solid, all of it's strong enough, even though there are some times where it flounders. But, like, still, I think they do need to introduce action and introduce things to get you, like,

[15:18] invested, like, oh, these are an actual threat. you know I also really didn like what they did to Guy Gardner I don think it makes a whole lot of sense either in this universe Because Guy Gardner we have already seen in the Superman movies he is a badass

[15:32] And he is not afraid. Like, he is fearless. He is. He is worthy of that ring. And in here, he gets reduced to just like a bitch. Like, Jon Stewart Gangnam Styles on his ass.

[15:44] So, like, Guy Gardner is not the smartest character. That is by design. He is just, he is not overly intelligent. and that is something that's already been established. So him getting fooled by John, I didn't really have much of an issue with.

[15:57] That does fit in line with the character. He is a little douchey, but he's not like a bad guy. He's just arrogant. He's a little wacky and zingy, but he's not like a bad guy. And I don't think the show here makes him out to be a bad guy or anything.

[16:10] But anyway, he gets fooled by John, and in the final episode, John summons him again, and this time John's got the ring and he's got his lantern. So Guy immediately connects to John and is like, oh shit, this is not ancient.

[16:22] This is not by the book. This is not protocol. And John is now telling him that he's an independent contractor and that he's claiming Earth and to deliver a message to the Guardians that they'll find it in their heart to let him be,

[16:38] which is, of course, a reference to the Manhunter because when he takes the heart out, it crystallizes. And it's a huge secret because, obviously, the Guardians don't want it to come out that Manhunter who's still alive. So that is

[16:50] Jon's plan to have Guy tell him that, and then they'll be okay with him claiming Earth for himself, because now Jon wants to watch over it because he lets Noah live. There is a Manhunter on Earth that Jon is now covering for, even though it's

[17:02] pretty clear he's being used by Noah. Noah giving over the ring and the lantern that Noah had Sinestro make. I think Noah and Sinestro and Kahoot will see in Season 2, but it's pretty clear Jon

[17:14] is playing into that Manhunter. That's what they do. and now if things pop off, John wants to be the one to take him down and he's having Guy Gardner still maintain his protection over the entire sector, just not Earth.

[17:26] And Guy Gardner just like cowers at him about it. He's just like okay with it, so he flies off to deliver that message. And I just don't think that's in line at all for the Guy Gardner we already saw in Superman.

[17:38] I just don't think it makes sense for him to just accept that. Like, Jon Stewart is extraordinarily powerful. They do establish that. He is very unique when it comes to his usage of the ring, his willpower.

[17:51] But even still, Guy has shown he's not really afraid to back down from a fight. I feel like it would be very much in line for him to not just take that shit. And yet, he took all of that shit.

[18:03] So, I thought that was a little upsetting to just see him reduced to that. I'm sure it'll be explored more if the show continues, but I don't know, I just didn't really like that. They just felt like they were really quickly trying to wrap everything up,

[18:16] like just very convenient, very hastily wrap up these plot points. And speaking of plot points, they introduced the most meaningless side plot ever. So like when Hal and John were talking at the diner the last time they ever interacted,

[18:30] there was someone working at the diner who saw them, and now she's blackmailing John Stewart like, I'm going to tell everyone, and I'm going to let them all know what I saw, unless you give me $300,000. and then at the end John just does deliver that money.

[18:44] It was just such a fucking worthless side plot. So yeah, I clearly have quite a few complaints about the show. I do think that there were some hits, but there were some shits too. Overall, I was entertained by the show.

[18:56] I did enjoy it. I think there were some very great moments in there and I think there were some very not-so-great moments in there. But overall, I am excited to see what they would do with season two if they do get a season two.

[19:08] I think they do have good ingredients for a Green Lantern show here. Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan, like I said, fucking slam dunk. I really hope he's not actually down and out forever in that universe.

[19:20] That would be a real shame. I think it's very possible he is based on where this reads off, but they did kind of leave it open-ended like maybe he will come back. And Aaron Pierre as Jon Stewart, I also thought was fantastic.

[19:32] I just wish they didn't start to fumble it towards the end. So if they do have good ingredients for a Green Lantern show, It just didn't all come together here. I think they were too focused on removing themselves from a superhero show

[19:44] and instead getting wrapped up in a detective mystery show that didn't always blend together super well. I think they should have leaned a little bit more into the fucking ring.

[19:56] Like, they don't make any constructs in this at all or really utilize one of the most powerful, most versatile tools, which no doubt could have been fucking amazing to see here. and there were a lot of instances I thought it was going to come into play

[20:08] but then they just have it be like 5% charge, can't use that it's like oh god I don't know man I do hope there is a season 2 because I want to see where this

[20:20] goes, I want to see where they explore next but man they did have good moments, it's just a shame they couldn't really make it all work there throughout the whole show and stick the landing fully, anyway though

[20:32] that's really about it, see ya