![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/iw-criticspick.webp\")
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John Stewart \u2014 one of the most physically flawless humans to ever walk the planet Earth (and played quite credibly by Aaron Pierre<\/a>) \u2014 can\u2019t get no respect. The man is 6 feet, woah inches tall. He\u2019s built like a defensive end, and he runs like Tom Cruise<\/a> (palms flat, eyes fixed, barely controlled bursts of desperation the only threat to his perfect form). As a military-trained sniper, he can hit a bullseye from two miles out. He\u2019s loyal, vigilant, and supernaturally patient.<\/p>\n He is, in simpler terms, the complete package. So naturally, he\u2019s second fiddle to an old white guy who refuses to retire.<\/p>\n When \u201cLanterns\u201d<\/a> begins, John is waiting on the side of the road for the current Green Lantern to pick him up. Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler<\/a>), Earth\u2019s first and only intergalactic law enforcement officer, is supposed to be training John as his backup \u2014 a \u201cpull in case of emergency\u201d superhero who could step in if, God forbid, anything happens to the man entrusted with the most powerful weapon in the universe.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s good reason to think something will. After 20 years zipping across the galaxy, saving the planet from falling meteors and alien invaders, Hal is resting on his laurels. He doesn\u2019t don his uniform anymore, since jeans make it easier to \u201ctake a piss.\u201d He\u2019s got the perpetual stubble of a guy who can\u2019t manifest an electric razor out of thin air. His gray streaks betray an age that his boyish quips aim to negate, and when he finally shows up to get John, he\u2019s two weeks late and proudly hungover.<\/p>\n To say there\u2019s no love lost between mentor and mentee wouldn\u2019t be entirely accurate. But respect only runs one way, and \u2014 despite an impeccable r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and unrivaled skillset \u2014 John isn\u2019t on the receiving end. After two months of \u201clessons,\u201d he hasn\u2019t even worn the ring, let alone used it to fly into space. When he\u2019s not running random errands that amount to little more than getting the boss a cup of coffee, he\u2019s waiting: waiting for Hal to finish taking pictures with awestruck fans, waiting for Hal to stop spouting bullshit, waiting to be chosen, one more time, after a lifetime of making sure he has been.<\/p>\n Hal says he\u2019ll die before giving up the ring, and that entitlement, that sense of superiority, that deference to the old way of doing things \u2014 when exciting new opportunities are staring you dead in the face \u2014 drive the tension in HBO<\/a>\u2018s anti-buddy-cop drama; a superhero series as indebted to odd-couple police procedurals as it is determined to see them through the eyes of its systemically slighted protagonist, rather than the long-established perspective of the powerful.<\/p>\n John is a young Black man. Hal is an old white guy. John does everything right, and Hal thinks he does everything right. John has been working his whole life to be deemed a worthy member of the Green Lantern corps, and Hal was literally handed the ring after answering a single yes-or-no question correctly. There are shades of gray, as befits any honest characterization, but \u201cLanterns<\/a>\u201d is aptly clear about who these men are, as well as what they represent culturally, generationally, and beyond. Can they come to an understanding before it\u2019s too late to crack the case? Before it\u2019s too late to save each other? Before it\u2019s too late to save the world? <\/p>\n Can humanity? <\/p>\n The case, a unifying objective, is the source of those fears as well as their only hope, and \u201cLanterns\u201d pivots around a doozy. Soon after Hal and John\u2019s long-delayed return to training, they\u2019re summoned to Rushville, Nebraska, a small town where four strangers are dead after a shooting at a high school football game. Hal\u2019s gut tells him aliens are involved, which means he and his trainee won\u2019t be shooed away by the local sheriff, no matter how well-intentioned her urgings may be.<\/p>\n Sheriff Kerry Kane (an excellent Kelly Macdonald) is whipsmart and no-nonsense. She clocks suspects as quickly as she dismisses Hal\u2019s flirtations, and she exudes honesty and trustworthiness\u2026 despite being married to Billy (Jason Ritter), the son of the richest man in town, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), who just so happens to employ a private militia that\u2019s armed to the teeth for a war against\u2026 something.<\/p>\n Macon claims his funding and supplies are courtesy of a \u201cmysterious benefactor\u201d who he\u2019s prohibited from discussing (per an NDA). His wife, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan), is no help either, despite befriending John early on, and the rest of the town echoes their de facto leader: They do not want Hal and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 to be there.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all a bit fishy, and between the case, the characters, and the larger Green Lantern mythology, questions stack up quickly across the first few episodes. Keeping track of who\u2019s who, what happened when, and how a glowing green ring manifests objects with the power of its wearer\u2019s will can be overwhelming for anyone without a doctorate in DC Comics (and, frankly, even for those of us who grew up reciting the oath<\/a>). There are clunky moments where characters speak in thesis statements, and the larger stakes can get lost amid the individual dynamics.<\/p>\n But co-creators Chris Mundy (the showrunner and a former writer on \u201cTrue Detective: Night Country\u201d<\/a>), as well as Tom King and Damon Lindelof (who, after ambitious and elaborate series like \u201cWatchmen\u201d<\/a> and \u201cMrs. Davis,\u201d<\/a> knows how to turn exposition into entertainment) don\u2019t let you lose track of what matters, relying on clean structuring, emotional logic, and charismatic performers to carry viewers into the core of a scintillating story.<\/p>\n Topping the charisma charts is Chandler, whose good-ol\u2019-boy charms are shrewdly weaponized to win you over (as is the actor\u2019s beloved screen presence; it can\u2019t be a coincidence that the premiere episode finds the once and always Coach Taylor<\/a> prowling the sidelines of a high school football field). Hal is the irascible old-timer whose belittlement can be interpreted as tough love, so long as you believe he\u2019s one of the good guys. How \u201cLanterns\u201d bucks and embraces that assumption at once, while savoring Chandler\u2019s wily persona, is one of its finest feats (as well as some of the Emmy-winning actor\u2019s finest work).<\/p>\n Pierre, as a vegan who \u201cdoesn\u2019t believe in anything that causes enjoyment,\u201d (Hal\u2019s words) still infuses John with ample wit, passion, and mystique. In effect, \u201cLanterns\u201d is his origin story (albeit one that\u2019s purposefully at war with Hal\u2019s third act), and Pierre\u2019s cool magnetism optimally aligns with the steady trickle of information provided about his past. He\u2019s in complete command of the character, just as \u201cLanterns\u201d is confident in the genre-mashing mystery it carefully unfolds.<\/p>\n While not as bursting with ideas as Lindelof\u2019s best work or as visually stunning as \u201cTrue Detective\u2019s\u201d most memorable scenes, \u201cLanterns\u201d is an exciting synthesis of its creators\u2019 strengths. Like \u201cWatchmen,\u201d it\u2019s a cop show set in America\u2019s heartland that centers systemic racial discrimination (with a refreshing flourish of comic book sci-fi). Like \u201cTrue Detective,\u201d its partners are mismatched and unaligned, except when it comes to the case they\u2019re determined to crack (and the top-notch actors working in tandem to bring them to life). Through seven of the first season\u2019s eight episodes (and \u201cLanterns\u201d is intended to run for multiple seasons<\/a>), the series is a bright addition to HBO\u2019s expanding mandate, rather than an empty capitulation to corporate demand<\/a> for more name-brand franchises (although \u201cHarry Potter\u201d is name-checked more than once).<\/p>\n Best of all, \u201cLanterns\u201d embodies the ethos it so closely studies. To become a Green Lantern, you must be deemed worthy and then answer a single question, posed under perilous circumstances: Are you afraid? \u201cLanterns\u201d is not \u2014 it\u2019s a bold endeavor, even riskier than the ill-fated Ryan Reynolds movie<\/a> it contradicts at every turn (including very little use of the suit) \u2014 but it is keenly invested in the fears we carry, what they mean to the world, and how they define our humanity. Our fears are neither purely good or evil; they\u2019re not meant to define us, but they\u2019re not erasable either; they deserve our respect, like John, not our compliance, which Hal happily withholds. <\/p>\n Sounds like \u201cLanterns\u201d has the perfect team. Light \u2019em up.<\/p>\n Grade: A-<\/p>\n \u201cLanterns\u201d premieres Sunday, August 16 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale (Episode 8) on October 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Stewart \u2014 one of the most physically flawless humans to ever walk the planet Earth (and played…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1000653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[66614,171,5560,92920,151292,11853,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1000652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-aaron-pierre","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-kyle-chandler","tag-lanterns","tag-reviews","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117094988351909813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1000653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"TORONTO,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2254509227.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-rivals-of-amziah-king-319857_c200b9.webp\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"'Lanterns'](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Lanterns-HBO-series-Aaron-Pierre-as-John-Stewart-and-Kyle-Chandler-as-Hal-Jordan.jpg\")
Aaron Pierre<\/a> and Kyle Chandler<\/a> in \u2018Lanterns\u2019Courtesy of John Johnson \/ HBO Max<\/p>\n