Lanterns
2026 • Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy • JioHotstar (HBO Max)
Director: Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King
Cast: Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald
🎯 Verdict
✍️ Full Review
Season 1 · 8 Episodes · Rating 3/5 — Very lukewarm show that avoids the mark marginally from being a complete misfire. Still has a promising future.
Alright. Let me get one thing straight out of the way. Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre’s casting as Lanterns was spot on. And of course, all the raving about the investigative mystery thriller aspects of the show somewhat holds up.
The Good
Lanterns has this very grounded hush-hush not showboating and not too shabby either approach when it comes to the CGI and its overall power angles. Yet, it leaves much to the desire when it comes to exploring the power of the ring.
The humor is also okay. Not great but good enough. There is a nonlinear trait of storytelling which is not much in and of itself. It’s just necessary in some contexts to let the lore expand. But, that is it.
The Mediocre and The Average
Lanterns right off the bat starts not at the beginning rather in the middle of a power transfer and that’s the high point. Much of the exposition remain either as memory implants or through dialogues. Ironically, the frustrating elements also get attached to the investigative thriller features of the plot. Two distinctly imperative twists, or at least should have been distinct and unique since both have been teased to the extreme up until that midseason finale and the finale become so generic and predictable that anyone can see it from miles away.
Secondly, you can’t stress the gravity of the situation to a calamitous level by ringing the bell through one of the OG villains of the Green Lantern Corp and then expect the audience to shiver when it comes to the light that the best the supervillain could do is manipulate by, as one character laughably puts, sexual congress. Apart from that, the only Armageddon proportioned extirpating capability of the other side is supposed to be more than equivalent to that of Elon Musk or Curtis Yarvin or Xi Xinping in the distant future. The ring was used properly like 4-5 times and what’s there to use it if the opposing force is so timid.
Third and the most important disappointing feature is probably the major one. For much of the talk about pride and honor and power. The show has very little to provide on any of these fundamentals. Even the character of John Stewart gets a little shaky when it comes to honor a couple of times. At other times, he displays that he is the only one with the integrity and the required finesse to wield such a powerful weapon. At least the people under the thumb or in debt stay true to their end of the bargain. The decisions taken by the sheriff, for the most part, pissed me quite a lot. It didn’t make any sense and towards the end, it was like the showrunners were just figuring her out as they went on. Even the group supposedly the counterweight to Hal Jordan’s mission also has lame basic abilities. And, I never thought I would say this about a superhero product about flair and CGI-saturated spectacle, but here we are. To ground Lanterns in reality and to quieten or dampen the usual stylistic elements of display related to this fatigued genre and to lean heavily on the narrative, one would anticipate more plot points, complex character motivations, intriguing villains and resolves all around like that in case of Legion or Watchmen, not these half measures. The background and backstory of Stewart also stay within the circumference of the used formula that we’re all familiar with.
Despite all the shortcomings of this show, it’s still way better than the rest of James Gunn’s DCU projects so far and that’d be setting the bar too low. In addition to that, Chandler’s portrayal of Hal Jordan and his chemistry with Pierre’s Stewart mostly carried this show. And yes, the soundtrack was amazing. Episode 4 and 5 try real hard to salvage the situation and for what it’s worth, these two episodes did that to an extent. That’s all. As the season progresses, I feel like, contrary to my expectations, I liked the early two episodes more than what came after the mid-season finale. Overall, it seemed like Lanterns was confused with itself philosophically, as if it lacked clarity and malnourished due to its forced ambiguity and ill at ease with its established comic book lore and the animation materials.