Entertainment
‘Lanterns’ Creators Have a Message for Fans After That Shocking Premiere Twist
Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 1.
HBO’s Lanterns has finally arrived with a premiere that could have major ramifications for James Gunn‘s wider DCU. Before getting to that, however, the show’s first episode introduces viewers to the characters who will be leading this particular story — and, in terms of the genre, think neo-Western detective drama, only if said detectives had access to a green power ring that could conjure anything within the boundaries of their own imagination.
Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) is globally known as the Green Lantern when the series first introduces him, kicking around as the protector of Earth decades before Superman (David Corenswet) shows up, but by 2016, he’s fully aware of the fact that the Guardians of the Universe, who are in charge of the Green Lantern Corps, are teeing up his potential replacement. John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) is a relatively green (no pun intended) recruit with greater ambitions of wearing the ring himself one day, but his straight-laced demeanor clashes with Hal’s untraditional approach to training.
When the two are unexpectedly thrown into a murder investigation in Rushville, Nebraska — a town that Hal has a personal connection to — it leads them down a path to an even bigger and darker conspiracy with little in the way of reassuring answers. But if you thought that was the entirety of Lanterns‘ plot, think again. The final moments of the premiere jump ahead a decade to 2026, where John is summoned back to Rushville by local sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) and makes a shocking discovery there: Hal Jordan, dead by a single gunshot to the head.
Ahead of the Lanterns premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with several members of the show’s cast and creative team, including co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom King. Below, the co-writers of Episode 1 reveal which comic book runs had the biggest influence on the show and where Lanterns sits in terms of the greater DCU continuity, and also share a message for fans who might be shocked and maybe even a little upset about Hal’s apparent demise.
COLLIDER: This is obviously rooted in a lot of comic book lore, but I think the show itself is telling a really interesting and unique story, and I was curious about whether there were any ways you wanted to intentionally embrace the comic inspirations for the viewers — whether that’s narrative choices, stylistic choices, anything along those lines?
DAMON LINDELOF: I’ll let you dive in because, normally, I’m the most comic booky person in the room, but I have this rare experience to not be.
TOM KING: It was always important to constantly be like, we’re not just making a cop show where they happen to wear rings. This is a show about Green Lanterns in a cop show, with me always going back to the source material and to the thousands of men and women who have made this material and love this material, and what they loved about it and what made it shine, from when Green Lantern’s first concept was created in 1942 to when Hal came on in the early ‘60s, to when John came along in the ‘70s, and then looking back at that stuff. So, you see it running through the whole thing.
John’s origin story is deeply tied to his first appearance by Neal Adams and Dennis O’Neil. I think Kyle [Chandler]’s sort of brilliant, bravura performance is very much tied to that Gil Kane, John Broome, Silver Age, 1960s optimism, but then bringing something new to it, something that only you can do on TV and be like, this is not just a comic book brought to life — this is a TV show that exists to be an incredible TV show.
Part of that’s just personal, working with Chris [Mundy] and Damon, who have grown up in this medium and know how this medium works, and know how, when you turn on a TV show, you’re inviting another family into your room, and they’re sitting on the couch with you, and making that essential to the heart of it, too.
Damon Lindelof and Tom King Explain Where ‘Lanterns’ Sits in the DCU’s Overall Timeline
“We had to accommodate and make sure that everything kind of fit together…”
[Lanterns] exists in its own space, but there are ties to the greater DC universe here and there, and the show establishes that Hal has been the Green Lantern for a while when we’re first introduced to these characters. What were those conversations like with James [Gunn] about how this fits into the overall timeline that they’re creating?
LINDELOF: I’ll answer it, even though the story starts with Tom. James and Peter [Safran], when they first took over at DC, they brought together a brain trust of comics writers, television writers, film writers, people that they trusted, to kind of begin to iterate what their vision was, and the projects that would relate from that. But all of that was already happening after James had written the Superman script, in which Guy Gardner was Green Lantern. And so, I think in the body of that meeting, Tom first pitched True Detective with Green Lanterns — and, very specifically, Hal and John in some sort of a buddy cop, Training Day, “I’m showing you the ropes” kind of scenario. So, all of that predated me coming in.
But clearly, as soon as I heard it, my question was some version of, I think, yours, which is like, “Well, if Guy is the Green Lantern of Earth, then where is Hal? Why aren’t they talking about him?” And James was like, “What do you think? The sky’s the limit.” And we very quickly started iterating. “Well, Hal’s probably still alive, so maybe he’s retired. Or, wait a minute, is he alive? And what about John? Don’t we want John to be Earth’s Green Lantern? He’s so cool.”
So all of those conversations organically started to kind of come around the spirit of, “How do we understand that in the present day of the DCU, the one that Superman is kind of a backdoor pilot for?” And James really, when he and Peter took over, [was] saying, “We’re not doing origin stories, we’re going to hit the ground running. This is a fully baked world, and Clark and Lois are already a thing, and the Justice Gang, people know who Mister Terrific is and who Guy Gardner is and who Lex Luthor is. And then you have the Peacemaker universe, as well, which was kind of up and running. I think the second season of Peacemaker had already been largely written when we started — at least, you were telling me about it…
KING: Yeah, Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, and Superman.
LINDELOF: …when we were starting in the Lanterns room. So, we had to accommodate and make sure that everything kind of fit together, but I would also say that once James and Peter heard our pitch on how we were going to answer these questions, they were super-duper excited. And to some degree, under Chris’s leadership, we were siloed, but at the same time, DC was constantly reading all of our material, weighing in. Really, a positive creative partnership, but they kind of let us cook, as it related to who was going to end up with the ring at the end of our season.
‘Lanterns’ Co-Creators Want Fans To Keep Watching After Episode 1’s Brutal Cliffhanger
“I think we’re willing to absorb the boos from the audience in the first inning, as long as we still have a shot at winning the game.”
To bring it back to the Hal of it all, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the way the premiere ends, with a moment that I think is going to surprise some viewers. I know we can’t get into how everything is going to wrap up, but what I will ask is whether there’s any reassurance you can offer fans who might be confused, or maybe a little upset, by that particular story choice and how it’s going to play out throughout the season.
LINDELOF: Well, I’ve had no experience with the fans being upset with me or confused by anything that I’ve ever done, so that’ll be a first, and I’ll just have to kind of learn the ropes.
KING: I feel like you just admitted to not opening my emails.
LINDELOF: [Laughs] And you haven’t been through that either.
KING: No, no, no, never.
LINDELOF: In all seriousness, the first thing [is] that Tom and I looked at each other when we were even kicking around the idea of killing Hal, and we were like, “We can’t do that. Everyone’s going to hate us. It feels gimmicky.” But Mundy actually was like, “I don’t think that it does feel gimmicky. I think that it will actually infuse the entire story with a lot of emotionality, especially if the audience understands that John and Hal were not in a good place at the time that Hal died.” Traditionally, in comic books, my understanding is that these characters can’t die. But if we’re doing something that’s supposed to be grounded, maybe this is something that we have to do? Then we’re like, “Yeah, but we’re still going to get blamed for it!”
But we gradually started coming around to it. And I think because we were so reluctant to do it and because we’re fans, and at the same time, we get our turn to run with the baton of these amazing characters, but also just as fans, Hal means something to us, too. So, we basically started reframing the question in terms of, yes, on Sunday night, are we willing to acknowledge that a lot of people are going to be angry, that if we were watching this and not making it, that we would be saying, “I waited this long for another live-action version of Hal, having not gotten him since the Ryan Reynolds film, and then basically 50 minutes after getting me to fall in love with Kyle Chandler, you’re killing him off? Fuck you.”
I guess our feeling is, let’s see how you feel at the end of Episode 8, and if you still feel like it was exploitative or unnecessary, or that it wasn’t exactly what had to happen in order for this story to get told, then we deserve it. But I think we’re willing to absorb the boos from the audience in the first inning, as long as we still have a shot at winning the game.
KING: Yeah. And I’m with the audience here. Like, I love Hal. I adore that character.
LINDELOF: I love Hal, too!
KING: I adored writing him. I don’t know if you’ve met Kyle Chandler. He’s fairly charming.
LINDELOF: He’s very charming.
KING: He’s absolutely wonderful. And I was the guy who turned off the show after the Red Wedding and was like, “Never again!” And so, I have been there. I may have even yelled at the television over Lost once or twice.
LINDELOF: Reasonable.
KING: But yeah, this is a show that we’re trying to make as close to reality, and sometimes you lose the things you love, and sometimes the stakes are that high in reality, and they’re supposed to be that high in our show. So, as much as I love that and making a show that’s about the real world, that’s about our loves and our losses, we have to write about the losses. The love and the loss are both part of this story.
New episodes of Lanterns premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
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