The new show “Lanterns” feels to me as if it came by silently. Everyone I knew seemed to be watching it with their own chosen person, and I didn’t realize I wasn’t the only one quietly waiting by my laptop every Sunday at 9 p.m. with my boyfriend.
As an outsider to the DC universe besides movies, this review is coming entirely from a stand-alone perspective. I am sure there will be inaccuracies in how I understand certain characters, or lack-there-of. Consider yourself warned.
What surprised me most about “Lanterns” was how little I needed to know going into it. I expected the DC connections to feel daunting, especially knowing how much history exists behind this world. Instead, the show gave me enough information to understand what mattered without constantly reminding me that I was a dumb know-nothing. All I really know about the Green Lantern is from Guy’s role in “Superman” (2025)–and I didn’t like him. Sure I had essentially an expert next to me explaining any question I had, but I was usually told to just hush and watch because it is, in fact, a detective show.
More importantly, “Lanterns” felt like a show about people before it felt like a superhero show. The powers were so secondary to the plot, it was so much more about relationships and power struggles. There is something about watching characters struggle with trust, responsibility, grief, and their own sense of purpose that just completely erases any small desire to watch another superhero with a cool but drawn-out fight sequence.
That is also where I think the show’s slower moments work best. “Lanterns” does not always come off like it is desperately trying to prove that something important is happening. It allows scenes to breathe, which I think is made most obvious by the purposeful use of music, which was few and far between. Scenes were left uncomfortable or mundane, and characters are given room to exist outside of whatever larger plot is developing. When John and Hal, played by Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler, meet up with the first supposed Manhunter and the viewer is faced with a fully nude man asking John who he knows had sex with his wife, to draw him; there’s genuinely nothing else to sit with but that. Something else that really got me was the lead-up to the finale; the holes in conversations were filled by new knowledge, and it wasn’t terribly cliché or expected.
That being said, “Lanterns” is not perfect. Some of its choices worked better for me than others, and there were moments where Kelly Macdonald’s acting and nearly consistent facial expression would just take me out of the moment. Despite the decent attempts of the show, I still think her character fell flat, with hardly any significant lines until she was thrown in the center of Hal’s murder. But those flaws did not outweigh what I enjoyed about the show.
Ultimately, I came into “Lanterns” without the expectations of a longtime DC fan and left feeling like I had been invited into its world. I did not need to understand every reference or know every particular of comic history to care about what was happening in front of me.
Maybe that is why I feel the show came by silently. It did not have to be the biggest show on television for me to care about it. It simply became something I looked forward to every Sunday night. I find that I’ve seen a lot of shows that are just alright, yet forgettable. This wasn’t the case with “Lanterns”; I think they did what they had to do to make you care about the character. Sometimes that is enough.
Sophomore Ramona Banos is the Photography Editor. Her Email is vbanos@fandm.edu.