Well, it’s time to flick the lights off on Lanterns for now as we’ve finally reached the final episode of its eight episode run. It’s been something of an impressive ride, especially as – for the most part – the show has focused more on the “cop” part of the space cop nature of the classic comic book character than it has on large-scale cosmic drama. Well, anyone expecting your standard, gargantuan, comic book extravaganza, might once again feel a little turned around by “Stars And Dirt”, as it resolves the entire story using empathy and smarts rather than zapping everything in sight with green constructs.
As the show strived to be more like gritty procedural shows like True Detective rather than the gaudy misfire of the 2011 Ryan Reynolds movie, it should have been obvious that matters would have been cleared up more under the radar, but even those disappointed by a lack of conventional superhero-ing would have to agree that watching John Stewart finally become the Lantern he feels he has to be is nothing sort of exhilarating.
There’s an episode full of revelations in store as John Stewart finally ties up all the loose ends that’s sprung up in the wake of Hal Jordan’s murder. After laying out an escaped Sinestro on the dead, fear-soaked planet claimed by the Zoe Manhunter, Stewart prises some secrets out of Hal’s former mentor by dunking him in the poisoned waters of the ruined world and discovers a shocking truth. It turns out that Zoe wasn’t the last Manhunter, and due to some alien fuckery, her grandson Noah is also a Manhunter too. Worse yet, he was the one who broke Sinestro out of space-jail in the hope that the rogue member of the Corps would forge him a lantern of his own in order to make him all-powerful.
Heading back to Earth, Stewart starts to piece it all back together and is finally able to see the tragic timeline all laid out. While Noah is certainly a threat on paper, his upbringing from his mother, Sheriff Kerry, has given him both a conscience and the desire to quash the kill/conquer/repeat urges of his Manhunter heritage. Reaching an understanding with John, Noah requests just one more night, to play the big, high-school football game before he’ll allow Stewart to kill him and end the potential risk, but John decides to trust the young killing machine, believing that his inate goodness will offset the bad. Part of the reason that John believes him is that Noah admits to killing Jordan – which proves to be a lie as he’s protecting Hal’s true slayer: his mother, Kerry.
But rather than going full scorched earth with his findings, Stewart is instead going to take a route far less travelled and use empathy and forgiveness to light the way. Making an audacious play and declaring himself the Green Lantern equivalent of an independent contractor, Stewart breaks all sorts of cosmic laws in order to bring change to the Corps. Guy Gardener’s gonna be pissed…
With John Stewart (and by extention, the show in general) tearing up the rule book, you might well think that Lanterns’ ballsy denouement is supposed to act like some sort of defund the Green Lantern Corp movement. After all, rather than killing an alien murder machine; turning in the one who killed Hal Jordan; and relinquishing an illegally made lantern forged of both will and fear, virtually the entire last third of the episode seems to be a sizable middle finger to everything a Green Lantern should stand for. However, while cops – especially space ones – do need to exercise reasonable force when upholding the law, it also has to come from a place of understanding and empathy to avoid the mindless following of a potentially dangerous rhetoric. We already knew that Stewart had long thrown off the weight of all who had hefty expectations of him – the Guardians, his parents, Hal Jordan – but to watch him change virtually all the rules into something that could actually do some real good is truly something to see.
Unwilling to be defined by how other Lanterns have operated, Stewart opts not to be a swaggering wildcard like Jordan, or an officious messenger boy like Gardener, and instead operates from a place of kindness and understanding – after all, most of all, cops are supposed to keep the peace and that doesn’t mean you can’t do it with with words and reason rather than belting someone with a giant glowing green fist. Some will obviously have trouble equating their love for the characters with the bold swings happening here, and while I’d argue that some of the reveals aren’t quite as elegant as they could be, it all eventually makes sense within the story the series has been telling. In fact, I’d probably go as far to say that Stewart’s hijacking of earth from Green Lantern jurisdiction utterly overshadows the whodunit we’ve been following this entire time, but while the outing of Noah as a Manhunter still feels a little too random to be totally satisfying, at least Kelly Macdonald and Kyle Chandler get amble chance to say goodbye to their characters in ways that are genuinely moving.
But while the big murder reveal and the casual use of Sinestro to plug plot gaps can be a little frustrating, it’s Stewart’s intention to remove earth from the oversight of the Guardians that proves to steal the headlines. It’s a bold move that sees a black man taking it upon himself to challenge the established order that smacks nicely of what Marvel was trying to do with Sam Wilson’s Captain America, and while it might have made even more of an impact if Aaron Pierre’s John had laid down the law to the Guardians directly, rather than passing a message along via Nathan Fillon’s dumbfounded Guy Gardner, it’s still exceedingly fun watching the current Green Lantern get his marching orders from a defiant pretender and having Stewart write his own Green Lantern vow is just thrillingly confident.
Of course, even if you didn’t appreciate the more grounded journey that Lanterns took us on, it would do you well to remember that Stewart’s story is far from finished and that we’re due to see him ascend to the big screen for James Gunn’s Man Of Tomorrow in 2027. It’s common practice for comic book adaptations to set up an new status quo for a character only to show the ramifications in another project focusing on someone else entirely, so I’m curious how the shift in power will relate to the likes of Superman, Supergirl and the Justice Gang (name pending). Undeniably daring in its attempts to ground a notorious space bound character and drive home the more procedural and moral based aspects of policing the galaxy, Lanterns succeeds in showing an established character in an audacious new light.
While finding the right mix of grounded detective work and cosmic scale varied from episode to episode, we ultimately landed on a Lantern show that was, at turns, challenging, moving and effortlessly cool. However, most fitting of all was that the show proved to be completely and utterly fearless.
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