Lanterns Episode 1 Recap – “Pilot”

In much the same way that other superhero IPs like Teen Titans and Jessica Jones have taken a more gritty approach to their storytelling through live-action television shows, DC Comics is trying that approach with a new series called Lanterns. The series follows two of the most popular men to carry the ring, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and his eventual successor, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), and Lanterns Episode 1, “Pilot,” sets the stage.

Lanterns Episode 1 opens in 1996. A television in the background plays 20/20, and a news anchor (Bella Shaw) is heard explaining that the world has learned of the existence of a space cop watching over Earth that goes by the name Green Lantern. As the camera pans to the television, Hal Jordan appears on screen, and his interviewer asks him about his experience becoming Green Lantern.

Hal explains that the ring chose him and that he is now one of the galaxy’s Lanterns, an interplanetary police force that watches over galactic civilization. When asked if there was an interview process, Hal simply explains that the only question they asked was “Are you afraid?” Hal’s response is that a kid’s biggest fear is losing a parent, but when that’s already happened, there’s nothing left to fear. It’s really interesting to see Lanterns Episode 1 lean into the aesthetic of the mid-90s in its full glory.

Lanterns Episode 1 opens in the 90s, introducing us to a young John Stewart and Hal Jordan in his prime.

10-year-old John Stewart (Cairo Lee) watches his hero in awe as his siblings keep an eye on the window in case their father comes home. As their father (Sherman Augustus) comes in, dressed in military fatigues, John quickly turns the TV off and stands by. The only thing his father asks him is, “What’s his name?” John responds with “Hal… something, sir.”

John’s father takes him outside and places an apple on his head. From a short distance away, he asks his son, “Are you afraid?” John responds, “No, sir,” and in a parent-of-the-year moment, shoots the apple off his son’s head with his military-issue handgun. Young John doesn’t even flinch but, with admiration, embraces his father as they walk back into the house.

Fast forward to 2016 in Lanterns Episode 1, John is now about 30 years old and training under the man he grew up idolizing to be a Lantern. The Corps decided they needed a backup plan in case Hal could no longer fulfill his duty. Unfortunately, Hal is not the same man that John saw on 20/20 all those years ago. While the previous scene was traumatic in its own right, it makes John’s situation 20 years later much clearer.

While he exudes cocky arrogance and an inflated sense of self, at this point in Lanterns Episode 1, Hal is just a washed-up superhero who peaked 20 years ago and is still chasing that high. He’s far from the young Green Lantern that appeared in the opening flashback. This Hal Jordan is cynical, refuses to wear the uniform anymore unless there’s a PR stunt attached, and grumpy would be an understatement. It’s a great use of contrast to see how both John and Hal have developed — John, toward something greater than himself and Hal, further into his own bubble of self-pity and loneliness.

In that opening 2016 scene, Hal picks John up, and while John complains that the training is going too slowly and that he’s never even had a chance to put the ring on, Hal dismisses one concern after another until he finally leaves the ring on dash, gives John directions to where to go, and bails out of the car just before it’s going to crash.

In the moments before the crash, John sees the ring and knows he has to do something to save himself. He puts the ring on and uses it to create bubble wrap to cushion himself. Something more interesting happens, though, afterward. A hologram version of Hal from 10 years prior appears, expecting Hal to have died because someone else is wearing the ring. When it learns that Hal is alive, the Hologram gives John a message for him: “There’s hail in Rushville, Nebraska.”

Time jumps in 2016 and 2026 lay down the groundwork for the series’ mysteries. 

When he catches up with Hal, John gives him the message, and Hal immediately takes off in the sky. When John finally makes it to Nebraska, Hal is sitting in the bleachers of a football field where a shooting has just taken place. The sheriff (Kelly Macdonald) won’t let him anywhere near the crime scene because she claims sole jurisdiction.

When Hal objects on the grounds that an alien was involved and that falls in the jurisdiction of the Lanterns, the sheriff brushes it off as a has-been superhero trying to make himself relevant again. John notices a man suspiciously loitering near the crime scene and, against Hal’s advice, goes to make sure the sheriff has seen him.

Sheriff Kerry Kane is already wary of the Lanterns and immediately confronts John when he appears on the football field. Further, she has already seen the bystander and has clocked him as a potential suspect but has just been watching him for fear that he might get spooked and more people might be killed. John’s actions do scare him, and he takes off running. John and the Sheriff chase him and eventually split up. It’s not long before the suspect runs right into John’s fist and is able to be apprehended.

Hal, still believing the suspect is an alien, demands access to question him, which Sheriff Kane flatly refuses. He offers to buy John a drink, and they head off to the bar. At the bar, they discuss the case, and Hal is still 100% convinced the suspect in custody is an alien.

Meanwhile, the jukebox keeps playing the same song over and over again, and a few of the bar patrons are keen to the fact that it’s Hal using his ring to repeat the song. John warns him that it could lead to trouble, but that’s the point. Hal goes out of his way to get involved in a bar fight so he can be thrown into the small-town jail and have a chance to talk to the suspect without the Lanterns’ lack of jurisdiction being an issue.

Hal sets the ring down in front of John and walks off to get arrested. A woman (Poorna Jagannathan) sits down and asks John if he’s going to say yes. Confused, John asks what she means, and the woman jokes that he gave him a ring and probably expects an answer. After exchanging a few pleasantries, the woman learns that Jordan is also with the Corps that govern Lanterns.

A mysterious woman meets John, and even though we learn her identity, we don’t see much of her yet.

As the bar fight becomes contained by the police, John grabs the ring and says goodbye to the woman, who asks if he’s going to walk her out to her truck. John introduces himself by name, and they walk out together, climb into the cab of her pickup, and make love. It’s the most mature moment in Lanterns Episode 1, but it will eventually serve a much bigger plot point.

The next morning, John arrives at the Sheriff’s office to pick up Hal, but he’s told he’ll have to be arraigned first. Further, Sheriff Kane explains that Hal spent the night in a broom closet to keep him away from the suspect because it was clear to the sheriff what the motivation for that fight really was.

In front of the judge, Hal tries to use his reputation as the Green Lantern to no avail. Expecting that the Judge will simply allow him to leave, Hal simply responds to whether or not he understands the charges by putting his hands out and saying “C’mon!” The judge isn’t impressed, but before Hal can make things worse, a lawyer comes to the rescue, identifying himself as Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) for the defense. Maybe it’s all that time playing a lawyer with daddy issues on Matlock, but Ritter does an exceptional job of fitting right into the role of a lawyer with daddy issues in Lanterns Episode 1 too.

Jason Ritter’s Billy Macon fits in nicely in the courtroom.

Sheriff Kane, sitting with John, explains that Billy is her husband. Billy enters a not-guilty plea on behalf of his new client and asks for a lenient bail. The judge orders it at $100,000, to which Hal says “C’mon!” and the judge makes it $200,000 unless he’d like to try another “C’mon!” Billy explains that his father will have the check sent over by lunchtime, and court is adjourned.

Billy, on behalf of his father, who is a big fan of what the Lanterns are doing on Earth, extends an invitation to join him and his family at the Macon home for dinner. Being that the invitation was being extended from Billy’s father, it doesn’t seem prudent to decline, and later that afternoon, John and Hal arrive at what can only be described as a compound complete with multiple firing ranges and people practicing their shooting as the Lanterns make their way to the ranch.

When Hal meets Billy’s father, William (Garret Dillahunt), he asks all of the obvious questions about how and why, but William makes it clear that the money and the compound are actually coming from his employer, whom he cannot disclose due to an NDA. Suffice it to say that William Macon and his employer are deeply disturbed by the potential for Earth to be the target of aliens.

Meanwhile, John sees a young boy about 7 years old in the yard, throwing a football trying to get it through a tire ring. He walks over and gives the boy, who identifies himself as Noah Macon (Cary Christopher), a few tips on how to throw more intuitively.

After successfully throwing the football through the tire, Noah turns around and sees his grandmother approaching. He yells out, “Grandma! Come look!” The woman from the night before at the bar walks up, doting on her grandson. She gives a stern look to John and, as if in answer to the dumbfounded look on his face, says, “My name is Zoe Macon, by the way.”

At the end of the night, William asks how John’s grilled tofu was. John says it was delicious, to which William says, “Always good to eat off another man’s grill.” When pressed by Hal, John has to admit that he had slept with William’s wife the night before. It was shocking enough when Lanterns Episode 1 revealed Zoe’s identity, but William already knowing about John may be an even cleverer use of shock.

Football ends up being important in a key interrogation scene.

William pulls a few strings and gets Hal ten minutes alone with the suspect, so the next day Hal goes into an interview room with the suspect as Sheriff Kane and John watch from the window. The suspect is very cooperative at first, answering questions about his job and the football game. While it’s easy to understand that Hal is using this to test whether this guy is an alien, it ends up reading less like original storytelling and more like something ripped right out of an X-Files script with Kyle Chandler in the role of Agent Mulder.

Hal starts asking more about football, and the suspect has an absurdly good memory for small details but struggles to provide more than surface details about the sitting president, Barack Obama. Hal theorizes that the suspect is trained on human details about a specific thing but that he lacks human knowledge at a broader level.

When the suspect finally reveals the truth that Hal was right all along, he also threatens to blow himself and everyone else up with him. As the bomb inside him starts audibly ticking, Hal uses the ring to shield the blast, which is mostly effective, and takes his victory lap for being right about aliens. In the moments before his death, he makes clear to the Lanterns and Sheriff Kane that this is about revenge.

Then Lanterns Episode 1 does one more time jump, going to the present, 2026. John drives through the snow and eventually arrives at the football field from 2016. He gets out of his truck and meets Sheriff Kane. They embrace as old friends, and John asks about Noah, who the Sheriff is eager to say is playing quarterback.

John then turns to the reason for his visit. He asks her how many people know, and she says, “Just the groundskeeper.” They make their way into the stands to the same spot where he caught up with Hal on the night of the shooting 10 years before. Sitting in the same spot that night is Hal, but he’s frozen to death. There’s nothing more to be done for him, so John reaches for the ring, knowing that his time has come. Unfortunately, the ring isn’t on his finger.

That is where Lanterns Episode 1 leaves us. What’s happening in 2016? Who has the ring in 2026? According to the season’s trailer and the quick behind-the-scenes blurb that plays after the Lanterns Episode 1 credits, those are the right questions to be asking, and it appears that the series will attempt to solve a mystery in two different decades simultaneously.

Lanterns Episode 1 is now streaming on HBO Max with new episodes weekly on Sundays.