Halfway into the first season of Lanterns and I can’t help but feel as though I’m missing something. Mostly, I feel like I’m missing any reason to care. It’s not that Lanterns is terrible. There were a few moments I genuinely enjoyed in Episode 4 . It just seems as though the cart has been put squarely in front of the horse on this one.

Maybe the show needed to build up the mundane mystery first, let us get to know Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) a bit more, and let them get to know one another a bit more, before it started throwing curveballs at us. Aliens, Manhunters, manipulative Tiger Moms, backstabbing and betrayal. I barely know these characters, let alone Hal’s old mentor, Sinestro, or this weird Guardian alien lady, but I’m supposed to be invested enough to care about the schemes they’re all plotting? Hmmmm.

In Episode 4, titled "Weenie", our heroes attempt to sneak into William Macon’s (Garret Dillahunt) compound to find his “Weenie” – aka, the center of the compound, which John likens to Cinderella’s castle in Disneyland – which is where they think they’ll find the Manhunter. John even makes a joke about them not letting him into “the happiest place on Earth” because he’d kill the vibe.

They don’t have much time before the aliens that abducted John will unleash hell on Rushville, but they don’t have much to go on. Sinestro told Hal a few things in his space prison: That he needed to kill John Stewart, first and foremost, but also that Manhunters can’t replicate a human heart.

The problem with this information is that it’s a bit like the Monty Python duck vs witch scene. You can’t know if the witch is a witch until you throw her in the pond to see if she’ll sink or float (like very small rocks!) and you can’t tell that a Manhunter’s heart isn’t human unless they’re dead. At which point it crystallizes. And if it doesn’t, well, oops!

While Hal is away, John goes to a gun store and tries to buy a scope (which he’ll later use as a telescope, which means he could have just bought binoculars). The rednecks don’t take kindly to folks like him (or Hal, I don’t think it’s a race thing, but who can say?) and tell John that scopes are package deals. You also need to buy a rifle. So John sets a roll of hundred-dollar bills on the counter, takes the scope off the rifle and heads out, paying for it all and leaving a nice tip. Maybe. They never actually tell him how much the rifle costs! Or fill out any paperwork.

I’m not sure why he doesn’t take the gun. Later, Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) gives him a shotgun because they’re in danger. Seems like having a rifle with the scope would have made more sense than effectively buying the jerk rednecks a rifle.

In any case, they sneak into a warehouse in the center of the compound where they see some newfangled-looking alien rifles but Hal steps on a section of floor that sounds off an alarm (despite John attempting to place a very large weight on it so that it won’t activate once Hal steps off) and Macon’s goons rush them, shooting billowing darkness out of their alien rifles.

Our heroes are brought to Macon’s room, and after a brief conversation, he undresses in front of them so that John can sketch him with charcoal. It’s a power move if ever I’ve seen one. Though, come to think of it, not so different from Lord Ormund Hightower’s own disrobing in Season 3 of House of the Dragon , also on HBO .

Things are looking rather bad for our dynamic duo until Sheriff Kerry shows up and hauls them back to their motel (which is when she gives John the gun and Hal complains that he doesn’t get one despite having one of the Rings of Power).

Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) visits John for some more fun times and urges him to leave town. As she drives off in her truck, a laser beam from the sky blows up her truck in a rather shocking moment of destruction. Hal flies up to where John motions and retrieves a satellite from orbit. It looks like an antique. Sheriff Kane returns and they do some quick and easy detective work, connecting the satellite to the owner of some slaughterhouses. They head to the nearest one, assuming that it’s some kind of trap set by the Manhunter.

When they arrive, the slaughterhouse is . . . very peculiar. The workers don’t behave like humans at all. They walk into a shower room where smooth jazz is playing. “Jazz,” Hal says, “That can’t be good.” A cow teleports through a wall and Hal says, “Well, we found the cows,” earning him two of the best lines of the evening, though “I guess we found his weenie” was pretty funny also. Hal just has my sense of humor, I guess.

As they watch, the cow is lasered into precise cuts (sirloin, chuck roast, ribs, etc) and the entire room is splattered with blood, though our heroes are saved by Hal’s prescient green shield. “That’s why I’m vegan,” John says, making his second joke of the evening, as they leave the slaughterhouse’s shower room.

Past this, they find a man sitting at a desk with a laptop. He tells them that he’s going to blow up John’s family in three minutes. He also plays John and the Guardian lady’s conversation (he had the motel bugged) for Hal and John. It’s an awkward moment. But Hal isn’t falling for the bait. He thinks the man is a decoy, pretending to be the Manhunter. He threatens to kill him since the only way to prove that you’re a Manhunter is to “rip your bleeping heart out.”

The man admits to being human and enters the code in the laptop. The man reveals that he was an engineering student and that Will Macon is the Manhunter. This seems . . . unlikely. We have two interesting claims. Macon says the Manhunter cured Macon’s cancer and Zoe tells John that she saved Macon’s life (not that she was his nurse, but that she saved his life). Of course, by the end of the episode they basically confirm that Zoe isn’t dead and is, in fact, the Manhunter. But that empty hospital makes me think that there are numerous Manhunters in Rushville – potentially lots more.

John and Hal have a heart-to-heart on the drive afterward, finally bonding a little bit. John apologizes (sort of) for what he said, and tells him he would have given him the ring back. Hal says it’s no big deal, he would have done the same thing. Hal is always working people, though, and here he’s trying to tease the truth out of John. He tells him to call the “alien hit squad” to meet up at the cafe.

“I really did forgive you,” Hal says after John arranges the meeting. “I thought you’d be honest.”

“When Zoe blew up, I didn’t get why you weren’t upset,” Hal says. “I thought you were made of stone. I wondered why you weren’t sad. I knew you liked her. Then with Hector, when you freaked out about your parents, it all hit me. You ain’t made of stone, Junior. You aren’t upset because you know Zoe isn’t dead, and I don’t know how she managed to get out of that car alive unless she’s a Manhunter. The thing that I can’t figure out is how long you’ve known.”

“I didn’t know, I just had a feeling,” John answers defensively.

“The student surpasses the teacher,” Hal says mockingly in response.

They trade barbs and Hal makes a remark about being old and tired. “Well I’m sorry about that,” John says. “Well I’m sorry about the rental,” Hal quips back, once again leaping from a moving vehicle, leaving John inside. It crashes into a post and the credits roll.

This wasn’t a bad episode other than the weird gun shop scene, but I’m still having a hard time connecting with these characters and this story. I like Hal and John but I feel like their dynamic works better in theory than in practice. I was thinking about Men In Black after I watched this episode. That’s a sort of similar duo. An older white guy and a younger Black guy who team up as an odd couple of sorts to take on an alien threat. But the dynamic between Tommy Lee Jones (Agent K) and Will Smith (Agent J) just works so much better in that movie, and they manage to set it up in a fraction of the time. Of course, Will Smith has that special charisma, so perhaps it’s an unfair comparison.

Either way, I feel like we have a lot of conspiracy and backstabbing and mystery going on, but not a lot of reasons to care. I wish that we’d had more of a “mundane” mystery first and spent more time with these two getting to know each other before we had Sinestro and the Guardian lady and all the rest enter the picture.

I’m also reminded of yet another dynamic duo in a much more recent show: Marvel’s excellent Wonder Man, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as struggling actor Simon Williams and Ben Kingsley reprising his role as Trevor Slattery. They form their own unlikely pair, each with their own unlikely secrets, but it’s just far more enjoyable and I found myself connecting with those characters right away, whereas I feel like I’m still only warming up to Hal and John, despite liking them both for different reasons.

It’s hard to put my finger on what, exactly, isn’t clicking. But something is missing here, and it’s creating a disconnect when I watch. It’s hard to know what this show is trying to be. It’s a detective drama, sort of, but the actual detective work is pretty thin. It’s a superhero show, sort of, but the superhero stuff is pretty meager. It’s a buddy cop series but the buddies still haven’t gelled halfway in, and have spent far too much time apart. The problem isn’t that Lanterns is trying to do too much. I’d be perfectly happy with a detective-superhero show (like the recently cancelled Spider Noir ), but halfway through its first season, Lanterns still hasn’t convinced me that it knows how to be one.

Hopefully the second half of the season finds its stride and tightens things up.

P.S. To curtail the most common response: No, it’s not because there’s “not enough action” or anything like that. I like a good slow burn. If anything, I think the story has been rushed and we haven’t had enough character-building to get us to this point in the plot.

What do you think of Lanterns so far? Let me know on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook .

Previous Lanterns Episodic Reviews

  • Read my Lanterns Episode 1 recap and review here . Watch my video review here .
  • Read my Lanterns Episode 2 recap and review here . Watch my video review here .
  • Read my Lanterns Episode 3 recap and review here . Watch my video review here .