Jonathan Millar 
Anil Krishna 
James Oconner 
Grounding the Green Lanterns: Why the New DCU Series Must Avoid the Origin Trap
© HBO Max
When Lanterns was first announced as a grounded Green Lantern series with a True Detective-style mystery, it immediately sounded like a pretty good idea. Green Lantern stories can get lost in all the cosmic stuff, especially when there are too many aliens, too much CGI and endless explanations about how the universe works. Putting Hal Jordan and John Stewart on Earth and letting them investigate an actual mystery gives the show a chance to do something different. It could make the characters feel like people first and superheroes second, at least for a while.
The pairing itself is probably one of the most interesting things about the series. An older, experienced Hal Jordan working alongside a younger John Stewart gives the show an easy source of tension without having to manufacture it. They’re going to see things differently, and they’re coming from completely different places. But there is one thing that could get in the way of all this: spending too much time on John becoming a Green Lantern.
This is where superhero origin stories can become a problem. A new franchise starts, the first few episodes explain where the powers come from, then we get the rules, the mythology, the training, the costume and eventually the big moment when the hero finally becomes the hero everyone came to see. By the time all of that is finished, the actual story has barely started. And sometimes the setup becomes more interesting than what the show was supposedly building toward.
Lanterns doesn’t really need to explain every little thing about the Green Lantern Corps for an entire season. Viewers can pick things up along the way. The rings, the Guardians, the Corps and all the cosmic mythology are important, sure, but they don’t need to be delivered like a textbook. If the first season spends too much time teaching us how Green Lanterns work instead of letting Hal and John solve the mystery they’ve been sent to investigate, the grounded approach starts to lose its purpose.
The better option would be to let the Green Lantern stuff sit in the background while the investigation takes centre stage. Let Hal and John argue, make mistakes, disagree about how far they should go and slowly uncover whatever is happening in the American heartland. That would also give the show room to explore the relationship between the two characters instead of constantly stopping the story to explain another piece of DC mythology.
That’s really what Lanterns needs to get right. The new DCU doesn’t have to prove that it knows Green Lantern lore by throwing all of it at the audience in the first season. It can trust people to follow along. If the series can actually deliver the tense, character-driven mystery it has been promising, while gradually bringing in the stranger parts of the Green Lantern universe, it could feel like a proper fresh start rather than another superhero origin story stretched across eight episodes.
And honestly, that would probably make the cosmic side more exciting when it finally does arrive. Give us a reason to care about Hal and John first, then open up the universe around them. Lanterns has a chance to establish a very different corner of the DCU, but it needs to resist the temptation to explain everything before it gets to the interesting part.
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