HBO’s “Lanterns” returned this week with episode two, “Trust Fall,” and the show still can’t decide whether it wants to be a grounded sci-fi detective mystery or another vehicle for the network’s addiction to gratuitous shock content.
Episode one ended on a flash forward: Hal Jordan, ten years in the future, dead or frozen in the snow with a bullet wound over his eye. It was the kind of cliffhanger that should drive the next hour. Episode two ignores it completely. Not a mention, not a flashback, nothing. If a show is going to drop that kind of reveal in its premiere, it needs to actually build toward it instead of using it as a cheap hook and moving on. That’s a structural problem, not a nitpick. It signals a show more interested in shocking the audience for a week of headlines than in earning its story beats.
That instinct shows up again early in episode two. Hal breaks into the morgue to pull the bodies of the four aliens killed in the premiere, running them through Will Macon’s alien detection setup. In the process, the show puts a full frontal shot of one of the corpses on screen for no narrative reason. It adds nothing. It could have been cut entirely and the scene would have played exactly the same. This is the same playbook HBO ran with “House of the Dragon,” where gratuitous content got prioritized over storytelling and made large chunks of that show unwatchable. “Lanterns” is an optimistic premise about space cops who fight for order using magic rings. It didn’t need this.
The actual plot advances more than the premiere did. John Stewart gets abducted and brought before an alien named Antaan, who lays out the Manhunter mythology, ancient synthetic beings who predate the Green Lantern Corps and who apparently wiped out Antaan’s people under a Guardian’s direction. Antaan believes Hal has been shielding the Manhunter responsible ever since, and gives John 48 hours to expose it. Meanwhile Hal digs up the alien bodies, gets shot by one of Macon’s snipers for his trouble, and ends up flying to visit his old mentor Sinestro in a space prison, who all but confirms a Manhunter is still active and pivots the conversation straight to asking about John Stewart.
That’s a real mystery with real stakes building across two fronts, and it’s the strongest part of the episode. The show also finally gives Hal a scene in the suit, which the premiere almost entirely skipped. It’s a step in the right direction.
Where it falls apart again is the messaging. Sheriff Kerry Kane spends much of the episode lecturing Hal Jordan on his behavior, with Hal written as reckless and obnoxious specifically so she can correct him, an increasingly familiar streaming formula. There’s also a scene with the militia man’s wife that veers into a conversation about unorthodox relationships and then, bizarrely, white privilege, as if that has anything to do with infidelity. It reads as message first, character second, and it’s hard not to notice that the militia figure at the center of this storyline bears more than a passing resemblance to JD Vance, right down to a wife who looks the part too.
The dialogue is still overloaded with profanity, though episode two does cut it roughly in half from the 37 instances counted in the premiere down to around 15. Progress, but still excessive for a show that doesn’t need it to land its drama.
“Lanterns” has a mystery worth following. The Manhunter plot, the Sinestro tease, and John Stewart’s arc are doing real work. But the show keeps sabotaging itself with shock for its own sake and political messaging bolted onto scenes that don’t call for it. HBO had a genuinely interesting concept here. It just doesn’t have the confidence to let the story carry itself without the extra baggage.
Episode 2 rating: 6/10.
Does HBO know how to make a genre show without falling back on its “Game of Thrones” era instincts, or is this the new house style going forward?
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