The first season of Lanterns has come and gone and it’s turning out to be pretty controversial online — at least in the circles I frequent. Lots of ‘Surf Dracula’ talk. People upset that there wasn’t more Green Lanterning. You know how the internet can be. Well I’m here to deliver my personal opinion and review on the first season of Lanterns!

TV Show Rating: 8/10 – Very Good

I liked it a lot! I will admit that my grade did go down a level from when I started writing this list until after watching the finale, but I’m not one of the people who hated the finale. I thought it was a solid ending to a solid show, which stuck to its intended tone and story all the way through. Surf Dracula? Maybe. Does that bother me? Not with Lanterns, not really. But I’ll get more into the nuance later. The important thing is, we have a Green Lantern TV show and there’s going to be more in the future!

Join me after the jump for my full thoughts on the first season of Lanterns. Expect FULL SPOILERS for the entire season. And feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below.

6. Solid introductory season

I very much enjoyed watching Lanterns and feel it was a very good show overall. I think this first season did a great job introducing the characters and concepts and telling a compelling story over eight episodes. I liked the time angle, where we jumped around to different years to tell a longer story. I enjoyed the grounded, True Detective-style series of mysteries. I had no problem with that. All the trailers and initial talk of the show said it would be like that, and Lanterns followed through on that promise from beginning to end. I was engaged, I was entertained and I was, ultimately, pleased with the finished product.

The show does a great job establishing and maintaining its tone. It does a great job teasing and setting up its mysteries. I would also say it does a great job establishing the mythos/lore of the Green Lantern. We don’t get to see a lot of it, but it’s there and the show doesn’t shy away from at least talking about it. They name-dropped Mogo twice and established that he is, indeed, an entire planet. The Green Lantern rings exist as they do in the comics. They talk about willpower and fear. There’s a lot of good stuff.

But, ultimately, the show lacks the wow factor I was hoping for. The writing, characters, mysteries, themes, and whatnot are all great. It’s solid prestige television. But for me, I needed that oomph to really raise this show into the stratosphere. Maybe not a full-on, blown-out ring vs. ring battle of some kind like in the movies…just more of the actual superheroing to make the show truly memorable. Because I just feel like my interest and praise for this show will wane over time. It’ll be quickly and easily forgotten as I move on to something else.

Lanterns was good while it lasted but didn’t deliver enough wow factor to stay in my heart for long. If I am ever to recommend this show to someone, it will always be with the caveat that they don’t actually do a lot of Green Lanterning.

5. All three Green Lanterns were phenomenal

Lanterns definitely didn’t shy away from giving us Green Lanterns and all three were great! Hal, John and Guy are ripped right from the comics, each one distinctive and charming and just plain awesome in their own way. Kyle Chandler practically redefines Hal Jordan as a character, or perhaps underlines him with big, bold lines. That is some top tier superhero casting. He’s both charming and tired, lonely and heroic, and Chandler easily captures Hal both young and old, eager and world-weary. Then Aaron Pierre is such a perfect counterpart. Cold, calculating, determined, while slowly but surely developing as a character over the season to become a better, warmer, more open individual. Their camaraderie was the best part of the show and I wish we had more.

Nathan Fillion’s return as Guy Gardner was, likewise, perfection. He’s so damn good in the role! He’s not a jobber or a joke, but he’s just a very different person from John Stewart. And he’s great for John’s character development, showing him where the ring and lantern go when he turns them down. I would love to see more of Guy and John together in the future. Their camaraderie could fuel a second season!

4. I won’t fault the show for being true to itself

There’s a lot of chatter online about the writers hating Hal Jordan or the budget keeping them from doing a full spectacle Green Lantern show. I think both of those ideas are wrong. This show has incredible respect for Hal Jordan and have given him an incredible story/adaptation. Kyle Chandler does an incredible job with Hal, and he’s given so much depth, so much charm, and such a fun story. Sure he’s dead, but death is a natural part of storytelling.

And the budget did not stop the showrunners from doing spectacle stuff. The showrunners didn’t want to do spectacle stuff. The likes of Damon Lindelof and Tom King made exactly the show they wanted. And the show wasn’t about the spectacle, it was about the themes of nature vs. nurture, about fear and will and all that other stuff. Tom King is a master of tone in storytelling, and Lanterns nailed it’s tone from the first episode and maintained throughout. They made the show they wanted to make, they did it well, and I can’t fault them for sticking to their guns.

3. But it coulda used a lot more Green Lanterning

All that being said, I really would have liked more Green Lanterning. I would have liked to see John Stewart get his uniform and make some cool constructs in the end. I would have liked more space stuff, like actually meeting some alien members of the Corps. I would have liked a post-credits stinger of Sinestro building a yellow lantern. I get what they’re going for with John becoming a superhero instead of a space cop…but honestly, the Green Lanterns being space cops is what I like most about them. Independent contractor superheroes are a dime a dozen, especially in the DC Universe. What sets the Green Lanterns apart is that they are part of a corp, with bureaucracy and all that comes with it. So John going rogue just…eh. Not as interesting to me.

Ultimately, I think Lanterns is lacking a real wow factor to make it really memorable in the long run. By withholding the Green Lantern spectacle, there’s nothing really to get excited about with this show. It was just some well-written, well-acted, dramatic conversations. And while that was fine to watch, I think my enjoyment of this season is going to wane over time. There are few, if any, memorable scenes I’ll want to rewatch. And if I’m to ever recommend this show to somebody, it will have to come with the caveat of not expecting any big superheroics. It’s just a bunch of engaging conversations and a solid couple of mysteries, with some superhero stuff skirting around the edges.

2. I guessed the killer!

I successfully guessed that Sheriff Kane was the killer! I’ll grant you, I didn’t guess that until episode 6, but still, that’s good enough for me! I always enjoy taking my best guess at a killer in a murder mystery. I don’t think I suspected Kerry at all in the first episode when we first discovered Hal’s body, but the show started dropping all sorts of hints in the dialogue, acting and circumstances in episode 6. So feather in my cap!

I’m fine with her not going to prison in the end. I agree with John that it’s not what Hal would have wanted. Plus, the John/Kerry scene firmly implies that her job will be to keep Noah in check. Granted, that’s a job for most/all parents, but it comes with extra care for raising a Manhunter not go turn evil. I also think it’s a little implied that Kerry will have to kill Noah herself if he does go bad. I think that is a perfectly fine ending for her character after all that she did.

1. Bring on the Sinestro Corps

A second season is said to now be in pre-production, which means we won’t get it for two or three years. And John Stewart is set to appear in the Man of Tomorrow movie next year. So we’re moving ahead with these characters. That sounds good to me. When we get this second season, I hope they go all-in on space stuff. I was originally hoping to see John go to Oa and meet the Green Lantern Corps and stuff like that, but that’s obviously not going to happen.

Instead, I hope they focus on Sinestro and the trouble he can cause after being trapped on Fear Planet with the ability to forge his own lanterns. The final episode introduced the idea that John’s lantern is streaked with yellow, yet nothing came of that by the end of the episode. Surely this is all set-up for future stories. Have Sinestro forge a yellow lantern and build his corps. Then Guy Gardner has to come to Earth to request John’s help, and we trade the Hal/John buddy cop stuff for John/Guy buddy cop stuff. That sounds like fun to me!

Honestly, I want to see all the colored corps, but that final episode did a lot to set up Sinestro. I hope that pays off. We could also then get Kyle Chandler back to do flashbacks to Sinestro’s rise to power and his attempted coup. And we definitely want Chandler back as Hal Jordan! We want everybody back!

But mostly we should do something with the aliens.

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