Lanterns’ Review: Episode 1 Lights Up Small-Town America with Big Mysteries and a Massive Twist — IndieWire

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

The Hal-o-gram's first words echo as the premiere's closing question: Did " Lanterns " really kill off Hal Jordan ( Kyle Chandler ) in the first episode? Or do the mysterious events preceding the time jump hint at an alternate explanation?

In the last-minute flash-forward, HBO 's space-cop drama jumps 10 years ahead to 2026, where a now-goateed John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) is called to examine the frozen corpse of his former mentor. Hal's ring is gone. John isn't wearing it (nor does his arrival by SUV suggest he chose to drive through a snowy Nebraska when he could've flown). There's a bullet hole in Hal's forehead, as well as a significant accumulation of snow on his already whitening hair. Related Stories Top of the Line: We Are We Going, Where Have We Been? As Superhero Movies Get Blander, Animated Comic Book Adaptations Have Gotten More Interesting

Spotted by the groundskeeper (who we do not meet) and identified by Sheriff Kane (Kelly Macdonald), there's no obvious reason to suspect anything more complicated than what the scene plainly suggests. But isn't that what everyone except Hal said about the football field's first crime scene? And didn't Hal's hunch help expose an alien that not only looked exactly like a human male, but also passed an X-ray without sending up any red flags? And then there's the Hal-o-gram: Just how detailed is the "backup consciousness" of a guy who can manifest tangible materials at will? Could the Hal-o-gram be "dead" and the real Hal is still out there, probably pissing someone off?

The "Lanterns" premiere, co-written by co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof , and Tom King, covers a lot of ground. There's the case itself, revolving around four dead aliens on a high school football field in Nebraska circa 2016; there's a town full of shady citizens, including William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), a rich rancher who's worried about losing his land to alien colonizers and his wife, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan), who's not worried enough about her hubby finding out she slept with John; there's the superhero lore laying out what's so special about a shiny emerald ring to begin with and, of course, there's the introduction of our two primary Green Lanterns, involving a father's terrifying recreation of William Tell's apple trick and a pink alien bestowing the greatest power in the universe on a test pilot who falls asleep in his boots.

So, to break it down without devolving into chaos — what I like to call a "Looper" scenario , where we're here all day, making diagrams out of straws — let's go section by section, starting with the inciting incident:

With those words, Hal's Hal-o-gram summons our duo to an all-too-common American atrocity: a mass shooting. This one took place at a high school football game, after a winning field goal resulted in fans rushing the field and four people getting shot. Given the rival teams and red state, John argues it's reasonable to conclude that tempers flared, guns were drawn, and tragedy ensued. It's harrowing but not "extraterrestrial," which is what it needs to be for the case to fall under the Green Lanterns' jurisdiction.

Hal, however, disagrees. For one, no one seems upset. "Seems kinda mellow for a mass shooting," Hal says. "They're in shock," Sheriff Kane counters. "Or," Hal says, "nobody knows the victims." All four of the dead are wearing the same sweatshirt, and when they spot a fifth on the ground near a nervous nelly in a short-sleeved shirt (played by Chris Coy), they round him up. (Well, John does, via a sprint through the school.)

Later, at a local watering hole, Hal explains what really tipped him off: Turns out when Hal was first chosen to wear the ring, he was flown to a spot not 20 miles from Rushville where the previous owner, a pink alien named Abin Sur, was dying. Hal always assumed the crash that killed ol' Binny was no accident, and he's been using his Hal-o-gram to monitor the area ever since.

So when he walks into the interrogation room to sit down with "Waylon Sanders," Hal peels away his cover story with a series of random questions every human would respond to, but an alien wouldn't understand. ("That's it?" Hal says when "Waylon" shrugs at the mention of the president. "As a rural Nebraskan, that's the breadth of your opinion about Barack Hussein Obama?") Waylon drops the act, and before he triggers a self-destruct bomb meant to take out as much of the town as possible, he confesses he's on a mission related to a "war" that's driven by "vengeance."

That's all we get before he detonates, leaving behind far more questions than answers: Who shot Waylon's four alien buddies? How'd the shooters know they were aliens to begin with? What sort of war is going on in such a small town, that's been peaceful for at least 30 years? And how does it connect to Abin Sur bestowing his ring upon Hal?

Common sense (and Hal's own logic) dictates we start with the strangest player on the board: William Macon. "If it looks like a duck, shoots an AR-15 like a duck, blah blah blah — duck," Hal says as they drive into the heavily fortified cattle ranch**. Well, Macon is one odd duck. Sure, on the surface, he plays a white-hatted cowboy: good-mannered (even buying tofu steaks for his vegan dinner guest), plain spoken, and ostensibly reasonable.

OK… sure… but why, exactly, is he so freaked out about aliens showing up to take over a few hundred acres in the middle-of-nowhere Nebraska? Was he really willing to spot Hal $200,000 in bail money just so he could talk about outer space invaders with the only person who also sees them as an imminent threat? Who is he "caretaking for," and how did this person know Waylon was an alien? And why does William seem so cool with John sleeping with his wife, Zoe?

"He's not a man you want to owe," Sheriff Kane warns Hal. But Hal isn't afraid of anybody, let alone a guy intent on separating himself from the xenophobic "isolationist crackpots" he so clearly evokes, but who still can't ...

Lanterns’ Review: Episode 1 Lights Up Small-Town America with Big Mysteries and a Massive Twist — IndieWire | AIPROPX