Review: Lanterns, "Dirt and Stars" | Season 1, Episode 8

Hey free subscribers - it’s premiere week, and some finales, so I’ve extended our yearly 20% off sale for a couple of weeks. Last time to get our steepest discount of the year, and join the conversation about this and the other shows we review. Here’s a preview of Liam’s take on the Lanterns finale, and you can click the button to access the sale.

They got me. When John chose to not become the Green Lantern at the end of episode five, I thought Lanterns was setting up a story where he wasn’t the Green Lantern at all, and would forge his own alternate path—which is what happened, sort of. Happily, though, how it went down wasn’t what I was expecting. John Stewart ends the first season of Lanterns as Earth’s Green Lantern, in a version of Lanternhood of his own creation. For the first time in Green Lantern history, the ring doesn’t choose the wearer, the wearer chooses the ring. It’s a simple yet bold choice that solidifies the show’s status as a more mature superhero story and is a satisfying ending for Stewart that sets up his next chapter. “Dirt and Stars” is a pleasant finale that ends the season on a high note, but still isn’t quite enough to make Lanterns clear the bar from good to great. 

John chooses to reclaim his ring in order to serve as a mentor and fail-safe to Noah (Shea Pritchard), Kerry’s son who inherited his grandmother’s Manhunter powers, and devises his own version of the Green Lantern oath. This decision is the final element that makes Lanterns an HBO version of the superhero genre—a more modern and character-driven story than the usual fare. Having power come from fate or predestination beyond the character’s control is the old-fashioned, comic book version of a superhero origin story, and is more the stuff of childhood fantasy—what if, through an act of fate beyond your control, you were granted powers that made you something more than human?

But that’s the easy version of the story, and isn’t true to real life. Fate and predestination are for gods. Humans have free will. John choosing to become the Green Lantern is him asserting that he’s a flesh-and-blood person with power over his own destiny, not a supernatural being serving the whims of the cosmos. Everything about John is ordinary human. He isn’t the son of a billionaire who inherited his father’s company after his murder, or bitten by a radioactive spider. The Guardians said maybe, not you are the chosen one. Then worked and trained and sacrificed to have the opportunity to become a Green Lantern, like a person would. And then he chose the great power and the great responsibility on his own terms after accepting that his path in life had brought him here, the way we all have to accept that nature and nurture have shaped us, but in the end we make our own choices.