Are Lantern Fans Happy, or Did DC Disappoint

If you're a D.C. fan, or a fan of heroes, then you've no doubt heard of the LANTERNS series Gunn and the folks at Warner Bros put together. Now the million-dollar question becomes: is it worth it, or is this another D.C. flop? Lord knows, that Ryan Reynolds-led experiment with the Green Lantern left even Reynolds willing to make fun of it when he did Deadpool.

In this outing with the lanterns, we get Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan, and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart. Most people who've seen Kyle Chandler in other things seem to enjoy his performances, but the question was, could he capture Hal Jordan's famed cavalier wit, cockiness, and bravado?

Then comes the much-anticipated appearance of a live-action John Stewart. Not all, but a lot of D.C. fans were rooting for David Ramsey (John Diggle, The Arrow) to pick up the John Stewart role. It was a heavily alluded-to possibility in the future of Oliver Queen's trusted friend and brother in arms during Arrow's series ending, as we learned Diggle's connection to the Stewart name, and saw what we believed was Diggle finding the ring.

So, how did Aaron Pierre do?

As we enter the first episode, we immediately feel a sympathetic nod for Aaron Pierre's John Stewart. This is a character that goes through a lot in the first ten minutes of the series, from childhood to years later as an adult and Hal's trainee, and you're left to wonder why everybody is so hard on the guy. If you check it out, you'll see.

To get to the big question, no, we don't see much of him as the Green Lantern. However, based on what we're seeing so far, he fits with the stoically conveyed John Stewart from the animated series and from the comics. His backstory supports why he'd be such a stoic, no-nonsense individual, and Aaron Pierre, as of the end of the first episode of the first season, is honestly nailing the character.

The lanterns are in a television series. As if it wasn't cool enough for Lantern fans to get Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner in Superman, now we have two more to think about every Sunday for the rest of the season. But will we continue to think about them, or will Lanterns fizzle and die off faster than Superman or Supergirl did this year?

The first episode introduces us to a time when Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) is training his potential replacement. Hal is now older, burned out, on the ragged edge of his existence. There definitely seems to be something off with Hal.

They end up returning to not far from where Hal got the ring when his story started. And as everyone knows, Earth has a Lantern to defend from extra-terrestrial threats. At least that's why they got their first one.

Ending up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, the two "space cops" are there to check on a shooting at a high school football game. Aliens? It seems unlikely.

But Hal has a feeling, and his feelings are never wrong. So they stick around. In the first one-hour episode, which, if you can't tell, is an exciting treat for viewers and fans of the Green Lantern characters, we're left with a weird feeling. Did Taylor Sheridan write this? No, but at times, in the middle of nowhere, it almost seems like a Taylor Sheridan creation; it's so good.

For that first hour you get:

The Green Lantern

A mass shooting

An alien suspect

A bar fight

A Green Lantern trainee getting some (that's right)

Weird militia folks

BBQ

Adultery

A group of human supremacists

and

A complete shocker.

If you make it that far, stick around for the preview of things to come. Finally, Gunn and the new team have a hit.