‘Lanterns’ Finale Review: HBO’s Epic DC Drama Ends on a Quiet but Promising Note

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Lanterns” Episode 8. After belatedly coming through with some apocalyptic action and awesome other worlds, “Lanterns” powered down for its finale. Characters and their issues — which it could be said had already eaten up too much time for a superhero show — sauntered toward resolution with very little slam-banging deemed necessary. Maybe it wasn’t. HBO’s DC Comics adaptation has gotten quite a bit of well-written and -acted mileage out of the contentious relationship between magic ring-slinging space cop Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and his Green Lantern trainee John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), not to mention each man’s complicated backstory. Add in the endless compromises that Kelly Macdonald’s smalltown sheriff Kerry Kane has to make and you’ve got loads of decent behavior-based drama. Which is informed by the show’s science fiction elements, yet tends to distract from rather than mesh with them. Episode 8 added a couple of good (if, in hindsight, obvious) twists along its way to the lead trio’s catharses. Some lame sentimentality came with all the closure, especially in John’s case, but in the end it was satisfying enough. The most rewarding new wrinkle was teenage Noah (Shea Pritchard) turning out to be part killer alien Manhunter — and suicidally conflicted about it. Pritchard played it beautifully, balancing menace with self-examination and keeping Noah’s angst under the lad’s quarterback control. I wouldn’t mind seeing a future series built around him. That led to the season’s overriding mystery getting solved in a logical way. It should have felt more devastating, though, when Kerry was revealed to have killed her lover Hal in order to protect Noah’s secret. Shae Pritchard in “Lanterns.” (HBO) Mother and son’s struggles with their good and bad natures were at least as compelling as the Lanterns’ coming to terms with themselves and each other. Chandler did a nice job in the flashback sequences, subtly expressing Hal’s true regret for the irresponsible assholery he committed for most of the season, as well as gratitude for the love of the woman who will murder him. Chandler also toned down the irritation factor in the Halogram incarnation. The point where he finally gave John his long-withheld approval and good, oath-breaking guidance, was another one of those things that was bound to happen. But it’s played at perfect pitch, straightforward yet just urgent enough. Well-calibrated by both parties. The show is John’s story if anyone’s, and the finale’s key purpose was to figure out how someone who turned down the Lantern job he’d been groomed for his whole life could still become Earth’s power-ringed defender. Ulrich Thomsen, Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler in “Lanterns” (John Johnson/HBO Max) Pierre brings out John’s ruthless, ex-Special Forces instincts in early scenes where he’s waterboarding rogue Lantern Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). But when Noah hands him a moral dilemma, John resolves it with decent instincts and real wisdom. Encouraged by that and his final encounters with Kerry and the Halogram, John figures out his place in the universe, or at least our little blue part of it. Pierre achieves all this with his usual cool command, injecting just enough doubt and emotion to keep us guessing. But not really. We know John will somehow fulfill his super potential. As intelligently as the series presented it, a little more grandeur would have been welcome. If not that, then at least the participation of a Guardian, like Laura Linney’s weirdly out-there but implacable boss lady. Instead we got another, wit-deficient appearance by Nathan Fillion’s doofus Guy Gardner, our space sector’s official Green Lantern. That speaks to a certain grubbiness the series went for, and returned to at the end after flirting with the space spectacle approach found in the more epic comic books. While we’re expected to approve of the showrunners’ effort to engage with powerful superheroes in detailed human terms, it’s nonetheless weird how so much of “Lanterns” could fit right into an episode of “Fargo,” “True Detective” or “Friday Night Lights.” Now that we know (as if we didn’t before) that Chandler, Pierre and Macdonald are superb at what they do, let’s hope that “Lanterns’” creative brain trust — showrunner Chris Mundy and co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom King — can give them future adventures that truly soar. “Lanterns” is now streaming on HBO Max. It has not been officially renewed for Season 2.