Lanterns Continues Damon Lindelof’s Iconoclast Streak
Creators will make works that breathe life for themselves, and we have to let them, even if it means defiling fan-favorite characters.
Published on Oct 14, 2026
*Warning: This article contains spoilers for Lanterns (2026) and Watchmen (2019)
When it was announced that Damon Lindelof would be a co-creator of HBO’s Lanterns alongside comic book writer Tom King and Ozark’s Chris Mundy, I knew we were up for a ride. The showrunner of Lost (2004-2010) and The Leftovers (2014-2017) knows how to drop bombs in the pilot. In Lanterns’ case, the bomb in question is a bullet inside pilot Hal Jordan’s head.
Much has been said about the tone of Lanterns. Most have likened it to True Detective, with the creators explicitly naming it as a direct influence. Two diametrically opposed space cops, Jordan and his ‘backup’ John Stewart, investigate a mass shooting in the remote town of Rushville, Nebraska. The duo discover that the victims are actually aliens scouting for a genocidal shapeshifting Manhunter in hiding. They hunt the Manhunter and see themselves become personally embroiled in the town. This case spans a decade. Lanterns’ structure, however, differs from True Detective. The latter jumps between its timelines freely. Lanterns sees its first 5 episodes in 2016 and then its last 3 episodes in 2026.
The core of the series will always come back to the mystery of Jordan’s death in 2026. Much like how Lost returns to the mysterious crash of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 and The Leftovers to the mysterious disappearance of a fraction of the world population. There is, however, one other series by Lindelof that I think best resembles the DNA of Lanterns even more than True Detective.
Watchmen (2019) is a limited series serving as a loose sequel to Alan Moore’s seminal 1986 graphic novel of the same name. Its pilot opens with the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. The present-day timeline sees the police adopt superheroisms like cops wearing masks. The pilot’s ending? The head of the police corps was mysteriously murdered. It even mirrors its source’s first issue with a murdered superhero being the crux of its plot.
The series’ central character is Angela Abar, AKA Sister Night. She’s the granddaughter of the very first masked vigilante, Will Reeves, AKA Hooded Justice, also a former police officer. Watchmen explores racism and the hypocrisies of the police institution, and it very much puts attention to Abar’s and Reeves’ blackness.
In Lanterns’ third episode “OutKast” (written by Vanessa Baden Kelly), we witness Stewart’s origin story. After his father failed a test to become a Green Lantern, his parents started training him at a young age to become one in the future. The series sees Stewart become increasingly disillusioned with the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians. Stewart and his parents’ preoccupation with the Lantern Ring is underlined by racial motivations: that the Stewarts have to work hard to prove Black people deserve to be in institutions like the Green Lantern Corps and the United States Marine Corps. The show, however, is not as racially charged as Watchmen. Race, at least in terms of Blackness, works only as undertones.
Both series end in a similar fashion. In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan transfers his powers to Abar. She tests her newfound powers by attempting to walk on water. Lanterns sees Stewart finally get his own ring (and lantern), then soars to the air, something he’s been struggling to do throughout the series. What I found amusing is that the series ended with a telling soundtrack that loops the series back to race. It used Michael Kiwanuka’s “Hero” with the lyrics “Am I a hero? A fallen hero now? Hear my sin, Lord. Speak no evil now. Am I a hero? My gun is to reload now. A broken people. There goes a Negro now.”
Some detractors of the show cite a disregard and disrespect of Green Lantern lore. John Stewart, again in the last scene, disregards the Green Lantern oath and makes a new one for himself. Hal Jordan’s death and his apparent ‘weakness’ as established in the penultimate episode “The Jordan Boys’ Legacy” (written by Lindelof and King), basically a character assassination in the eyes of some fans, also attests to this. This is actually what I find endearing in Lindelof’s works.
“So I think we all just have to acknowledge that there’s a level of hubris involved in taking on any of this preexisting IP. But to your point, it is called adaptation,” said Lindelof in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “As a consumer and as someone who’s making this stuff, there’s almost a responsibility to take risks. It’s not just for the sake of taking them; you’ve got to earn them. I don’t think anybody wants to see you be completely and totally vigilant to the source material because then it isn’t an adaptation at all,” he adds.
Lindelof refuses to regurgitate venerated material from the past without reckoning how it means to us now. He forces Moore’s Watchmen to grapple with the complexities of the present time simply by furthering its timeframe, extending Moore’s commentaries of Nixon-era America to Trump’s. Lanterns remixes decades-worth of Green Lantern mythos under the same (albeit diluted) lens of race to fit our zeitgeist. But it did not erase its legacy, just conversed with it. Its timeframe sees Hal Jordan’s already past his prime. Sinestro has already tried and failed in his mutiny against the Guardians. The villain is relegated in the series as a pathetic Hannibal Lecter-esque figure whose importance and weight depend on what he did before rather than what he does now, similar to how an old Ozymandias was portrayed in Lindelof’s Watchmen.
Creators will make works that breathe life for themselves. And we have to let them, even if it means shooting fan-favorite characters dead straight away. Lanterns’ heart is akin to this dilemma. Stewart held on to the creed of the Green Lantern Corps until its maxim of ‘fearlessness’ did not work for him anymore. Jordan evaded the same fate his dear father and his grandfather nudged him towards. The Manhunters superseded their genocidal programming. All reckoned with what they inherited and sought a life that diverge from it.
Joker Manio is a freelance film critic and culture/lifestyle writer whose works have been published in various local broadsheets and magazines. His criticism is guided by the principle, "The form is the message."
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