‘Lanterns’ Is One of Our Strongest Superhero Shows Ever. Plus, ‘Sicario 3’ and a New ‘Miami Vice’ Ending.

The Watch

Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald dissect the season finale of HBO's Lanterns, praising its emotional depth, narrative restraint, and complex character work while debating how it fits into

Key takeaways

• Chris Ryan calls Lanterns season one arguably the best superhero TV show ever made, alongside Watchmen, highlighting its emotional ballast over typical action set pieces.
• Andy Greenwald emphasizes the intricate writing required for the finale's sideline scene between John and Carrie, noting how it successfully wove together multiple origin stories and character relationships.

Main topics

• Lanterns season finale review
• DCU integration and James Gunn's oversight

Notable quotes

"I found last night's finale to be emotionally very satisfying and a little bit creaky in places, but ultimately the work of really an expert team of writers."

Conclusion

The episode delivers a nuanced breakdown of Lanterns' narrative ambiti

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:05) I need support staff to clear the room. Speaker 1 (0:08) Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me on the other line after a brief on-field conversation with Matt Rule, he is ready to commit to Nebraska. It's Andy Greenwood! Speaker 2 (0:29) I wish it always happened like that. You Speaker 1 (0:32) wish Matt Rule always walked up to you and it was just like, this hat fits you just right, brother. Speaker 2 (0:37) I mean, wouldn't life be easier? Speaker 1 (0:39) I mean, you'd be playing for Nebraska and getting smoked in the Big Ten every year, I think. So it's Speaker 2 (0:45) tough, but you know. I'd be getting smoked in any program, Division I through III. How far are we stretching this? Not me, Speaker 1 (0:53) man. I was born to play for Dan Lanning or the University of Miami. You know, there's a couple of programs that I think I could have applied myself at. Andy, Speaker 2 (1:01) fun show today. Did Speaker 1 (1:02) you maximize Speaker 2 (1:02) your skill set? Speaker 1 (1:05) We are talking about the season finale of Lanterns, obviously, and then after that, I'm going to handle some mailbag questions that dovetail nicely into some headlines that are out there today. but I wanted to just get into Lanterns. This show has become, I don't know, I mean, like compared to Marshalls, is it a juggernaut? I don't know, but it's done quite well. I think it's been a real feather in the cap of HBO, of DC, of Skydance, the dance. They're loving it over at Skydance. And I think. It's arguably, with Watchmen, the best superhero TV show I've ever seen. I don't know if that bar is as high as we think it is, necessarily. But I found last night's finale to be emotionally very satisfying and a little bit creaky in places, but ultimately the work of really an expert team of writers. from Vanessa Baden-Kelley and Justin Britt Gibson and Tom King and Chris Mundy and Damon Lindelof, the latter three who got credit on this last episode. So why don't we start with the episode and then maybe we can talk a little bit about the season as a whole if we have time today. What were your feelings on the finale? Speaker 2 (2:20) We are, I think, in complete alignment here where I deeply enjoyed the finale and it made me feel very satisfied about the time spent with the season and it made me excited for future stories to come. I was surprised by a lot of the finale, which is a good thing, I think, in the way that we watch TV shows, to still have the potential to be surprised late in the game of something, even something that you like. But man, I also went away from it being like, this is one of the more challenging puzzles that I've ever seen a writer's room try to put together. And I am very, very interested in talking to you specifically because I do a podcast with you, but also because of your thoughts on this about the pieces that didn't fit. despite being hammered down on, you know, like what I mean specifically, and I'll use an example, and then I think we should talk more about the positives, like the turn in Sheriff Kerry's. Speaker 2 (3:21) persona, personality, history, and future that had to happen in the scene with John on the sidelines, right? The journey that that scene had to take the characters in is a monster. Like it's the sort of thing that if you're in a room and you're looking at the whiteboard and it's like, John talks to Carrie and it's like, boy, that seems like an easy scene. But you have to understand that what that scene has to do is take you from a place of John knows what Carrie did and John is ahead of the audience. Carrie knows what Carrie did, but thinks she's getting away with it, maybe. To a place of this not only has to resolve the relationship between these two characters, but it also has to successfully sew together the... origin stories of John and his mother with Carrie and Noah and also leave us in a good place about an unattended manhunter running wild in Division One professional football. Right. Like what? So the main thing is I love it to you. The most important Speaker 1 (4:17) thing is to protect Division One football, not the White House. Speaker 2 (4:21) Oh, well, I mean, the sanctity of one is still... I know, we have to save college Speaker 1 (4:26) sports. I mean, that's one of your major planks of your platform. Speaker 2 (4:30) 100%. 100%. But do you get what I mean, though? About like, man, if you really dig into the metadata here, it's just like, I can't believe they got away with it, let alone made us feel good. But they did make us feel pretty good. That Speaker 1 (4:43) scene worked for me. I think... It worked for me after I gave it some thought rather than when I was watching it. When I was watching it, I thought we were getting another version of Sinestro tells John that Hal and Carrie went to an Italian restaurant in 2026. And, you know, all these details about Hal that I think the show kind of took over that storytelling mechanism. Speaker 1 (5:13) this flashback only being told to John by Sinestro, who has been living on a toxic alien planet since Noah broke him out, but being like, and then Hal, you know, Hal and Carrie went to, you know, became in love after he left prison and had this beautiful relationship and Hal tried to make amends. And he's like, Hal told you all that, you know? Speaker 2 (5:34) I'm pretty into the idea of Sinestro being such a good listener that he was able to convey that in 2026 or whenever it is, the Italian restaurant in Rushville still has Chianti bottles in wicker baskets. And Sinestro's like, Speaker 1 (5:48) hmm, how is the Speaker 2 (5:50) garlic bread? Speaker 1 (5:52) Intergalactic criminal mastermind Sinestro is also just a fiend for tea. He just loves hot goss. He loves, I mean. He Speaker 2 (6:02) has to sustain himself somehow because I don't think he's pulling fresh carp out of that poison lake. I would love to see Speaker 1 (6:07) Sinestro's group chats. But that scene was a little bit hard for me to get my head around because so much relatively crucial information was being conveyed by a character who has been living in exile, who is... sort of inexplicably telling John some of this stuff, but then has to be waterboarded to tell him the rest of the story. The John and Carrie scene worked for me. And I think that this is an example of perhaps the writing and the direction not being necessarily on the same page. I buy that John jumps to the conclusion that Noah is lying to protect his mother. And I buy that John has an instinct that he knows how far mothers go. To protect their sons and to also make their sons into what they want them to be or what they think they need. Speaker 2 (7:00) And John's story is one of rejecting his programming in favor of the ability to, as he says to Noah, right? Like if you're even asking the question, you're kind of further along. Speaker 1 (7:11) Yes. Speaker 2 (7:12) The reason it works is because that group of talented writers that you talked about did the labor. of scaffolding a story that begins with a heroic character journey that then is applicable to the larger super heroic or super villainous plot so that they've sort of protected themselves from the idea of a plot hole because they've said, look, you buy this hero. So can you extend the same grace to the villain? I think that's very clever. And I think it works because again, like I came away from this feeling pretty psyched. about how things had gone and about this birth of a new style of lantern and all of that. I also came away from this being like, wow, it is another bold zag in a season of bold and surprising zags to make the first 15 minutes of the finale of the first season of a show, a tender late in life love story between two characters, like with some Waxahachie playing on the, on the speakers, like, look, they set a Speaker 1 (8:13) mood and I went, I fell right into it, Speaker 2 (8:15) but like. I do think the two conversations are so deeply entwined because if we were to, if one of us, and I'm going to say you, because you, I think you have more resources in the beautiful new studio you're in right now. Like did the Charlie Day meme, whether you're like making the Homeland Crazy Board and you're just listing all of the things that it turns out in retrospect, season one of Lanterns had to do. Because even one was just baked into what I just said, which is I'm pretty psyched about the emergence of Jon Stewart, a new style of Green Lantern. This series had to tell us what an old style of Green Lantern is. It had to backfill the entire history of, I mean, it didn't give us a lot of Oa and the Guardians and the Korra, which was smart, but it did have to give us an example of what Jon wasn't going to be before it let us understand what Jon... is. And there are so, so, so many things that it had, that it quote unquote had to do that. It remains a wonder to me that they had any room to do anything at all that they wanted to do. And I feel like ultimately they did. Speaker 1 (9:15) Yeah. When you think about the amount of story, the amount of like, even like seasons of TV that they wound up condensing without making it feel rushed ever. I mean, you essentially had an origin story for Jon Stewart. You had an origin story for Hal Jordan. You had an origin story for their partnership. You got a full mystery series that was set in Rushville about the identity of the Manhunter and who is the benefactor and who is the, you know, who is Zoe. That whole thing culminates with this massive set piece that they then don't ever bother to top. They never bother to go, what can we do in the second to last episode of the last episode that would be an action set piece that matches Rushville? What they choose to do is move to this planet, Anton's alien planet, which is obviously a projection of the souls of the main characters. And it's not literally that, but it is. physically a manifestation of the kind of Speaker 2 (10:21) in Speaker 1 (10:21) -between worlds these guys existed. And then have a grace note on this relationship between a sheriff and a aging superhero. And then the basically digital backup of this superhero's consciousness and his protege that they then fucking do nail the Friday night lights. Like I love you too, junior moment. So. I'm so impressed, but there are points where I think in this finale, if I had to say anything, it's not that I wanted an explosion or I needed him to put the ring on and do Green Lantern stuff. Speaker 2 (11:00) Because he doesn't. Everybody Speaker 1 (11:02) was really still. It was a lot of Noah and John sitting in a car, very still, talking. John and Carrie at the sideline being very still, watching. suddenly much bigger offensive linemen block for Noah. And I did get all of your emails to the people of America about eight on eight football. And I still have notes. I Speaker 2 (11:27) also want to say that in. In our defense, we may be projecting a little bit about poor offensive line play after watching Cam turnstile Juergens for the last two weekends. So I think we are, you know, hyper-focused on that and what it can do to structure. Maybe Speaker 1 (11:42) Cam Juergens should quit the Eagles and go to turnstile. He should just join turnstiles. Join the band? The bongo player, yeah. Speaker 2 (11:49) That's a great point that, like, I can... It is very, very bold. that a show called Lanterns that is really about building Green Lantern into the new DCU, you can count on one hand the number of cool shit moments that the ring does. John makes the bird, John makes a watch, Hal uses it as a shield a couple times, and then the kind of super Zelda Tears of the Kingdom moment when they build a digger that digs into the room with all the dark alien tech in it. Otherwise, that was it. And that is a remarkable exercise in restraint. I also think that it was an exercise in respect and a testament to the enormous amount of caretaking that this crew seemingly did to make sure that their quite bold, quite adult story fit into whatever it is James Gunn is planning on his big crazy-making whiteboard in his office. The way that the show deployed Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner was very clever. but also felt like very important connective tissue to suggest how these people can exist with each other in opposition to each other in future movies. I Speaker 1 (12:56) think it was emotionally resonant. I don't know. I mean, I found it to be a much better story about kids and their parents and their parents and what they want them to be. And maybe a great story about a great buddy cop movie or a great buddy action story. Speaker 1 (13:15) And I found it to be at the end. It just had like an emotional ballast that I don't find in a lot of superhero things. Like a lot of the times in superhero stories, the thing that impresses me or the thing that grabs me is the high level of execution of superhero story. So it is, we've closed the portal or we have, you know, the completed the gauntlet or we reversed the snap or whatever it is that hits. Speaker 1 (13:45) And this had more to say, I think. I mean, it had something different to say. And I think it was ultimately about a lot of the things that haunt these writers, which is, you know, what does it take to be somebody with a lot of responsibility? You know, and what do your parents have to do to you to make you think that's what your role in this world is? Speaker 2 (14:05) I think that's very well said. I want to run through a couple points with you to see. where you net it out. Did this work for you? Did this not? I wonder if there's something that is like translatable, like could Apple learn from this? Because I feel like from the time Hal's Ring told John that it was