Well, that's a wrap on HBO's Lanterns.
At first glance it was a massively disappointing effort that was poorly written, baffling conceived and mystifyingly executed. The decision to take DC's intergalactic weirdos and stick them in one of the least visually appealing places in Nebraska screams of an attempt to restrain the budget and the decisions made by Damon Lindelof, Tom King and the rest of the writers seem to point to a group of people who just wanted to use the flayed skin of an existing property to stuff their modern agenda into. The most generous reading of the situation would be to assume that the writers just never read any Green Lantern material outside of the kindergarten level cliff notes and were just winging it but I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt on that.
However, the show was so badly constructed that people online seemed to constantly be trying to come up with their own theories about what was potentially going on and now that its over, it's kind of hard to even remember what was happening at the beginning of the series. Is it possible that the completely nonsensical final few episodes were actually masterpieces that tied the entire show together in tightly wrapped and satisfying bow? I doubt it and the more I hear the defenders of this show lament about people not having enough "media literacy" to understand the complex issues and messages makes me doubt it even more. The defense of Lanterns has been so flimsy that "media literacy" has joined "mental load" in phrases that have been used so frequently with such little meaning that its obvious that whenever you hear them, its just something a stupid person is saying in an attempt to sound smart.
No matter. In fairness the only way to fully judge Lanterns is to go back and watch all the episodes in full knowledge of what little tricks and secrets the writers had in store for us. Hopefully its better the second time around. Maybe there will be some answer as to why a galactic warrior was taken out with a standard issue 9mm bullet. Or how the legal system imprisoned a member of the Justice League. We shall see.
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