Lanterns Is Better Than Most Superhero Shows—But It's No Watchmen

Aaron Pierre, left, and Kyle Chandler in Lanterns —John Johnson—HBO Max “Are you afraid?” This is the tagline of the HBO drama Lanterns , a prestige take on the Green Lantern that is part of James Gunn’s reimagined DC Universe .

Early in the premiere, we hear both of the show’s lead characters respond in the negative.

Kyle Chandler ’s Hal Jordan, the first of the intergalactic cops known as Green Lanterns recruited from Earth, is on TV explaining that his military-pilot father died in a plane crash when he was eight—and when you lose parents at that age, nothing will ever scare you again.

Watching this interview in his modest home is a young John Stewart (Cairo Cash Lee).

Soon, his own dad, also a military man, takes John to the backyard, places an apple on his head, aims his gun, and asks the boy if he is afraid.

John declares that he is not.

It will take several episodes to discover why he is so unnervingly calm.

Fear is indeed a central theme of Lanterns , which premieres on Aug.

16, but not in the macho, who-blinks-first sense you’d expect from a superhero show.

Created by crime drama specialist Chris Mundy ( True Detective , Ozark ), TV eminence Damon Lindelof ( Lost , The Leftovers ), and Eisner-winning comics writer Tom King, it juggles their different strengths and points of view with mixed success.

At its most ambitious, the series allegorizes John and Hal’s disparate relationships to fear as a younger Black man and an older white one.

Privilege, insiders vs. outsiders, and the brutal clarity with which disadvantaged people see the societies that devalue them come into play.

Parallels to Lindelof’s great 2019 DC adaptation Watchmen abound.

Like the latter, Lanterns is smarter, more mature, less formulaic, and more stylishly made than the identikit Marvel brand extensions that are now the industry standard.