NEED TO KNOW
- The Lanterns season finale will drop on HBO Max on Monday, October 5.
- Fans are theorising that Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) will be taken over by evil entity Parallax in the season finale, turning him into a villain.
There are pros and cons to starring in a series based on a beloved comic book series. Yes, there’s the esteem, the built-in fandom and plenty of graphic novels ready to be read for character research. But with great power and legacy comes great responsibility — and that’s not something that Lanterns stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre take lightly.
But to bring Lanterns — a series which somehow combines comic book lore, a wild detective-like case and a prickly mentor-mentee relationship — to life, the stars were well aware that they needed to bring their own energy to the screen.
“It’s one of the most beautiful things about this show is that Kyle and I were about to allow ourselves to be present within the characters and our own chemistry. ” Aaron Pierre explains to TV WEEK.
“It made for something that was very alive, very visceral.”
For the uninitiated, Lanterns is part of James Gunn’s DC universe, and created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King. It stars Chandler as an older Hal Jordan, a weary yet charismatic superhero who is arguably a few years past his prime. He is a member of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic police force tasked with keeping the peace between humans and aliens throughout the galaxy.
Hal is tasked with training John Stewart (Pierre), a promising and exceedingly calm new recruit to the Green Lanterns. The series kicks off with Hal and John attempting to investigate multiple deaths at a football game in Rushville, Nebraska, with it quickly becoming apparent that some dark extra-terrestrial mysteries might be at play.
But at the heart of the plot, the buddy cop-esque relationship between Hal and John is the cornerstone of the series — and the essence that kept us coming back for more.
“It was encouraged… and I mean, it was already written,” Kyle admits sheepishly. “We had to open ourselves up to have a friendship, and it needed to be a real friendship.”
Even during the chat with the stars, their jokey bond is clear, built on mutual respect and taking the absolute piss out of each other when the right moment arises.
“We tend to agree to disagree sometimes, and agree on other stuff, but we laugh a hell of an awful lot together. It’s just like any normal friendship, only we’ve taken our new friendship, put it into a TV friendship and now we’re stuck in a room together and can’t get away from each other quick enough,” Kyle quips, sending a cheeky smile Aaron’s way.
Yep, Aaron Pierre looks exactly like comic book John Stewart
For Green Lantern fans coming to the series, there’s no denying the similarities between the comic book version of John Stewart and Aaron Pierre himself. With his dark skin and shockingly light eyes, fans had long suggested online that he would make a brilliant John Stewart.
“I have to thank the decision makers for gifting me the opportunity to portray a hero who is a hero of mine, and a hero who it was my dream to portray,” Aaron explains.
“I’ve said it before, but this is a dream realised for me and I’m very grateful.”
Will Hal Jordan have a parallax moment in Lanterns?
In Lanterns, Hal Jordan is a slightly older, silver-fox variant than we’ve seen in other iterations of the Green Lantern. In later comics, Hal Jordan is possessed by enemy and supervillain Parallax after he goes mad with grief after a catastrophic loss. In this storyline, Hal becomes a villain and it’s all orchestrated by his former mentor-turned-arch-nemesis Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen).
Can we expect this kind of turn in Lanterns? While Kyle didn’t answer directly, he did hint at some darkness within his portrayal of Hal.
“Hal was chosen to have this ring but once he gets this ring, over the course of the years, things change. That’s a lot of responsibility,” Kyle explains.
“I like to look at the imaginary past of his, where Hal couldn’t save people, or he had to make choices in the split second of who he’s going to save and not,” he continues.
“The things that would cause really dark thoughts and and keep them up at night, because these are two humans, two very human people who are then put on a ring and allow them to experience extraordinary circumstances that their normal human body has to control.
“It’s a power that we don’t use, but we’re wielding it, and we’re going to make a lot of mistakes. Outside of the ring itself, we’re just frail human beings who have to overcome our fears, and and that’s what the main that’s the superhero in us.”
You can tune into Lanterns season one on HBO Max.
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