Speaker #0hello everyone and welcome to the concession stand here on the kb radio network i am your host kevin reed and and welcome everyone to the review of the season finale of dc studios hbo's lanterns this is episode 8 dirt and stars concluding in Eb epic first season to this show and i'm saying first season because i'm praying that they green light a second season of this show i have enjoyed this show immensely this has been an incredible incredible show on hbo you know hbo doesn't miss well i'm not gonna say it doesn't is, but rarely misses in their programming. I mean, game of... thrones true detective uh mayor of east town if you really want to go back you know the wire and sopranos and the you know uh uh eyes all this good stuff that come out on hbo but this this just adds to the lore of hbo programming and saves i would say saves dc studios who who was on the fence Really, they were up against the ropes here. They swung and missed with Supergirl. Superman, in my humble opinion, was good. It wasn't great, but it was good. But a lot of people did not care for Superman and all that had been coming out in the, not the MCU, but the DCU. And James Gunn really needed a win. DC needed a win in the worst way. and lanterns gave them that lanterns is the perfect blend of realism grounded storytelling and comic book lore it blended it perfectly i i i can't think of another comic book property to do that well um even even if you go to the dark knight trilogy with uh christopher nolan yeah there was a great you know but it it didn't have a lot of comic book lore that supported what we were watching with the dark knight trilogy yeah you had batman you had the joker and all that good stuff and two-face and all that there gotham city yeah it built that but it didn't feel like a comic book movie those movies felt like a Yep. crime drama you know it felt like uh watching heat with with batman in it you know that's all that was and it was great i'm not knocking those movies i love those movies but i'm i'm just saying as far as the comic book nerd and knowing the lore and the canon of it all and try to fit it into a grounded 2026 version of storytelling it's not an easy feat and our showrunners here chris mundy uh david lindy off uh uh uh and tom king man bro they found the way they found the way to perfectly blend the real detective story this felt like an a season of true detective just with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrison with lantern rings. You know what I'm saying? It was that deep. And man, it was so good. This was so good. All eight episodes, I must say, I enjoyed. I can't pick one to say that, oh man, they could have kept this one. Or they should have did this one better. This was great. Now, did... every episode get up to the level of a 10 no and sadly our season finale didn't live up to that epic climactic close to a season that i was hoping for but i still enjoyed it episode 8 entitled dirt and stars put an end to this first season and we had a lot of questions to be answered In this final episode, you know, we had the question of how did Sinestro get on that planet? Who broke him out of prison? Who killed Hal Jordan? will john stewart go ahead and take the mantle of green lantern if there's a lot there were a lot of questions that needed to be answered in a one hour period and i i wasn't a hundred percent confident that they could pull it off in a believable way to whereas i was like okay we still kept the tone of the show they're just trying to tie up luzen's type ending You know, give us these little... uh what how can i describe it this little sunshine and rainbows ending you know right off to the sunset everybody's smiling and happy ending there was it was guaranteed not to be a satisfying ending i guess that's why this ending didn't really make me mad or upset where i feel that a lot of people probably are going to feel about the ending of this season but As for me, I was looking at it from a different lens. I was like, well, this is guaranteed not to be a happy ending. We got that in the very first episode where it was already foreshadowed that Hal Jordan was dead. So we knew that this was not going to end in a happy way. And so we get to this final episode. And I must say, many of the questions were answered. Yeah, they are. shockingly so uh there were some open-ended answers to questions that we didn't receive but that's fine if we're going to pursue this show further in a season two or three or whatever um but even still even if john stewart gets his own movie standalone movie or something like that all of that is set up so we got set up and that's what comic books do that's what comic book movies do so uh that's no shock i wasn't expecting uh a grand finale to all of our mischief that has taken place throughout the show uh anyway episode eight had some heavy lifting to do here in one hour and we needed to resolve some stuff, some long standing questions throughout this series. Let's start off with the biggest mystery. Who killed Hal Jordan? The big mystery of the show that was set up in season one, or episode one, I'm sorry, with the conclusion to that episode that kind of, especially threw me off, but it threw a lot of people off. And so we needed to see if Jon Stewart would take the power ring and become the true Green Lantern at last, and how would that affect... the the guy garner of it all who is currently the green gray uh uh green granite green lantern of earth and so you have that and we needed to know if there was still remnant of a manhunter threat in rustville it's 10 years later and so there's an emotional level there we needed to know if john stewart would make peace with his destiny and with hal jordan to be honest with you or should i say the uh the ghost of hal jordan in that hologram let's start it off this episode uh begins back in 2016 hal is being released from prison and uh well actually he got released in 2026 but in in 2016 uh we see carrie go see hal after all of what took place uh after uh zoe was killed and all this here and she tells hal that you know she she feels bad she feels bad for him even though he did what he did that doesn't mean that i you know she doesn't feel bad for him and he gets released from prison in 2026 and she's there to pick them up. Had some beer. Had some flowers waiting on him. So that confirms that she always had feelings for him, which they didn't really hide throughout the season. You know, didn't do a good job of it, I must say that. But I don't think they meant to hide it. They did a great job with that storyline, the will they want they, between Hal and Carrie. And they begin a relationship. And we fast forward. forward about two months later and she's tired of hiding you know sneaking behind the people of rustville's back you know seeing how and decides you know what we're gonna do this we would no point hiding it you know they eventually they're gonna figure it out anyway and so they go to eat at a restaurant and everybody is of course upset and uh staring at them hal is like super uncomfortable and tells carrie like look you know these people these people smeared their own crap literally their own poo in my lawn and told me to leave a-hole and you know and that takes a lot of time i was like yeah when he said it i thought like man that's a lot of crap you know i pulled a jeff goldblum in uh uh jurassic park you know that's a lot of crap and so that's some hatred that is some real hatred behind that to collect that amount of poop but anyway carrie uh The tells everybody that's sitting in the restaurant like look it is what it is you know uh i i forgave him i lost just as much as you and i i managed to forgive him y'all need to go ahead and do the same thing and so on and so forth and so so we're just gonna bounce around i'm not gonna go through every bit of the episode but i i it will cover the entire episode and so let's just go through plot point let's answer the questions the big questions that we all had is nor a man hunter that was my theory or at least one of my theories i wasn't 100 sold that he was but that that was a theory of mine because i kept i always thought you know like that can't be possible because i thought back to episode six i think it was or five when um uh anton told uh uh macon that they can't procreate that the man hunters can't procreate at least that's what zoe told antoine that they can't procreate and so the theory of noah being a man hunter didn't quite make sense but the way it was explained on this show in this episode well they she didn't really procreate with him you know She didn't really have Noah. It was more or less a gift. And that's the way Carrie described it. So it was confirmed that Noah is a Manhunter. And that was revealed after Hal's house gets firebombed. And he gets burnt up, coincidentally. Just like John got burnt up in that episode. Where Zoe watched him and waited until he... caught on fire in order to uh rejuvenate his skin in that machine or whatever and uh noah did the same thing for hal but in exchange it was uh noah that told hal not to tell anybody that he is the manhunter and so on and so forth so so this is why carrie was so connected to rusville you know so so willing. to put everything on the line to protect the people and noah you know and zoe for what she did for you and she later explained to hal uh not hal to john that you know zoe saved her life you know she lost a pinky and she grew it back but in exchange she gave her a gift and that was the thing gave her a gift and that that was the line that kind of stuck with me because she said that in a previous episode and i didn't catch it but when she said it again in this season finale i was like oh ah that was the giveaway there that was the dead giveaway right there that noah was uh a manhunter but that also brings in the question about uh jason ritter's character you know because he's supposed to be the father and so does he know this you know and his his character kind of took a back seat this this was some of the little things that i had a problem with in season one just the little things like that characters that kind of took a back seat that appeared to play a bigger part in the show but that ultimately didn't but like i said maybe in season two because well we'll get to it but there's a lot of things that still are open-ended all right so we find out about sinestro sinestro my theory was last week that it was Hal who broke him out of prison, you know, because of their connection and everything. Well, I was wrong. It was actually Noah. Noah is the one who kidnapped Sinestro and put him on that desolate planet. And the reason being, because Sinestro is the only person to ever successfully kill a guardian. And so, of course, Noah will want to know this information, how to kill a guardian because he wants revenge on what happened to his grandmother zoe he wants to eliminate the guardians and so you have that or at least a part of him wants that you know because there's another part of him that doesn't want that you know he is actually a good person because of carrie and this is explained away in a scene with carrie and john and when john tells him that he knows everything and this, that, and the third. And he tells her that, you know, due to the conversation he had with Noah, that Noah is he's fighting within itself. He's fighting a battle within itself, you know, with the good side that was raised up by Carrie and his natural instinct as a manhunter. And some of the thoughts he had and some of the feelings he had, you know, and accent. john to kill him but letting him don't let him see it don't let him see it coming and i was like oh my god man this is this is gonna be brutal is john gonna do it well ultimately he didn't do it and uh because he saw that noah deep down is a good person you know that he if there's a chance that he can do some good and so you have that element there now will that come back to bite him We'll see later on in the future, God will it. Zoe wanted John to kill her. We kind of got that as well in this episode. It wasn't blatantly said, but that's the insinuation that she wanted that. You know, that she knew that was going to be her end. And she wanted it to happen in the hands of Jon Stewart. And so... kind of got that confirmation john is indeed the green lantern now uh not the green lantern but a green lantern but not under the leadership of the guardians he's doing his own thing you know he's kind of uh how he described it on his episode an independent contractor and his oath i don't know man it may be like i said in previous reviews of other things and whatnot uh i'm getting older and the older i get the more emotional i get and stupid stuff that at least when i was younger i would say was stupid stuff but now just little things gets me emotional and i got emotional twice in this episode i'll get to them both but the first one is when john says his oath he finally says the oath from charging the ring in the lantern that, he got from Sinestro, the one that he forged, for Noah. And at first I was skeptical about that. I'm like, cause they look like it had those yellow scratches in it. And I was like, Oh my God, he's going to, is it parallax? He's going to open up the thing and his parallax or whatever, but nah, it didn't end up being that. But, when he quoted his oath, it is not the, official green lantern oath but it was his and it was in brightest day and darkest night i embrace my fear i would do what's right i choose this ring i choose this fight in service to this lantern's light i don't know why now just read it i didn't get emotional but when aaron pierre spit it out on screen i was i was i got emotional because i know the oath you know and it's it's a big deal in green lantern uh lore but this is his new oath and he was given instructions to do that you know or a suggestion to do that by the hologram you know uh hal jordan's hologram and the second that the second time that i got emotional you which is out of order, but just bear with me, is when they basically say goodbye to each other. Because after he charges the ring, there's no more hologram. That's it. It's over for him. And that's mainly the reason why he didn't charge the ring when he first got the lantern. Because John loves Hal. In spite of all that took place, he loves him. He respects him. And he has so much love and respect for him. He just did not want to let him go. it was that scene in the car when uh after he had spoke to noah and noah had got out the car and he was calling for hal and in the hologram didn't come back and it was crushing to him you know you could tell you could look on that expression on his face it was crushing to him so john had to muster it up and do it on his own and confront carrie on his own and after all of that confrontation that's when the hologram came back and it was just his way i'm talking about the hologram here his way of teaching john to do it on his own and i thought that was beautiful that was a beautiful moment but that's not when i cried when i cried it was when they were talking they were saying their goodbyes and uh uh he had asked well they weren't saying goodbyes but you know it was the the implications, but the hologram asked john what was his last words what did carrie say what was his last words and john looked at him he kind of hesitated for a minute i'm getting choked up now he hesitated for a minute and said i love you and it was a little pause with the hologram because he knew he was lying he knew that wasn't it he knew that's not what it was that was john telling hal that he loved him and hal and kyle chandler bro my god if he doesn't get an emmy for this show or at the very least a nomination that is an absolute crime but his reaction his look and like okay it did that was basically what he said like okay i love you too And he faded away. I broke down. I broke down because that was beautiful. That was a beautiful end to this partnership, to this relationship, and to this show, to this first season. It was perfect. Perfect. Now, I know they left a little Easter egg with Sinestro. Sinestro told him that he can resurrect Hal. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Now, nine times out of ten, they probably would do that in a season two or something like that. Personally, as much as I would love to see Kyle Chandler return and Hal Jordan return, and if they do it, fine. But if they leave it alone, I would be perfectly fine with it. This was the perfect send-off to that character. Just like I... felt about wolverine and logan i thought that was the perfect send-off to that character to to hugh jackman portraying that role for 50 years that was the perfect send-off and i think this was the perfect send-off you know and if they bring them back you know it's fine just like i felt with wolverine with when he uh came back in deadpool and wolverine i accepted it But I would have preferred them to just leave it be. You know, I would like to remember that character the way he left us, you know, and the same thing here. But any who's the big one who killed Hal Jordan? It was none other than Carrie. It was Carrie Kane that killed Hal Jordan. And the hologram said that last episode. And I felt that. last episode but i didn't want to believe it everything pointed to her everything pointed to her and when you think back in your mind's eye you the seeds were there the entire season you kind of knew that the entire season but you didn't want to believe it because you like that character you like the chemistry between those characters and you personally i felt like their their arc their love story was flushed out. pretty well it was a it was a well-developed love story and to have it end in that matter but the way they did it it wasn't cheap i must say i i thought it was a perfect way to do it uh hal confronts her tells her that he knows who noah is what he is and uh trying to flush out their next course of action and what to do And all Carrie can think about in this moment, the last time you came here and there was a manhunter that you knew about, the city was destroyed. You pretty much decimated the town. And now you know about Noah and the town folk already hate you. I'm involved with it because I'm in this relationship with you. Dan is my son. You got all of those factors involved. the woman is like oh my god i can't do this you know and in a i don't know weird moment she i don't think she meant to do it it was just a reactionary moment she pulled out a gun turned around and just fired and perfectly hit to hell uh cinemas in the forehead killing him instantly and that's where he said uh the big question was why did she call John and John asked her that and she gave a great answer to that. You know, deep down, she knew deep down. She knew that she wasn't going to get away with that. Yeah. And she tried to do the right thing, even though she did the wrong thing. And it was it was it was kind of poetic. You know, it was a little poetic there. But I really did. I really did think. it was her throughout i just didn't want to believe it i still i still don't want to believe it after it was shown on the show now noah and this is the thing that kind of convinced john to let noah be uh noah took the took the bullet for that you know he told john that he killed hal you know to protect his mother and that's what he told john to kill me just kill me and once john figured it out really did figure it out in his head he knew that you know killing noah wasn't gonna work that that's not the that's not the course of action i should take because he is truly good he is willing to sacrifice himself for his mother and i thought that was also a great great way to wrap that up this was great man And I know if you're playing a drinking game at home with the greats, you're probably drunk by now by as many times as I said it. But I don't have any other adjective to put on this show. I really love this show. This episode was anticlimactic. You know, you didn't have the action and the suspense and the thriller elements and all that there to kind of... boost up your adrenaline throughout this episode it was none of that it was more story character driven and i'm not mad at it i'm not mad at it at all i think that this was one of the best written shows that we received all year one of the best written shows to come out of the dcu i i'm i'm just blown away on how good this show was really was this show is so good you take away the superhero element of it all take take away the lantern rings and the alien evasions and all this other good stuff and just be a standard true detective style show it is phenomenal you know adding on the comic book elements of it all just makes it that much more exciting and i'm i'm happy with it i'm happy with it i think this episode uh was decent but to give a grade to win the entire season of lanterns season one i gotta give it a a minus i thought it was awesome it was it was truly truly awesome not a bad episode within all eight hit um they had some weaker episodes don't get me wrong i'm not gonna say every episode was perfect But. it still wasn't bad i the only way i could judge it by the last episode that came out you know it wasn't it wasn't up to par with the previous episode or so on and so forth but it was still good and that's that's all i can ask for man it kept you coming back every single week i don't know what i'm gonna do with my sunday nights now i'm completely lost i gotta pick up a hobby now But congratulations. Congratulations to James Gunn. Congratulations to Damon Lidnoff, Tom King, and Chris Monday on an excellent show. DC Studios as a whole for getting a win. Getting a win under your belt. You know, there's something to build on here. This is the direction you need to go. Now, not everything needs to be in this style. you can still have your different styles you know you can have a show like a peacemaker you know this oddball comic book movie or show or uh the kid friendly superman movie or the kind of i i don't know how you describe supergirl but it's oh you can have the body horror rated r a clay face movie that comes out in a couple weeks you you can have all these different tones throughout the dcu and still have it connect and still have it work i still feel that superman is a part of lanterns i never once did i feel this was a different universe or this existed in elseworlds or something like that i still felt like this existed in that universe And even though it was a darker, mature tone and that the writing, the directing, the acting, all that plays a part into making everything work together for the good. So it's possible. And so I just need more real constructive shows. I guess that's the better way to describe it. Not not to say, oh, I need more shows like this. No, everything didn't have to be like. lanterns just make everything work you can tell your story and connect it to the overall universe without inundating it with all the easter eggs and setting up the next superman movie or the next uh uh whatever movies they got coming a batman movie or whatever you don't need to do all that you know leave that for the movies but everything that comes out on you HBO Max, let that be your grounded storytelling elements that hooks the audience in because this was phenomenal. I would like to know what did you think of Lantern season one or do you hope for season two? I certainly do. I will be beating that drum until an announcement is made. Subscribe to the KBRadioNetwork.com. website where you can be notified of new episodes and previous episodes that you can listen to don't forget about youtube ladies and gentlemen subscribe to the kb radio network channel like this video while you're there don't forget about the five stars the reviews and sharing this show if you're listening on apple podcast spotify iheart radio wherever you are currently listening to the concession stand here on the kb radio network everybody thank Thank you for joining me all season long for my coverage of Lanterns on HBO. This was fun. This was an exciting story. This was the type of show I love to cover. It brought nothing but joy every Sunday night, sitting behind this microphone, talking about a show that I enjoyed so much every single week. And I was glad. for all of the support i got every single week with all of you coming to listen to me rant about this show i really do appreciate all of you i truly truly do uh i don't know what else is out i don't know what else you know for the remainder of this year what show is coming out that i will cover throughout uh it's run but hey if something do pop up hey just keep a lookout for me i will be around but for the time being i'm taking a rest it's sunday nights i will be laying up probably doing nothing because life is lifing and especially now that we're getting close to the holiday season and whatnot it is starting to ramp up so i i kind of need a sunday evening to get some rest but it's all good everybody thank you once again for all of your love and support of me and this podcast. I want you all to know that I love you. Continue to love everyone. And until we speak again, you all be blessed.
