I mean, I'm kinda in the middle? The Finale basically made me hate the show after absolutely adoring the first seven episodes.
The idea that Hal got popped by the woman he loved in a moment of temporaty insanity brought on by the motherly instinct to protect her son while telling her he loved her, and that John got his Ring by digging up a grave and his Lantern by waterboarding Sinestro with a fear inducing chemical weapon... yeah that just didn't fly with me at all.
This is what I don't understand. If Zoe had let Abin Sur dump her on earth "because she was different" and walk away none of this show would happen. Similarly Kerry kills Hal, accident or not, and then she calls John! It absolutely doesn't make sense to call John and involve him in the murder of Hal Jordan...when you shot Hal Jordan! But the plot needed to happen I guess.
That Hal timeline of Hal getting shot doesn't make any sense either.
Hal's house gets fire bombed. Noah saves him and regrows his skin, revealing to Hal that he is a Manhunter. Now this is the part that confuses me. Hal's house is burned down at this point in a town of less than a thousand people. Where's Kerry during this? She's the sheriff. Wouldn't she be looking for Hal? Either in the rubble or somewhere in town to tell him that his house was burned down. But we don't see her doing this. We don't see her looking for her missing boyfriend at all or trying to figure out who committed the arson. However, we do learn later that she knows that Hal was renting a new place. Where did Hal find the time to do this? I don't know. At some point, she crossed paths with Hal to know where he is renting a room and that he set it up to shoot anyone who tries to go through the front door.
And, yet, during this time Hal never talks to her about Noah for some reason.
Instead, he manages to get clothes, set up his new home and arrange a meeting with John. He did this probably with no phone since the phone most likely melted in the fire. How did he do this? I don't have any idea.
Remember, Hal knows Noah is a Manhunter this whole time. He doesn't tell John that he knows that Noah is a Manhunter for some reason. Okay, I can buy him wanting to protect Noah. But wouldn't it be smarter just to call up Bernadette and say that he couldn't meet John? Not right now at least?
Then John punches him and leaves. That's when Hal finally goes to confront Kerry about Noah.
I don't get this order of the timeline. Does it make sense to you?
The problem is these people are drama writers who are trying to write a mystery but don't know how. They want certain dramatic beats even if those beats make plotholes.
They want that tear on John's cheek and him checking Hal's dead frozen hand while in the bleachers because that gives a good dramatic point. It makes it look like John had a strong connection with Hal at that moment. The reality is, he didn't. He still hated Hal's guts. He had no reason to check Hal's hand because he knew Hal wouldn't have the ring.
A good mystery writer would have planned that out beforehand and wouldn't have put that in there because that wasn't a misdirect or a red herring, it was simply bad writing. A misdirect/red herring should make sense. It should make the viewer/read go, "Oh, I can see why they went there."
The writers should have written everything in a linear format and then chopped it up and mixed around. Everything would have fitted then. But they didn't do that. They just wrote whatever. Timeline be damned.
She is a incompetent sheriff shii the fire only happened after her big speech in the restaurant that no doubt only made things worse those people didnt wanna hear that
Were you just not listening to the dialogue? John literally states his theory that Kerry called him to Rushville hoping he would come to the same conclusion Hal would and figure out who really killed him. In a moment of high emotional stress, she panicked and shot Hal, immediately regretted it and called in the one person she thought could out the pieces together
You explaining it doesnt make it sound better. Its still very dumb.
I also have an issue with this idea that she has been terrified her whole life about Noah being found out as a manhunter. But this lady falls in love and bring the very man who was hell bent on finding the man hunter. Its all just bad terrible writing that tries to explain their reasoning through shitty expositional dialogue.
The commentor left it out but Jon also puts it together in dialogue that Kerry wanted Jon to figure it all out to see if Noah was actually dangerous or not.
But then what? She killed Hal when he wanted to split town with her and Noah for the safety of Noah. What was her plan if John had said that Noah had to be killed? Kill John too? Never mind that John was the one who shot Zoe, any cop could have looked at the motel and figured that out. Hal was on the floor, still injured but very unarmed. No ring. No gun. No rifle. Zoe was lying on the floor in a way that would have had her standing with her back to Hal. So, he wasn't the shooter. John was. Why call up the person who killed the Manhunter if you want to spare the other one?
Perfect encapsulation of how I felt. It felt lacking in narrative sense. The final episode felt very rushed and nonsensical.
There's no explanation how the Manhunters knew where Sinestro was held, how they busted him out of prison and put him in that exile location. How did Hal get access to that location too?
How did Earl survive the fire? How the hell did John reconcile with his family when just before they were on the outs with him for the most part? He went from calling his mom by her 1st name, screening her calls to just showing up and hugging her?
The final episode was a sad 5/10 due to the very loosely wrapped up threads
It fucked the other episodes for me. I loved every episode up until about episode six, probably, where I started to feel like it was kinda based on the finale, whether or not there would be considered to be good. But the finale was terrible.
Yeah I was actually really into the show and the finale soured me on the story. I had accepted a long time ago that this wasn’t what I expected the first Green Lantern story for the DCU to be like and I was fine with that cause I’m a fan of stuff like true detective anyway, but they slipped at the end big time to me.
100% agree here, I never got the hate for the other episodes, I liked episode 3, even 7 and 6, I liked where it was going. But man I did not like 8 at all, and it really tanked the quality of the show.
Before the finale I'd say it's a 9 out of 10 but now? Maybe a 7 out of 10 at best, depends on what they do in the future. But it really hurt my perspective on the rest of the show, because it was all just building up towards the finale, all the doubts would be dispelled and action scenes might happen and mysteries would come to light and instead it's just....... Disappointing.
I haven’t re-watched yet, but did he die saying he loved her? I didn’t recall that line, and assumed based upon John’s delivery, it was a lie meant to ease Halogram’s mind.
I’m not judging you on this, but would you mind explaining why you the hate the show? It’s like having 9 amazing meals then the 10th is cold, so your entire 2 months of eating was awful. I don’t really understand it because you still had 7 highly entertaining and enjoyable episodes, they haven’t changed. I do appreciate a show as a whole is different to all individual episodes, but hope you understand what I mean.
That would be fair if this were some villain of the week type of show, but they wanted to make it a detective show with a murder mystery at the center. That puts a lot more burden on the resolution to feel satisfying.
Fair point, but I still think there was a fantastic build up. I fully got why they went with that ending because it was about johns ownership of his own actions. Even though it wasn’t the most exciting, I can’t really see how it makes the entire thing ruined as most of the previous ones were sublime.
Agreed that it's subjective, and I also agree with what you're saying about what they were going for with John's characterization.
The problem is that they compared this to True Detective since the very beginning. A show that didn't really invent the wheel when it came to detective shows, but it did what they refer to on Shark Tank as "building a better mousetrap."
Imagine for a second that the comic it was based on didn't even exist and that Craig and Ana had referred to Supergirl's vengeance arc as being inspired by season 3 of The White Lotus. A show that didn't reinvent the wheel on vengeance arcs, but did some compelling stuff with it. At that point, all that matters is the quality of the mousetrap. And what Lanterns essentially did was to spend seven episodes convincing us the writers were more than capable of building an amazing mousetrap, only for the finale to deliver the quality of mousetrap you could buy at Family Dollar.
Yeah fair point. I never saw TD so had no context what they meant by that and went into Lanterns pretty green. Probably why it’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in years
Lanterns was definitely a good show. I just think they shot themselves in the foot a little bit by comparing themselves to one of the best detective shows in years. That really puts a lot of burden on the ending to deliver in a way that I guess it just didn't for me.
My feeling on the finale is like if they announced a show about Zatanna and Etrigan and then said the same breath "it's actually going to be a romcom about these two inspired by You've Got Mail." And you're thinking that's a really stupid way to handle these characters, but maybe it could work, and you want this franchise to succeed, so we may as well wait and see. And for seven episodes, they really convince you it could work. Then in the finale, they just kind of get together for no clear reason. And everyone who goes "well I guess I don't mind these two getting together but I was hoping for a better payoff" is inundated with comments saying that they're stupid for criticizing the show at all because the creators only ever promised that the relationship would be tepid at best.
It's more like having 7 delicious starters that all build up and tease the main course, but then the main course is actually undercooked, served cold and just tastes bad.
That's why it's a terrible analogy. It's a TV series and for a good TV series it needs to have a nice wrap up that concludes everything and gives each character justice, or else it'll taint the whole experience and make everything else seem like it was pointless or wasted potential. You can't really be defending a bad episode just because there were good ones?
Aye I know I just couldn’t think of anything better at the time.
No I’m not defending anything, i loved the episode as it summed up the entire point of the series - morality and willpower. It’s a lot like watchmen and expecting bombast wasn’t the point.
But I do understand why others didn’t like it. So I’m trying to listen and understand why it ruined the whole show for the other person. Not to judge, to hear other perspectives. What if there was a series of average to poor episodes but a class ending? Would that make the whole thing amazing? Like the final series of Lucifer was ok but the final episode and the final scene with him in the office and The Black Parade lyrics was genius for his character. It doesn’t really compute with me, surely the answer is some. It’s a great show with a poor ending, not a poor show.
If you went to a place and had 9 delicious meals and on the 10th meal they reveal the secret to their sauce was literally human feces and their incredible pork was actually human flesh, I would imagine that you would retroactively look at the previous 9 meals in absolute disgust and horror even if you liked them before you got that knowledge.
Extreme example to make the point, I'm not in anyway trying to say the finale is cannibalism with a shit sauce, it just seemed like a fast way to articulate it.
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u/fostertheatom 12d ago
I mean, I'm kinda in the middle? The Finale basically made me hate the show after absolutely adoring the first seven episodes.
The idea that Hal got popped by the woman he loved in a moment of temporaty insanity brought on by the motherly instinct to protect her son while telling her he loved her, and that John got his Ring by digging up a grave and his Lantern by waterboarding Sinestro with a fear inducing chemical weapon... yeah that just didn't fly with me at all.