Well, well, well. Look who decided to crawl out of the writers’ room to tell us we’re all a bunch of impatient, dopamine-addicted gremlins who don’t appreciate “the craft.” That’s right, the showrunner for HBO’s *Lanterns*—the prestige-TV equivalent of watching paint dry in space—has officially gone to bat for Episode 4, the installment so slow that my Apple TV remote literally fell asleep and started snoring. And honestly? I’m starting to think the only thing more dim than the lighting in that show is the person in charge of defending it.
For those of you lucky enough to have better things to do than mainline every superhero-adjacent property like it’s your job, here’s the deal: *Lanterns* is HBO’s big, shiny, billion-dollar bet on the Green Lantern Corps, starring Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and some other guy who I’m pretty sure was cast because he looks like he smells faintly of cedar and regret. It’s moody. It’s gritty. It’s got more contemplative silences than a meditation retreat run by mimes. And after four episodes, the biggest action sequence so far involved Hal Jordan aggressively filing his taxes. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. The show is a “slow burn,” which is TV-speak for “we spent 90% of the budget on practical effects and now we need to stretch this script until the CGI money kicks in.”
Now, in Episode 4, titled “The Long Dark” (subtle, guys, really subtle), the plot—and I use that term loosely—grinds to a near-complete halt. We get approximately 45 minutes of two guys staring at a dead alien corpse, doing that thing where they talk in vague, portentous sentences that sound deep but are actually just word salad. There’s a subplot involving a grieving widow on a farm that could have been cut entirely, and at one point, I’m pretty sure the camera just lingered on a lantern for a full two minutes. Not a Green Lantern. Just, like, a regular Coleman propane lantern you’d buy at Target for a camping trip. It was riveting. I’ve never been more on the edge of my seat waiting for a mantelpiece to be dusted.
Naturally, the internet—that bastion of nuanced critical thought—has collectively lost its mind. The discourse is in full swing. You’ve got your “This is cinema, you uncultured swine” crowd who are frothing at the mouth, insisting that any criticism is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy. They’re the same people who will tell you that a 45-minute scene of a guy eating a sandwich in *The Bear* is “transcendent.” Then you have the other side, the people who are just trying to unwind after a 9-hour shift at the warehouse and don’t want to feel like they’re doing homework. They’re the ones tweeting, “Bro, I just want to see a giant purple guy get punched in the face, is that too much to ask?”
And then there’s the showrunner, who apparently took a break from polishing his Emmy nomination speech to drop a statement that is so hilariously out of touch, it feels like a parody. In an interview, he basically said that the audience needs to “trust the process” and that “patience is a virtue” when it comes to the show’s pacing. He argued that the slower moments are essential for character development, claiming that the explosive, action-packed finale will feel “earned” if we stick with it.
Oh, really? Earned? Like how I “earned” that root canal last year? Because that’s what watching this show feels like. It’s a dental procedure with better lighting. Look, I get it. We’re living in the post-*Succession* era where every show thinks it needs to be a Shakespearean tragedy about the human condition. But this is *Green Lantern*, man. The guy has a magic ring that can create anything he can imagine. The source material is literally about a space cop who has to deal with a Yellow Lantern who feeds on fear. It’s not *The Brothers Karamazov*.
But no, the showrunner wants to make it about “legacy” and “trauma” and “the burden of the light.” Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I love trauma. I have trauma. My trauma is that I paid for HBO Max and I’m watching two dudes have a philosophical debate about whether or not they should use their super-powered rings to fix a tractor.
The funniest part of this whole debacle is the response to the showrunner’s defense. It’s not the usual “You’re ruining my childhood” rage. It’s a deep, existential exhaustion. The vibe is less “I’m angry” and more “I’m tired, boss.” People are responding with screenshots of their watch history, showing they’ve abandoned Episode 4 halfway through to go re-watch clips of *Impractical Jokers*. Others are posting those “One Piece is real” memes, but changed to “Episode 5 is real” as a form of desperate cope.
The official subreddit is a warzone. One thread, titled “Can someone explain the plot of Episode 4 to me? I was on my phone the whole time,” has over 2,000 comments, most of which are just people admitting they were also on their phones. There’s a separate thread dedicated to cataloging every time the show cuts to a shot of the sky, which is apparently a lot. It’s like a drinking game, but instead of taking a shot of liquor, you take a shot of melatonin.
Look, I’m not saying every show needs to be a Michael Bay movie. I’m a fan of a good slow
Final Thoughts
Having now seen four episodes, it’s clear the showrunners are making a deliberate, restrained choice: they’re less interested in cosmic spectacle than in the grinding, procedural weight of a galactic beat cop’s jurisdiction. The real drama isn’t the ring’s power, but the moral corrosion of wielding it—and watching John Stewart try to navigate that with a chip on his shoulder is where the series finally finds its footing. If they keep this focus on character over fireworks, they might just have the most grounded superhero drama on television, even if it risks alienating fans who just want to see the giant green fist.