I'm not sure why I thought that HBO's new Lanterns series about the DC Comics superhero Green Lantern would be anything but a miserable slog. It's not as though James Gunn's track record since moving over from Marvel has been exactly stellar.
His Superman movie was a moderate success at the box office, but Gunn got everything wrong about the character of Clark Kent and Kal-El (not to mention both sets of his parents). That was followed up by this summer's Supergirl, which can only be described as an unmitigated disaster.
Maybe it's because I didn't dislike Supergirl as much as most people. No, it wasn't a good movie, but it certainly wasn't the worst superhero movie I'd ever seen. Remember The Marvels? Yeah, no one else does either. And Kevin Feige over at the MCU probably wishes he could forget it. too.
Plus, Lanterns had Kyle Chandler as the titular hero Hal Jordan, and he is always a treat.
It didn't take long, however, for me to realize that Lanterns was just another iteration of Star Wars' The Acolyte, an intentional attempt to sabotage and destroy another beloved franchise from our childhood. The first two episodes are drab, joyless, and miserable. And there was wokeness aplenty.
But then Episode 3 happened. Hoo, boy. Did it ever!
It became clear that the creators of Lanterns don't just hate their audience; they want everyone who watches the show to hate every character in it.
According to this show, Hal Jordan is a jaded, washed-up loser who we're supposed to despise. Mostly because he's a white man. But his apprentice and purported successor to the Green Lantern mantle, John Stewart, is also a hate-filled, resentful, humorless malcontent who is not honored to be selected for superhero training, but feels he is entitled to it.
In Episode 3, we find out why. Stewart's parents are racist psychopaths who have filled him with noxious poison (and psychologically traumatized him while putting his life in danger) since he was a small child.
This isn't just subtext. It's about as subtle as a brick to the face. The race hatred is overtly written into the story, going so far as to have Stewart's mother condescendingly explain to an alien why black people are so oppressed on Earth.
"Lanterns" writer/producer Vanessa Baden Kelly says she wrote the scene where a main character's mother explains racism to an alien who oversees a galactic police force because "it's 1986 and this lady knows nothing about nothing."
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 3, 2026
She then agrees with an interviewer who claims… pic.twitter.com/447KxJP4RS
... aliens would have no way to know about racism on Earth because CNN's coverage of the Rodney King riots had not happened yet.
Wait, aliens watch CNN? Maybe that explains why the network hasn't gone out of business yet.
Believe it or not, it gets MUCH worse.
The mother also claims during the episode that Jordan was only chosen to be Green Lantern over her husband because of "white supremacy."
No, I am not making that up.
And, of course, we can't forget the sexism.
Lanterns Writer Claims Green Lantern Ring Is “Sexist” Because It Didn’t Choose John Stewart’s Mom
— Geeks + Gamers (@GeeksGamersCom) September 2, 2026
“The thing that I would always say in the room is that if the ring wasn’t sexist, Bernadette would have been chosen, because she really is just the most fearless of everybody.”… pic.twitter.com/KyU3yTptyo
I'll get back to the fear subject a little later. For now, it will come as a surprise to no one at all that Kelly has nothing in her filmography that would remotely qualify her to helm such a big HBO tentpole series.
That's the irony of a show like Lanterns. It depicts a world where minorities and women can't get ahead in life, and is written by someone who was chosen for the job specifically because she is a minority woman, not based on anything else.
Of course, the backlash against Lanterns Episode 3 — perhaps the worst episode of television ever written or produced — was swift and well-deserved.
[Warning for some very NSFW language in the video below, but he's right about everything.]
I want to physically beat the s*** out of everyone involved in the Lanterns show. pic.twitter.com/JhlnjIRhFF
— Joe Redden | The Older Millennial (@teameffujoe) September 1, 2026
It turns out, when you hate the source material and your audience, they're going to hate you right back.
Who could have guessed?
I think it does a disservice to make literally every show with a black main character about racism and how hard it is to be black. https://t.co/uzmihBTdAO
— Corey Walker 🇺🇸 (@CoreyWriting) September 4, 2026
No one complained when the black Stewart became Green Lantern in the comics, and no one complained when it was announced that he would be one of the two leads on this show.
No one cared. Just tell a good story.
Nope. They can't do it. Everything has to be about racism because they have no imagination and even less intelligence.
I am begging Hollywood to stop hiring writers who have room temperature IQs. https://t.co/2f3rQNiFML
— Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) September 4, 2026
Not only does Lanterns make everything about race, it goes to ridiculous lengths to do so. The main detective story takes place in the current era. The flashbacks to Stewart's childhood are in 1986.
But to make sure we know that America is still a horribly racist country, the show takes one of the Guardian aliens who select Green Lanterns — and who are blue-skinned, by the way — and dress her up as a white woman (the criminally wasted Laura Linney here) who is straight out of Leave It to Beaver in her attire, hairstyle, and mannerisms.
See? Everything is still racist in 1986 because the aliens look like white people from before the Civil Rights Act. Get it?
Hilariously, after Episode 3 enormously backfired, the same writer who wants to tell every white person that they're racist and tell every black person that it's OK to hate white people desperately tried to walk everything back and beg viewers not to abandon the show.
‘Lanterns’ Writer Pleads With Comic Book Fans to Keep Watching After Episode 3 Backlash
— Geeks + Gamers (@GeeksGamersCom) September 5, 2026
“Following considerable backlash to Episode 3, ‘OutKast,’ Kelly admitted in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter that she is ‘really sad’ some comic book fans believe the series has… pic.twitter.com/iP8BZQjtY9
... ruined John Stewart, while urging them to continue watching through the end of the season. ‘I would caution anybody who feels like they know where the John Stewart story ends, based on episode three, to really make it through to the end,’ Kelly said.”
LOL.
Of course. It's OUR fault that she sucks and can't tell a story.
And no. No one is going to keep watching. I haven't seen the ratings for Episode 4, which aired this past Sunday, but something tells me they might look like Nike's stock price over the past several years.
The writers declared that they hate the audience. I don't need any encouragement to change the channel and never change it back.
Even setting aside the tired racist and sexist tropes that were all over Episode 3, it is clear that Kelly or anyone else behind the show does not understand Green Lantern at all.
Shocker, I know.
The story claims that the Guardians didn't choose Stewart's father to be a Lantern because they asked him their one question, "Are you afraid?" And he said yes. (Also, he's a black man, so obviously, they couldn't pick him ... even though they picked his son. That's leftist pretzel logic for you.)
But Green Lantern was never about not feeling fear. That's a ridiculous premise. Every person, every alien, even superheroes feel fear. Fear is a critical, necessary survival instinct.
No, being the Green Lantern is about mastering the power of your will to overcome your fear. That is what defines courage. Not feeling fear at all, ever, is what defines sociopaths.
In fairness, the awful Ryan Reynolds 2011 Green Lantern movie also got this mostly wrong, but at least that movie showed Reynolds' version of Hal Jordan overcoming his fear to take on the mantle of space cop with a magic ring.
Of course, he is also a straight, white guy, so far be it from the makers of Lanterns to take any cues from him.
I know an HBO superhero series is not the most critical problem facing America. But the show spreads poison, like so many of our institutions today that are controlled by the Left. In the end, Lanterns does what all Marxists do.
They don't know how to create, so all they can do is destroy.
In this case, they are destroying a favorite comic book superhero. But we know they will never stop there. As we've seen at the recent Socialism 2026 conference, they want to destroy Western values and America itself.
To that, we all need to respond with the same oath spoken by every member of the Green Lantern Corps:
"In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power… Green Lantern's light!"
We may not all have green space rings, but we do have power. And the easiest way to show HBO and Lanterns that we do is to never watch another episode of the show.
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