Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Lanterns’ latest episode on HBO or streaming via HBO Max subscription, so be warned!
After a premiere that seemingly killed off its iconic superhero — though I’m not fully convinced that’s the case — on top of some NSFW uses of the Green Lantern ring, Lanterns’ second episode introduced audiences to the iconic DC comic book villain Sinestro. The scene in question, which features Hal Jordan flying out to meet his former mentor in a space prison, is where the promotional first look at the villain was taken from. So fans may be wondering just how much more of the critical character we’ll be seeing this season.
If the co-creators are to be believed: not all that much. Which isn’t to say that Ulrich Thomsen’s Sinestro will be wasted with his on-screen time or anything. Just that there won’t be an overabundance of on-screen time. Which is something executive producer Damon Lindelof says is a calculated move that played firmly into the idea that Season 1’s murder-mystery narrative doesn’t have a textbook “big bad” for the heroes to face off against and defeat in the most traditional sense.
Though more direct forms of antagonism may come in the future, SInestro’s role in Season 1 seems to be as a motivating factor for Hal, even if said motivating isn’t through good-natured encouragement. As Lindelof explained to EW, the writers conceived this version of Sinestro to be Lanterns’ take on Silence of the Lambs’ most eloquent monster.
As big of a trope as it is to go visit Hannibal Lecter in the prison or Loki, this is tried and true. The idea that Sinestro is out there is really, really important to understanding who Hal is. No one is gonna be able to poke at Hal’s reluctance to cede the ring more than Sinestro will.
Though it's unclear just how closely Lanterns' "intense" backstory for Hal and Sinestro will reflect one or more of their comic book arcs, the general idea is that Sinestro was Hal's fatherly figure within the Green Lantern Corps, and he inevitably let the Yellow Lantern's fear take over his willpower, causing his turn to villainy. Sinestro's actions did a lot of damage to Hal's optimism and ability to see the good in others, which is why he's such a surly squirrel with Aaron Pierre's John.
Showrunner Chris Mundy more directly lays out an explanation for why Sinestro isn't getting his villainous due in this particular season, saying:
We wanted him in the show just because of his place in the mythology. But by nature of the fact that we were telling a mystery more than we were telling a thriller, we don’t really have a big bad in the season. We have mysteries [where] there might be something malevolent behind them or not, and there’s a mystery of people’s identities or who did what, but it’s not ‘we’re fighting this bad guy, and he’s gonna destroy the world.’ So in this weird way, it freed us up. We could use him sparingly.
Whether or not one thinks the co-creators' plan was a solid idea, everything Mundy says does make logical sense. If this fairly grounded show added a hyper-intelligent alien nemesis into the mix, it could create a narrative overload that would get criticized for different reasons. Damned if you do, and so on.
Plus, the dual-timeline nature of events would also create complications when introducing an overarching villain. Would Sinestro break out of his jail in 2006, and then not get stopped until 2016, or some other situation?
Damon Lindelof shared that the starting point was the most extreme version of events, in which Sinestro was never seen nor heard, and that they built the story out from there, as opposed to conceiving of a villainous endgame and then working backwards. In the live-action Watchmen creator's words:
You start from, ‘What if Sinestro isn’t in the show at all?’ And you just go, ‘Well, that feels wrong.’ Sometimes you can just let your guide be, ‘If I were watching the show and I wasn’t working on it, what’s the thing that would drive me the most nuts?’ and ‘What are the things that I expect?’
Also logical enough at face value, and is smart from a TV-writing perspective. But then there's that question about expectations, which spins all of these comments back around to being a bit maddening. Which I say even as someone who genuinely enjoys Lanterns for withholding the spectacle early on.
Maddening in that Sinestro's sparse usage is being explained away using a narrative conceit that the creators crafted specifically for this show. Nothing was being foisted upon them from outside forces, and they weren't sourcing specific "light-on-villainy" storylines. It stands to reason that if any of them despero-tely wanted to tell a Sinestro-centric story for Hal and John, they wouldn't have gone the murder-mystery route in the first place.
I understand the need to keep things easy to understand for viewers who aren't familiar with Green Lantern's lore, and that it'll be easier to build up to space-faring adventures rather than starting there. But it's wild to hear that they asked themselves, "What would drive me the most nuts" as fans, but didn't foresee other fans being driven nuts by a story and aesthetic that looks and acts so differently from the comic book stories that made them Green Lantern fans.
So does this mean Sinestro and Parallax will team up in Season 2? Obviously not, but it sure would be nice if enough people are watching to convince HBO to up the budget to deliver a proper Good vs. Evil-ish story next time around.
