'Lanterns' Reaches the River Styx, Then Asks What the Partnership Is For
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IndieWire's review of the penultimate episode of Lanterns Season 1 describes an hour stuffed with cosmic furniture: dark matter portals, dead alien worlds, and a dangerous ride across the river Styx. The critic's argument is that the spectacle is not what stays with you. What lingers, in that reading, is what becomes of Hal and John's late-maturing bond — a relationship that took most of a season to arrive at something worth watching. That is a harder trick than a portal. Mythic set dressing can be borrowed from anywhere; a partnership that only clicks in the final stretch has to be earned by everything the show did while it was not clicking.
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The portals and dead worlds are the easy part — they can be rendered. A bond that matures late is riskier, because it depends on the audience having noticed the earlier distance.
Or the late bond is the safe part. Cosmic imagery is what a penultimate episode is expected to deliver; two leads finally getting along is the cheapest way to make an hour feel consequential.