Grant Morrison Trashes 'Lanterns' Finale Despite Becoming a Fan

When we last left Grant Morrison, the comics legend was not entirely thrilled with Damon Lindelof earlier in the year. At the time, Lanterns was embroiled in a now very silly bit of fan kerfuffle over the first teaser not having enough green in it. This led to an old podcast clip of Lindelof being unearthed where he joked that Lanterns sounds better than Green Lanterns because “green is stupid.” Morrison did not like that one bit and ripped Lindelof up and down for being “ashamed” of the source material, prompting an apology from the Lanterns creator.

Since then, there have been some developments. Halfway through the first season, Morrison did a 180 and revealed that, actually, they love what Lanterns is throwing down.

Via Xanaduum:

Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre are great. I didn’t care for the Hannibal Lectering of Sinestro, but otherwise the show has picked up nicely and the approach has worked, so good on them. Otherwise, I’ve grown to love the more nuanced Hal Jordan Kyle Chandler is delivering, while Pierre’s John Stewart has developed impressively as a character, with every episode cracking him out of his regimented shell while Hal’s reckless drunken bum routine is revealed as useful misdirection. I’ll watch until the end, but it’s probably not worth having any more opinions about the show until then.

True to their word, Morrison stuck through to the end, but they did not love the finale. Weirdly, Morrison’s main sticking point is that the ending didn’t make sense from a legal perspective, and I’m starting to wonder who doesn’t understand comic books in this equation.

Spoilers below:

I read writer Tom King’s explanation for why this choice was made - she killed the man she loved and was suffering enough - and wondered how that defence would fly in a court of law after some ghastly crime of passion.

‘The horror of murdering his wife in cold blood is punishment enough for this man, your honour. Let him walk free with a gun in his hand, and we’ll just hope it never happens again, okay?’

I watched the show; Kerry lost her shit in a way that made her seem unhinged and she shot a superhero in the head out of pique. John Stewart also let the Manhunter go free, knowing that he could one day destroy the world. For a show that’s not about masked vigilantes with their own personal code but deals with weird space policemen working for an interplanetary judiciary, it was a morally and legally incoherent conclusion that backed out of its own implications and the basic premise of the franchise.

Extremely nerdy opinion coming: I’m sorry, is the writer of Final Crisis — one of the most notoriously convoluted DC events ever written — complaining about coherency? Wow… I realize I’m just some dork on the internet, and Grant Morrison is one of the most famous comic book writers on the planet, but Lanterns to me was pure funny pages goodness. Not to mention, the show is set in a world where magic rings exist alongside shape-shifting aliens that can cure cancer.

To put things in perspective Grant Morrison once wrote a story where Batman used a gun on Darkseid, only for Bats to be sent back to the dawn of time where he fought his way through history to crawl out of his own grave. He was a caveman at one point! How is that any more ridiculous than John Stewart’s actions? Here’s an evolved character who is now fully aware that everything about the Guardians is shady as hell, and more importantly, the last attempt to bring down a Manhunter destroyed both the entire town and Hal Jordan. I can’t imagine why John would want to avoid all that.

Then again, Grant Morrison has written way more comics than I ever will, so I should probably shut up now. What am I even doing here?