This is a collection of comments from the Lanterns creators on the future of the series IF Season 2 gets greenlit for production. As you’d guess several creatives of Lanterns have ben doing press following this week’s Season finale. We know that work has begun on developing ideas for a Season 2 if the show gets the greenlight from DC Studios. We also know Damon Lindelof will not be involved in Season 2, which is important to note before reading his comments.
Chris Mundy
Let’s begin with EW who spoke with showrunner Chris Mundy who is in charge of working out what to do in Season 2 should they get the go ahead.
The trade asked if John becoming Earth’s Green Lantern was a way to keep things Erthbound for future seasons?
“That definitely played into the thinking. We obviously left the planet, so that’s in our wheelhouse, but we like the idea of the show being very grounded. It’s a little more tactile “of this earth,” “of this world” kind of thing. So it was for us to plant that flag. But again, we’ve proven that we can sneak in other stuff, too, if the story warrants it.”
As for his hopes for a Season 2 greenlight?
“You always approach these situations with assuming something’s gonna happen and not being heartbroken if it doesn’t happen. We’re all happy and proud of season 1 and mostly just happy that people seem to like it for the reasons that we intended. If there’s more, great. And if there’s not, we had our day.”
Mundy also informed there’s no multi-Season arc planned with an endpoint in mind.
“I think the story usually dictates it for you. We get a little ways in and then you just have a sense of when you might have overstayed a welcome. But I obviously don’t feel that way now. If and when it goes on, I think that’ll start to become clearer. But there’s not like three acts in all of our minds, you know what I mean? It’s not that at all. It’s more of, What’s interesting? Are people making it still interested and the people watching it still interested? That dictates it.”
RELATED: Lanterns S1E08 Season Finale Review – Some Won’t Be Happy But I Was – Plus Season 1 Review
As for whether John’s ability to maintain constructs will become important going forward?
“I think it’s a really cool idea that’s ripe to be used, especially if you consider things like, if John was thinking about him, the Halogram would pop back up and he’s like, “It’s your subconscious. You’re the one.” I have no specifics to give you, but I think the idea of it is interesting. Any idea or notion or whatever that came up in season 1 is fair game to expand on if it goes forward. That’s a good example of something that might resonate in a way that’s cool for us to do something.”
In the interview below (last third of the video), Mundy was asked about Season 2 being another buddy cop type series, but with another Lantern?
“Vanessa Baden Kelly’s (one of the writers) been talking a big Kilowog game for a long time. We’ve tossed out a lot of different things”
Damon Lindelof
Next up we have co-creator of Lanterns Damon Lindelof who spoke to Collider, mostly about the events of Season 1. as said above Lindelof is not coming back for Season 2, so bear that in mind when analysing his comments.
Asked about whether Hal Jordan could return?
“I definitely don’t want to speculate about the answer to that question. I can only tell you that everybody in the Season 1 room, inclusive of the writers who are working on ideating on Season 2, felt like, even though we knew that it was going to be emotionally devastating and/or disappointing and maybe even frustrating, that the worst possible schmuck-baity thing that we could do is show you a pilot where Hal Jordan was definitively dead, and then try to walk it back and say, “Oh, he was a clone” or “He’s only mostly dead” in the Princess Bride vernacular. In terms of moving forward into subsequent seasons of the show, I swear to you, as I look at you in the eye on Wednesday this 30th of September, I do not know anything about the creative, and I wouldn’t want to hamstring those writers in any way for what future storytelling mechanisms they could indulge in. Knowing what the comics have done with Parallax and Hal, I think, has died at least 3 or 4 times over the course of the canon, and celebrating everything that Kyle did in his performance to get the audience to fall in love with Hal.”
“So I think that honoring the emotional impact and making Season 1 feel felt. The question that you’re asking would be the equivalent of, “Would I want to see a movie called Ghost 2 where Patrick Swayze was alive again?” And the answer is, I would not, because it would degrade the emotional impact of Ghost. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Where there’s will, there’s a way.”
Lanterns remaining Earthbound?
Lindelof was asked whether grounding John as Earth’s protector is purely down to budgetary concerns?
“Yeah, I think nobody wants to hear and writers certainly don’t want to feel like the creative decisions that we’re making are budgetary, or even pragmatic. I mean, we have imaginations, and our job is to dream. That said, for reasons that I think you guys have reported on, and many others have reported on, the appetite for a Lanterns show, both that preceded James and Peter taking over the DCU, and then ultimately, once they did take over and they and they convened their brain trust, of which Tom King was, an inaugural member and basically said, True Detective/Lanterns and inadvertently was unaware that some version of that idea had been bandied about all the way back to when Greg Berlanti, who I think is incredible and has done more for the DCU than any living human being. I admire greatly and love his stuff, but going back to what he and Marc Guggenheim were working on was a more space-bound Green Lantern Corps, I think.”
“Yeah, of course there’s a budgetary consideration, but the other consideration is when audiences see materials, whether they’re fans, lifelong fans, or they’re looking to flirt, their brains basically tell them, “I can relate to this” or “I can’t relate to this,” and you don’t design the story to pander to the audience. But when you see a Superman trailer vs. a Supergirl trailer, your brain basically tells you, even though it’s set in Metropolis, this story is taking place on the planet Earth, and when you see a Supergirl trailer, your brain tells you this story is not taking place on the planet Earth. And so we wanted to create the biggest tent that welcomed the greatest number of people without alienating or pissing off the fans, because the Green Lanterns are a universal intergalactic space force, but we get to decide what beat we’re focused on, and at least for Season 1, which is the only decision-making that I was involved in, it felt across the board that we should stick to Earth with some limited dalliances to show the audience that the Lanterns were intergalactic.”
“Where they go in Season 2 and beyond, or where they even go in [Man of Tomorrow], which I have not read and know nothing about because I don’t want to be spoiled, is anyone’s guess. But obviously James’ vision for the DCU is intergalactic, because we’ve already seen Supergirl, and there are references to alien beings. And I think that it’s been reported that an alien being is the big bad of the Man of Tomorrow movie. So yeah, there’s a lot of planets out there where a lot of bad things are happening that would benefit from the intervention of Green Lanterns. But I think that John, for all the emotional reasons, wants to keep his focus on Earth for now. [That] felt important to us — not just for budget.”
That’s everything I can find from any of the creatives of Lanterns on what could happen in the future of the show and a possible Season 2. Leave any thoughts below as always.
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