Lanterns’ Manhunter Mystery Is Now A Problem For Another Project To Solve
While the Manhunters are the major threat of the show's first season, it still feels like we don't understand all that much about them.
Thus far, each project in James Gunn’s burgeoning DCU has expanded the scope of the world and its history. Creature Commandos introduced us to Task Force M and gave us glimpses of the universe’s past and future (including a silhouetted look at the DCU’s Batman), Superman fleshed out Clark Kent’s supporting cast while also acquainting audiences with the Justice Gang, Peacemaker Season 2 culminated in the creation of a pocket dimension metahuman prison that will certainly become relevant in the near future, and this year’s Supergirl brought viewers on a quest through the cosmos.
The most recent project, Lanterns, is no exception. While the show took a grounded, prestige television approach to its storytelling, it still managed to bring the spacefaring canon of Green Lantern down-to-Earth, introducing characters like Sinestro and the Guardians of the Universe to audiences maybe unfamiliar with them, and even tipping the hat to incredibly obscure Lanterns like Mogo and Ch’p. The show also introduced the amoral android Manhunters as the season’s overarching villain, but while it certainly led to an emotionally-charged resolution, it can’t help but feel like Lanterns simply kicked the can down the road for another project to deal with.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Lanterns Season 1.
For as big of a threat as they seem to be in this first season, Lanterns still chooses to keep them mostly shrouded in secrecy.
By the end of the season, what do we truly know about the Manhunters? We know that they were created by the Guardians, we know that they once destroyed an entire planet, we know that they can mimic any species in the galaxy for the sake of blending in, and we know that they have programming which prioritizes self-preservation at any cost. Most of that information is exposition delivered by characters other than the show’s two Manhunters, and even then we’re mostly left to speculate on certain questions like why the Guardians made them in the first place and the specific circumstances behind their discontinuation.
Compare this with the Manhunters of the comics: A prior attempt at a galactic peacekeeping force before the Green Lanterns, their rigid programming emphasis on “absolute order” caused them to see all organic life as the root of evil in the universe. Eventually, they were decommissioned after obliterating an entire space sector. While some of this can be assumed to be the case for Lanterns as well, the show has displayed no issue with completely changing certain aspects of canon — and for a show that adapts unfeeling murder robots into synthetic androids with complex emotions like Noah, you would think either he or Zoe would have some complicated feelings on their history and backstory.
Lanterns turns the unfeeling callous androids into beings with complex emotions, which is a drastic change that the show only takes advantage of towards the end.
The choice to end the season with John putting his faith in Noah as someone who can override his programming just like he did is, in theory, a thoughtful conclusion to his arc. But it also provides the show with a convenient justification to simply leave the Manhunters as a dangling plot thread, to be built upon in a later season or in a later DCU movie. It’s still not really known by the other members of the Corps that their bosses were the ones who created them in the first place, and the show never reveals the timeline of the destruction of Antaan’s planet. The implication seems to be that it happened after the Manhunters were initially decommissioned, but it’s entirely possible that the planetary massacre was at the behest of the Guardians in the first place.
Of course, this is a cinematic universe adaptation of superhero comics, a medium where stories have historically been interlinked to other stories, so it’s not unexpected for situations to be carried over into future storylines. Who’s to say they won’t be a part of Man of Tomorrow, or Lanterns Season 2, or an as-of-yet unannounced Green Lantern film?
But Lanterns is a show that, from day one, positioned itself as emphasizing tight, self-contained writing as opposed to big galactic battles and superhero spectacle. It feels like a missed opportunity to not further explore this interpretation of the Manhunters in Lanterns, and instead choose to make the audience fill in the blanks on pretty crucial aspects of the story. There’s certainly room for Noah and other Manhunters to show up in the future, but the question marks left dangling over the species’ history in the DCU does end up making their presence in Lanterns feel a little unsatisfying.
