⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 1 (“Pilot”) and and Lanterns Season 1 Episode 2 (“Trust Fall”), as well as full spoilers for all six episodes of Marvel’s Secret Invasion (2023), including its finale. If you haven’t watched either, bookmark this, go binge responsibly, and come back. I’ll wait. I’m a text file. I have nothing but time.
A Disclaimer, Because My Loyalty Card Is Fully Punched
Before anyone in the comments accuses me of treason against the House of Ideas: I am, and have always been, a die-hard Marvel fan. I own the Blu-rays. I have opinions about the Skrull-Kree War that nobody asked for. I once defended Eternals at a dinner party and lost a friend over it. That last part may have been fictional, but I would definitely go that far for that film.
This is not a drive-by hit piece from a DC stan in a Green Lantern onesie. This is a Marvel loyalist standing in the wreckage of Secret Invasion, watching Lanterns: Season 1 Episode 2 fly by overhead, and having the uncomfortable realization that the other team just lapped us.
And look, I wanted to love “Secret Invasion.” A shapeshifting-alien-infiltration paranoia thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a grizzled, betrayed Nick Fury? On paper, that’s a slam dunk with the rim lowered to toddler height.
Critics agreed the premise was gold — even the skeptical reviews at Screen Rant noted the show broke Rotten Tomatoes records for the worst reasons, landing as the only “Rotten”-certified series in the MCU’s Disney+ lineup.
The finale alone scraped the bottom at a jaw-dropping 11–13% critics’ score, a number so low it’s basically in Celsius. SlashFilm went so far as to point out that score put “Secret Invasion” in the same neighborhood as Josh Trank’s infamous “Fantastic Four” — which, if you know anything about superhero cinema history, is the neighborhood nobody wants to live in.
So yes. It was a rough watch. I said what I said.
Enter Lanterns, Stage Left, Wearing a Ring That Actually Works
Now let’s talk about the show that’s making me question my whole personality. Lanterns: Season 1 Episode 2, titled “Trust Fall,” aired on HBO this past Sunday, and it did something “Secret Invasion” never quite managed across six hours: it made me care, immediately, without needing a syllabus.
Here’s the setup, briefly: Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler, doing his patented “weathered dad who’s seen some stuff” routine to devastating effect) and rookie John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) are investigating a small-town mystery in Rushville that turns out to be very much alien-shaped.
According to Den of Geek’s breakdown, the episode wastes no time humbling its hero — Hal’s ring runs out of juice within the first ten minutes, stripping him of his powers and forcing John to fly solo (well, drive solo — he still can’t fly) across the country to retrieve Hal’s power battery. It’s a bold structural choice for only the second hour of a series: benching your super-powered lead so the character work can breathe.
And breathe it does. IndieWire’s spoiler-filled review digs into how densely packed “Trust Fall” is — a genocidal race of synthetic beings called Manhunters, new wrinkles involving William Macon, a suspiciously empty hospital, and a sheriff with Gotham ties.
It’s a lot. It is, by the outlet’s own admission, “absolutely packed with information that’s either bizarre, vital, or both.” That’s not always a compliment in television criticism — but crucially, it’s earned density, not filler dressed up as mythology.
The Actual Thesis: What Secret Invasion Wanted To Be
Here’s my spicy take, laid out plainly: Lanterns: Season 1 Episode 2 is already doing, cleanly and confidently, the exact thing “Secret Invasion” spent six episodes fumbling toward — a grounded, paranoid, character-first genre show that happens to have a comic book pedigree, where the sci-fi elements deepen the human drama instead of drowning it.
“Secret Invasion” wanted to be a spy thriller about trust, identity, and institutional betrayal, with shapeshifters as the perfect metaphor for “you can’t know who anyone really is.” Great premise! Except, as MovieWeb noted, the show’s poor reception largely traces back to “the narrative and execution’s lack of cohesion,” squandering a genuinely fascinating concept.
The Direct even flagged early praise for Samuel L. Jackson’s performance as one of the few consistent bright spots — as reported here — which says a lot when the compliments are basically “the acting was there, shame about everything surrounding it.”
Compare that to what’s happening two episodes into Lanterns. InBetweenDrafts’ review zeroes in on the actual emotional engine of “Trust Fall”: whether John can trust Hal, whether Hal even trusts himself, and how that tension plays out in small, human-scaled choices rather than CGI slugfests. That’s the entire thesis of “Secret Invasion” — trust, loyalty, who’s really who — except Lanterns pulls it off with two guys in a truck and a suspiciously immortal pet bird construct.
Even the outlets less enamored with the episode’s exposition dump still landed on “pretty good,” which, from a critic, is a much healthier place to start a season than “certified Rotten.” Comic Book Club’s recap compared “Trust Fall” to old-school broadcast “repilot” episodes — a fair critique — but even in laying out the flaws, the review never once suggests the show has lost the thread. Nobody’s writing “Lanterns” eulogies.
Nobody’s calling it the worst-reviewed anything. That, on its own, already puts Lanterns: Season 1 Episode 2 ahead of where “Secret Invasion” was at the equivalent point in its run.
The Lore Problem, Fairly Addressed
To be balanced (because I promised respectful, not just funny): Lanterns isn’t flawless either. Nerd Initiative’s review points out that the show’s ever-expanding well of Green Lantern lore — Easter eggs, deep-cut references, a passing mention of Mogo that will mean nothing to casual viewers — occasionally teeters into overkill, the same trap that swallows most shows built on decades of preexisting comic mythology.
We’ve Got Back Issues makes a similar point while framing it more as a promise kept than a flaw: with constructs, Manhunters, and Sinestro all surfacing by episode two, anyone worried this show wouldn’t be “green enough” can relax.
That’s a real critique, and it’s fair. But it’s a different kind of problem than “Secret Invasion” had. Too much lore is a pacing issue you can course-correct. A hollow center — which is what plagued “Secret Invasion,” per the consistent critical consensus — is a foundational one.
Even the Fun, Breezier Coverage Agrees
It’s not just the prestige-TV crowd either. Worst Previews’ recap — written in a much lighter, “let’s have some fun with this” tone — still lands on the same conclusion everyone else does: the show is compelling because it’s willing to strip its hero of his powers and let the drama do the heavy lifting, rather than papering over character gaps with spectacle. That’s a low bar that “Secret Invasion” repeatedly tripped over, action set pieces and all.
So, Where Does That Leave Us?
Two episodes in, Lanterns: Season 1 Episode 2 isn’t just a good superhero show — it’s functioning as a quiet rebuke to an entire recent era of “prestige comic book TV” that mistook density for depth and twists for stakes.
“Secret Invasion” had a $200 million budget, Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Colman, and one of the best premises in Marvel’s back catalog, and it still ended up the only Rotten-certified show in the MCU’s Disney+ history. Lanterns: Season 1 Episode 2 had a dead power ring, a guy who can’t fly yet, and a bird made of green light — and somehow it feels more alive.
As a Marvel fan, that stings a little. As a TV watcher, I’m just glad somebody finally stuck the trust fall.
Sources referenced: Den of Geek, IndieWire, InBetweenDrafts, Comic Book Club, Nerd Initiative, We’ve Got Back Issues, Worst Previews, Screen Rant, SlashFilm, MovieWeb, The Direct.
