Nebraska lights up ‘Lanterns,’ a new TV Western

Their solution? Set it in Rushville, Nebraska.

With relatives in Nebraska, co-creator Tom King says setting a series in a vast open space would underscore the power of superheroes “and they’d explode like the dragons in ‘Game of Thrones,’ instead of being lost among the chaos," he says. "In Nebraska, they’d really stand out.”

The superheroes are the Lanterns, interstellar peacekeepers, who are assigned to investigate a murder in Rushville. Hal Jordan, the veteran (played by Kyle Chandler), believes it’s an extraterrestrial incident. John Stewart (played by Aaron Pierre) is a recruit, not one chosen by a power ring.

The new series feels like a season of “True Detective,” which could track because co-creator Chris Mundy worked on “Ozark” and “True Detective: Night Country.” Producer Damon Lindelof, best known for “Lost,” said it was a relief to work on a show that wasn’t steeped in superhero lore.

“They’re human beings first before they even put on the rings,” Lindelof says of the two detectives.

Digging into that veteran/newcomer dynamic would give “Lanterns” a relatable feel.

“It became obvious really quickly that there was going to be a very cool collaborative process which freed us up,” Chandler says. “It didn’t take long for Aaron and I to find a spot where, ‘OK, that’s you, that’s me, that’s my character, that’s your character,’ and then we started playing back and forth. All the rest of it fell into place.”

Pierre says the two improvised frequently.

“The magic was already on the page, but they knew we were always going to get from point A to point B, but how we got there nobody knew," Pierre says. "We like to surprise each other. And they permitted us freedom and liberty to do that.”

Rushville, which is in the panhandle of Nebraska near South Dakota, was home to King’s grandmother.

“And she would tell me stories of this little town. She rode a horse to school, and there were three people in the schoolhouse, and they all knew each other," King says. "To me, that was an alien planet. So when we started thinking about this show and people going to an alien planet, it appealed to me. And to put a little bit of my grandmother’s magic in it” was a bonus, he says.

Lindelof says it reads like a classic Western.

“John and Hal are not quite father and son; they’re more akin to brothers. But they’re both processing this very complicated relationship with their own dads in partnership with one another," Lindelof says. "There’s no rings, no aliens, no space, no Guardians. Then you layer all that stuff in, and you make that the science, and the genre stuff supports those ideas.”

While working on “Lost,” Lindelof found outsiders were eager for an end to the mystery: “‘When are you going to tell us what’s going on?’’’ Lindelof remembers them saying. “But once we started answering mysteries, the show was going down the hill.”

“Watchmen,” another of his series, had a nine-episode limit, and that was more manageable. Likewise: “Lanterns.”

“Chris’s vision for ‘Lanterns’ was the perfect hybrid of both those things,” Lindelof says. “It had a mystery, a relationship story and an end, but the audience is going to be really hungry for more when it ends.”

Bonus perk: Chandler says “Lanterns” was his way to get into the ever-popular superhero world.

“It’s a lot of fun, and there’s humor in getting older,” he says. “You get to play out so many things.”