Spoilers ahead for “Lanterns” Episode 7, “The Jordan Boys Legacy.”
Long before its official debut, we heard much about how “Lanterns” would essentially be a comic book version of “True Detective.” Indeed, during a 2023 event, DC Studios co-head Peter Safran unveiled a slate of upcoming projects and specifically touted “Lanterns” being “very much in the vein of ‘True Detective'” (via Variety). When the series finally arrived, it was clear that much of Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart’s (Aaron Pierre) dynamic was modeled on Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s characters from “True Detective” Season 1. But with Episode 7, “Lanterns” takes one of the crime anthology series’ most intriguing and mysterious concepts and realizes it on a scale “True Detective” fans surely never expected. Yes, it seems “Lanterns” has finally taken us to Carcosa.
Carcosa is a fictional city referenced heavily in “True Detective” Season 1. It was first mentioned in Ambrose Bierce’s 1886 short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” wherein the city is only recalled retrospectively following its destruction. The grim locale was then used by Robert W. Chambers in several short stories for his 1895 book “The King in Yellow,” all of which revolve in some way around the eponymous play. And while Chambers doesn’t provide the full text of the play in question, he does include sections from the script, depicting Carcosa as a cursed and wretched place that appears to exist either in an alternate dimension or on some alien planet. Chambers also uses the term “Aldebaran” in his writing, which could be interpreted as referring to the star of the same name, suggesting Carcosa may well be an extraterrestrial world.
Now, “Lanterns” has taken us to that planet, bringing the hellish location to life in a way that “True Detective” never did.
Lanterns takes us beyond the Carcosa of True Detective to the real deal
“True Detective” fans are well aware that creator Nic Pizzolatto borrowed heavily from the Carcosa mythos when crafting Season 1 of his crime series. That debut season sees Matthew McConaughey’s Rustin Cohle and Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart investigate a child sacrifice cult (one that may be linked to a real-life cult case) in Louisiana. Its members worship some version of the Carcosa mythos and a Yellow King figure, with the cult having since become known as the Carcosa cult among fans.
We even got a glimpse of an Earthly version of the cursed city in the “True Detective” Season 1 finale, wherein Rust and Marty descend upon a set of old underground tunnels in a Louisiana backwater. There, the Carcosa cult had been carrying out twisted rituals in caverns filled with devil’s nets and a Yellow King effigy. But it’s never actually confirmed that the cult refers to this location as Carcosa. It’s also left ambiguous as to whether there is an extra-dimensional element at play in “True Detective” Season 1, resulting in the lingering sense that the cult’s subterranean hideout is merely their attempt to recreate Carcosa on Earth.
In “Lanterns” Episode 7, John Stewart and Hal Jordan step through a portal onto a mysterious world where, as it happens, everything is tainted with a distinct yellow hue. The pair eventually determine that they’re standing on the home world of Paul Ben-Victor’s Antaan, the alien being whose people were wiped out long ago by the “Lanterns” villain known as the Manhunter. The skeletons of Antaan’s race now litter the barren wasteland on which Hal and John stand, and anyone paying close enough attention should start to get the sense we’re in the series’ version of Carcosa.
Hal Jordan and John Stewart face the Yellow King in Lanterns Episode 7
“Lanterns” is full of Easter Eggs, but Episode 7’s Carcosa planet has to be the most significant yet. In Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” the titular city is described as a “dismal landscape” over which “a canopy of low, lead-colored clouds hung like a visible curse.” The term “lead-colored clouds” recalls the defunct sky city that hangs ominously above John Stewart and Hal Jordan on Antaan’s planet. Was Bierce’s language the inspiration?
Robert Chambers adds to Bierce’s gloomy portrait of Carcosa in “The King in Yellow,” wherein a passage titled “Cassilda’s Song” from the apocryphal play describes twin suns sinking behind a lake. What do John and Hal find as they walk across the surface of their mysterious alien world? A lake. The passage from the play in “The King in Yellow” also references “strange moons” that “circle through the skies,” beneath which the “the tatters of the King” flap. What do we see as Hal and John row their way across the misty lake? Two strange moons in the sky above. What’s more, they soon find Thaal Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) wearing a ragged cloth to disguise himself. The tatters of the King.
The associations only continue from there. The King in Yellow is said to reside in Carcosa. What color does Sinestro embrace in the comic books? Yellow — the color of fear. Sinestro is this show’s Yellow King, and Antaan’s home world is his Carcosa. With its seventh episode, “Lanterns” has taken us beyond “True Detective” Season 1’s Earthly shrine to Carcosa and delivered us directly to a fully realized version of the bleak locale first envisioned by Bierce exactly 140 years ago.
