YMMV / Blackest Night

• Catharsis Factor: Watching a White Lantern Ring fly through Nekron and actually cause him pain. After being forced to watch him torment the entire DCU, it was so satisfying watching him feel some pain for once.
• Complete Monster: Nekron, Lord of the Unliving and the face of all death within the DCU, is an entity that eventually proves himself to be far too sadistic a being to simply be a cosmic force doing its job. The force behind the necromantic Black Lanterns, Nekron implicitly influences William Hand into killing himself and his entire family to become his tether into the living world in his bid to enact the "Blackest Night," a state of eternal death imposed upon all creation. Nekron reveals the constant death and resurrection within the universe is a matter of his influence, making those who die and revive sleeper agents—keeping them aware and conscious in their own bodies—and eventually simply turning them all into Black Lanterns, twisting them into horrible, undead mockeries of the people they once were. Through the Black Lanterns, Nekron unleashes a wave of death across everything in his path, turning more and more into Black Lanterns and intent on never stopping until all is silent.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Black Lantern Alexandra DeWitt coming in in a refrigerator construct, with Black Lantern symbol fridge magnets.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Black Lantern Firestorm, partly because he looks really awesome, partly because he's responsible for a truly horrific death. He's so popular that he was brought back in Brightest Day, Forever Evil (2013), and the The Flash TV show.
  • Yellow Lantern Scarecrow for his character design, his use of the ring, utter defiance against Azrael and his fight against Black Hand.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • Prior to the release of Blackest Night #0, it was established in Nightwing that there was a black market for metahuman bodies and organs, leading to the League's confiscation of them. At the end of BN #0, there is a shot of the Black Lantern Corps with its members rising from a graveyard, with no indication that this was to actually happen. The backlash was substantial, saying that DC was ignoring what the Nightwing writer, Peter Tomasi, had established; but it turned out to be the opposite as BN #1 made direct reference to the Nightwing storyline. This made it all the more sillier since Tomasi had been writing for the monthly Green Lantern Corps book for at least two years previous... and what was supposed to be a non-canon group picture of the Black Lantern Corps was taken literally.
  • And then there's the origins of the entities shown in Green Lantern #52. The only explicit stuff is that the avarice entity is a serpent and discussed while showing a snake and an apple, and the hope entity was said to be born from prayer; but of course it's prompted Wild Mass Guessing as to what other religious symbolism can be inferred about the entities. The fact that the story also makes reference to "Let there be light" doesn't help.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Adventure Comics tie-in is a self-referential story where Superboy-Prime laments how his portrayal since Infinite Crisis has made him extremely unpopular with readers. It concludes with the DC writers being made aware of his suffering, apologizing to him and promising not to feature him as a villain in future comics... before they send a Black Lantern Laurie to presumably kill him off-screen. While the conclusion to Prime's arc is harsh by itself, it's made even more tragic by the fact DC would fail to keep its promise: In August 2011, Prime returns as a major antagonist in the Teen Titans book, which not only ignored his fate and Character Development in Blackest Night, but also condemned him to a Fate Worse than Death by having him imprisoned in the Source Wall.
• I Knew It!:
  • When the initial idea of the emotional spectrum was floated, with the Orange Ring belonging to "The greediest being in the universe," fans everywhere surmised "Lex Luthor". Then Agent Orange rolled around, and we met Larfleeze. Then came the end of issue #6.
  • Subverted when Sinestro became the first White Lantern. Played straight when Hal did it, too.
  • The two-page double spread in issue 8 has about a dozen of these, with Martian Manhunter and Aquaman taking center stage.
  • The general consensus of fans was that Nekron would be the Big Bad, despite being a minor character with only three prior appearances. Fortunately, his arrival isn't treated like The Reveal.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Captain Boomerang killing women and children to feed his Zombie father, in a desperate attempt to bring him back to life.
  • Nekron crosses it by causing the dead to rise and attack their loved ones.
• Narm: While Guy's rage and despair over Kyle's death is generally a Tear Jerker, the actual panel of his reaction crosses into this. The Big Word Shout of Kyle's name is drawn out as "KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKYYYYYYYYYYYYLLLLLLLEEEEEE" — implying he stressed each letter's pronunciation more or less equally, even the silent E, it being especially hilarious to imagine him repeating the letter “k” before trying to properly shout Kyle’s name.
• Padding: The Parallax vs. Spectre fight: while providing an emotional callback to Rebirth, it comes off as this when both were promptly dismissed once the fight was over.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The first Adventure Comics tie-in did this with Superboy-Prime with Character Development and delivering several Take Thats.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Holly Granger of Hawk and Dove, who had a thoroughly dislikable personality that, somehow, changed depending on the writer, was not liked by fans. So when Hank is brought back here, he kills her in a Curb-Stomp Battle, and in Brightest Day, Hank is brought back as Hawk instead of Holly. Notably, Holly's death is basically shrugged off by the DCU at large, including her sister, and rarely if ever referenced again... after the event is over, that is. During the event her passing is handled with some degree of tragedy, mainly in how it affects poor Dawn.
  • Terry Long, one of the less popular elements of Marv Wolfman's run on the Teen Titans, is brought back as a Black Lantern and ends up being killed by Donna Troy herself, with a comment about moving on that has some interesting Applicability.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Black Lantern versions of Firestorm's old villains were made prominent in the variant cover for the third issue, and were the most visible among the dead villains who rose out of the Hall of Justice's morgue. However, nothing came out of this and the most focus there was on Firestorm was on the Black Lantern version. They didn't even think to do a sequel issue to one of the defunct Firestorm titles to tie in to the series.
  • Rot Lap Fan, a Green Lantern from a race of people who are blind and have no concept of color, is explicitly included in the background of the event, but his perspective is never even referenced. Given that the color spectrum is key to the event, it'd have been interesting to see how he explained it.
  • The Threeboot version of the Legion of Super-Heroes briefly appeared in the Adventure Comics tie-in issues discussing old comic books they uncovered which could've shed light on Superboy-Prime's future, and also mentioned they were keeping Prime under surveillance. However, nothing else came out of their appearance, nor was it revealed if they ever learned that two of their deceased members, Sun Boy and Element Lad, had been revived as Black Lanterns and were among the Lanterns attacking Prime in Earth-Prime's 21st Century. It would've been interesting to see this Legion, which had previously been fighting against Prime in Final Crisis, being forced to save him.
  • Despite being prominent among the Black Lanterns, Aquaman received no tie-in miniseries or sequel issue to any of his previous volumes, which seemed especially confusing as Mera was also one of the central characters in the overall event and the second issue featured most of the Aquaman Family being turned into Black Lanterns. In a similar case, even though Black Lantern Kal-L was among the most prominently featured Black Lanterns in the promotional ads for Blackest Night, he was only important to the Blackest Night: Superman and Blackest Night: JSA miniseries which, in the long run, had little to do with the main story.
  • In Blackest Night: Batman, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake encountered Black Lantern versions of their parents reenacting how they were killed. Yet strangely, there were no Black Lanterns of Thomas and Martha Wayne. While Bruce Wayne was technically considered dead at the time, it would've been interesting to see Alfred encounter the two of them over how Bruce's life turned out after they died.
  • Dinah Lance was seen fighting against a Black Lantern Black Canary (her mother) briefly in the first half of the main Blackest Night series, but that was about it. The zombified version of the original Canary wasn't even featured alongside the Black Lantern Justice Society in the tie-in miniseries, and instead Dinah had more prominence dealing with Black Lantern Green Arrow. In a similar regard, Dinah was seen in the first issue with some of the surviving members of Justice League International, and even though a good chunk of past members (Blue Beetle, Ice, Martian Manhunter, Maxwell Lord) were turned into Black Lanterns, seeing them come together as a Black Lantern JLI never happened.
  • Blackest Night: Titans was particularly bad about this trope.
    • First off, the opening page of the first issue features Red Star mourning Pantha and Baby Wildebeest, who had been killed in Infinite Crisis. But when the two Titans actually come back as Black Lanterns, they don't go anywhere near him and instead attack Wonder Girl, a Titan they barely knew. And in regards to Wonder Girl, it feels weird that she would be discussing her regrets over the deaths of Marvin and Kid Devil under her tenure as team captain and yet not have her being attacked by them as Black Lanterns. They didn't even actually appear as Black Lanterns.
    • Beast Boy is targeted solely by Black Lantern Terra, which does make sense. What doesn't make sense is that, even though former Doom Patrol and Titans villain Madame Rogue became a Black Lantern, she didn't attack Beast Boy as well since he was the one who ended her life.
    • Many dead Titans and associates of the Titans, such as Kid Devil, Marvin, Kid Eternity, Joker's Daughter, Terra II, Osiris, Power Boy, Anima, Arella, and Gnarrk, as well as formerly dead Titans like Raven, Jason Todd, and Young Frankenstein, failed to appear in the miniseries or the two tie-in issues from the main Teen Titans comic. While it stands to reason three issues wouldn't have been enough to focus on all the dead Titans, and the Teen Titans issues focused on the Wilson family, they could've just as easily appeared in Titans had that series tied in to Blackest Night. Kid Eternity and Raven are especially egregious examples, as Kid had been referred to in the main Blackest Night series as one of a few characters who keep defying death. And with Raven, wouldn't it have made more sense to utilize a character with emotion-based abilities in a series that was all about emotions?
  • Tempest was one of the bigger-name living characters to be converted into a Black Lantern, and was explicitly shown as surviving, along with Black Lantern Terra, Dove's Holy Hand Grenade attack that takes out the rest of the Black Lantern Titans. Terra would go on to be the main antagonist of the Outsiders tie-in, but Black Lantern Tempest only showed up in a few crowd scenes before being offhandedly atomized by Atrocitus in another tie-in. Following this, Jackson Hyde replaced him and that was that.
  • While it's not necessarily a terrible idea for Sinestro to be confronted by Black Lantern versions of Abin Sur and Arin Sur, it feels like a missed opportunity to not have Sinestro face his predecessor Prohl Gosgotha as a Black Lantern, who would most assuredly have called out his successor for letting him die just so he could keep his ring for himself and how this secret act of selfishness wholly undermines Sinestro's experience as a Green Lantern as well as his claims of defending his actions against the Green Lantern Corps as doing what he feels is right.
• The Woobie:
  • Osiris had it bad enough in 52. Now, not only is he the only Black Lantern to retain his humanity, but his sister and brother are dead. And everyone is afraid of him. And Sobek is murdering people just to get to him. The poor kid just can't catch a break. Although in the end, he is given a true second chance at life thanks to the White Rings. Which gets subverted in Titans when he participates in the murder of Ryan Choi and gradually becomes the killer everyone accused him of being.
  • Maggie Kyle is now one too, given everything which had already happened to her in the Catwoman monthly book (which was being tortured with her husband by Black Mask, having her husband die, being forced to eat her husband's eyes, and being committed). After escaping from Black Lantern!Black Mask, she has now snapped completely and gone insane.
  • Bro'Dee Walker's origin shows that his family died.

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