Well, I guess that he really is dead. You don’t have a funeral like that if you were planning on walking it back.
I really expected the body to be a fake, but no, Hal Jordan is actually dead. Shot at point blank range without any defensive wounds or signs of a struggle in a town where almost everyone absolutely hates him.
While the episode covered a lot of ground in terms of catching the audience up on what everyone has been up to over the last ten years, it still managed to feel quiet. Somber. It really was dedicated to saying goodbye to the man that Hal Jordan had been, for all of his vices and virtues.
Hal went to federal prison after everything that had happened, which makes sense. The whole town was destroyed and he was no longer protected by being the Green Lantern. It’s quite a fall from grace. Deservedly so, but still. Especially with the implication that Hal took all of the blame so that John could walk away from the situation without any legal blowback.
But then, when he was free and could do anything he wanted, he went right back to Rushville and knocked on doors every day to ask what he could do to help. There’s making amends and then there’s doing what Hal did. And I’m really glad that we got that and the long voicemail to Kerry because it showed a very different Hal than the one that we knew. This was someone who was kind and warm and would have been worthy of the ring, who deserved to have more people at his funeral.
I don’t know when Hal wrote his eulogy, but he clearly imagined a very different reaction. He had expected a hero’s goodbye as opposed to the coroner wishing to flush his ashes down her toilet like her kid’s goldfish. (What a cruel thing to say when Kerry was standing right in front of her. Even if you hate Hal, you can have some tact for her sake!) At least he got to be buried in his suit.
I was nervous about how Guy would translate. He was very over the top in Superman, and I didn’t think that he would fit into the grounded world of Lanterns. Happily, he worked very well in this small dose. Still recognizably Guy - he put his Lantern Signal right next to the memorial, after all - but there was a bit more humanity in him that made him feel more real.
John managed to get under his skin a bit. Or at very least, he managed a successful guilt trip. Guy certainly isn’t what I would think of as a superhero, but he still did a decent thing without claiming attention or credit for it. Maybe he really did want to avoid the “bad optics” (hello, episode title) but it would have been much easier to just blow John off.
John had been busy in the decade since we last saw him. He’s in business with one of his brothers while financially supporting the other, and is estranged from both of his parents. Of course John would take his architecture skills and use them in a way that helps and protects people. City-sized panic rooms are a very natural response to a world that has alien invasions and giant starfish emerging from the ocean.
I don’t really care about the contract that he failed to get, though. He really couldn’t tell the Colonel that he had a funeral that he had to go to instead of trying to do it over the phone? The Colonel seriously showed up to the meeting just to say three sentences and then immediately leave? Sure, I’m glad that they didn’t drag the plot point out, but it felt very unnecessary. Maybe the Colonel will pop up again, but for now it’s just clunky.
The showcase of the family dynamics was much cleaner. John still gets called “Chosen” but he tolerated it from Marcus. Especially when it was used as praise as opposed to an insult or jab at his past failures.
It’s not surprising that his relationship with his parents has fractured given that they dedicated their entire lives to the sole goal of making John the next Green Lantern and he turned it down. It is interesting that only Bernadette gets called her first name; John Sr. is still Dad. That doesn’t mean that they have a good relationship either, of course. John Sr. was verbally distressed over the phone, and John still refused to talk to him.
There has to be some kind of advanced dementia happening with him, right? He’s rather young to be in a care home, especially with a living wife who he could theoretically be living with instead.
Despite all of John’s success, he did seem unsettled. And he didn’t try very hard to leave Rushville either. He had countless chances to leave, but he was the one who kept finding another reason to stay. He was the one who asked Kerry to deputize him. He was the one who suggested that they bury Hal. Kerry might have been the one who invited him to dinner, but he still showed up.
Part of me wonders if Guy didn’t correctly clock John as someone who hides his ugly stuff well. John arranged everything in such a way that it was possible for him to dig up Hal’s body and retrieve the ring, a ring that he knew the trick to repower it.
The question is why. To ensure that Hal got justice? To solve the murder before he got blamed? I know that Hal told John to make sure that no one knew that they had met, but John cleared Kerry of being the killer. Why couldn’t he mention to her in private “Oh, yeah, that main lead that you’re chasing down is worthless because I was the one who broke his nose.” Now we have a blackmail plot that I’m sure is going to annoy me instead.
At least we got the reappearance of the Halogram. What a great way to keep Hal, or at least a version of him, involved in the rest of the season. It’s the younger version of Hal too, which means that we’ll have a different dynamic with a less cynical Hal. I’m excited to see that.
So, on to the mystery itself. We certainly aren’t lacking for suspects. Hal seemed scared right at the end of his meeting with John. We couldn’t see his face for a few seconds there after John punched him. He was facing the window. Did he see someone? He was very insistent that John kept his visit a secret. Did he know that he was going to die and wanted John to stay out of the fallout?
Someone broke Sinestro out of jail, but I can’t see him being responsible. We only saw a few minutes of him, and I’m sure that we’ll see more of him in the future, but he doesn’t seem like the type to travel across the galaxy to shoot Hal in the head a decade after Hal loses his ring. He would have nothing to gain from it.
No, I think that my prime suspect is the same one as last episode: Noah. He was a significant part of the episode, and more importantly, the content of his screentime was interesting. The fact that he’s interested in politics with explicit plans to become a senator and eventually the president raised multiple flags.
Sure, it could just be that his brush with the Green Lanterns and campaign for FEMA funds unlocked a love of public service. But Zoe was his grandmother, and we were told that Manhunters work slowly and methodically to take over a world from the inside. Noah getting involved in politics sounds a lot like that.
Plus it would make for some nice narrative symmetry with the whole “chosen for greatness by your older family members at a too young age” angle that they’re playing with.
Random Thoughts
I don’t know how far away John lives from Rushville, but I would scream if I had to drive somewhere for ten minutes, get home for ten minutes, and immediately have to turn around and drive right back to where I was.
Earl! I didn’t expect to see it again.
The Carol cameo was also unexpected but very fun. I’m glad that she got a moment.
John eats meat now.
I’ve been telling myself that the reason why we only hear John’s family over the phone instead of being able to see them is because of budget, but I can’t fully shake the idea that John keeps talking to a fake Bernadette. I blame all the shapeshifters.
~~~~
An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love comments! Just note that we always moderate because of spam and trolls. It's never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.