Lanterns: The Weenie

“Jazz. That can’t be good.”

Hey, what's wrong with jazz? It's a perfectly acceptable music genre!

We returned back to 2016, and again we spent the entire episode there, and once again I must ask when we will see more of 2026. The season is eight episodes. We’re halfway through. I want to know more about Hal (maybe, possibly, potentially) being murdered!

I really enjoyed this episode. I thought that it was a lot of fun and the dynamic between Hal and John is a treat to watch. But I’m also starting to bump up against some larger, structural issues that are distracting me from all of the fun stuff.

Like Sinestro. I’m very curious how people who are not familiar with Green Lantern lore and comics in general are viewing and interpreting his scenes. I don’t know if they were trying to channel Hannibal Lector or something, but his conversation with Hal just felt like such obvious manipulation that I couldn’t understand why Hal was even remotely entertaining it.

Sure, we were told last time (by a very biased source) that Hal was very attached to his former mentor, but we weren’t shown why. We weren’t shown anything about their relationship. All we know about Sinestro is that he killed a Guardian and that he openly admits that he’s ambitious. It made me want to grab Hal by the shoulders and shake him for being so stupid.

Excellent acting by Kyle Chandler in that scene, though. His eyes told a completely different story than what he was actually saying.

Lianna was another one who was so clearly and obviously manipulative that I got annoyed with John when he rose to her bait. It just felt clumsy. She didn’t even try to assuage his doubts over stealing the ring, just jumped straight to insulting him.

If there hadn’t been a ring during John’s initial interview, I would be wondering if she wasn’t the Manhunter. Especially since the blackhole portal that John jumped through looked identical to the one in the slaughterhouse.

It does certainly illuminate why John isn’t a Green Lantern in the present day. This isn’t really a case of him fumbling the bag as much as he’s already in a clearly hostile environment that is poised to punish him the moment he so much as inches out of line.

And yet John still pushes against that line. He went to Hal multiple times. Maybe he never told Hal that the Guardians were threatening him, but he still didn’t completely shut down. He offered insight, he offered plans, he took initiative to figure out what was going on with the Benefactor.

Both John and Hal came off as very competent for most of the episode. John’s body language in the gun shop was so carefully casual. And his boring machine was amazing! I love how his constructs are truly built from the inside out too, like a mechanic assembling something meticulously.

He really got to show off both the skills that he earned in the Marines and that he earned in school. Macon stripping and demanding that John draw him was a power play that he dealt with without blinking. He even managed to shift power back his direction with how he kept instructing Macon to pose a certain way or to stop moving.

And Hal got to show off his interrogation skills as well. “What color was Abin Sur?” is a great test. And yes, he did put John’s parents in danger with his gambit, but as soon as “Hammond” gave up his focus was instantly on stopping the countdown and showing John that they were okay. There was zero hesitation.

That really was the highlight of the whole episode: Hal and John’s dynamic and how it ebbed and flowed. They both realized that they could genuinely like the other person if circumstances were different. They still snarked at each other, but they also made jokes and asked relatively genuine questions about each other’s lives.

I do believe that Hal truly did forgive John for what he said to Lianna. It was just a reinforcement of everything that Hal already believed that John thought, and it wasn’t like it changed how John had treated him. He was still going to give back the ring instead of speaking the oath and stealing the mantle from him.

It was Zoe that kind of broke Hal’s heart. And just like with Sinestro, you could see it in his eyes the moment he realized that John was lying to him. Or is it still a lie if it is just a hunch? Honestly, I think that John had a bit more than just a hunch. Zoe basically had a neon sign over her head that she was the Manhunter. She outright told him that she saved Macon’s life, and this was directly after Macon said that his benefactor/boss/deity saved his life.

As a reveal, it’s… fine. She was just such an obvious suspect for the Manhunter. Even if she hadn’t tipped her hand to John with her wording, the fact that we never actually got to see her body after the explosion would have cemented it. It made me impatient during the slaughterhouse, especially since a lot of it seemed to be weird just for the sake of being weird. Seriously, why did absolutely no one acknowledge them? Why did we see lasers butcher a cow? To further sell the idea that they were actually going to confront the Manhunter?

I guess that I don’t really care about the Manhunter in general. It’s a similar issue with Sinestro. We’ve been told that they’re this unimaginable evil, but we haven’t seen anything to actually back that up. We have the ticking clock thanks to Antaan, but there still isn’t really that much urgency.

The mystery of it all just doesn't work. It kind of feels less like a mystery and more like Hal and John staying uncomfortably late at a party trying to find yet another excuse to loiter. If Zoe hadn’t taken the relatively extreme step of faking her death in one of the most dramatic ways possible, would they have figured it out? John and Hal had just shot their one shot at getting into the bunker undetected, and they had failed. They were rapidly running out of options.

But now, Antaan is on his way to town and John is possibly out of commission. This is a drastically different set of circumstances from how the episode started. If nothing else, it did make for a great cliffhanger for next week.

Random Thoughts

Macon and Kerry really look more like siblings than father-in-law and daughter. I do a short doubletake whenever she calls him "Dad."

Did Macon have a wife before Zoe? Or is his son technically half-Manhunter?

I did like how they deliberately explained why no one used the hospital. That’s one question answered.

Hal looked very surprised that John had gone to art school. Was that not in the briefing?

I liked how they had the dome over the motel after the satellite attacked. Smart.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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