Lanterns Episode 6, “Bad Optics”: So Much Heart in an Hour of TV

Warning: Spoilers for Episode 6 of Lanterns, “Bad Optics.”

We’re almost to the penultimate episode of Lanterns, and somehow I have LESS of an idea where we’re going than I did a few episodes ago.

I love that.

Obviously Hal Jordan’s death has been hanging over this entire season. We saw his body in the very first episode, so we’ve always known where at least part of this story was heading. But everything else?

The Manhunter reveal already happened. Zoe is already dead. John already got the ring AND gave it up. The Guardians are looking increasingly suspicious. Sinestro is out there somewhere. And we’ve still got the mystery surrounding that crazy black smoke technology.

We’re running out of episodes, and instead of the story getting smaller as pieces fall into place, it somehow feels like it’s getting BIGGER. That’s exciting by itself, but it’s even more exciting when you consider all the rumors and speculation about Lanterns potentially kicking off something much larger in the DCU.

What the hell are these last two episodes going to give us? I couldn’t wait to find out. There was just one problem. Guy Gardner was coming. Oh Great, Guy Gardner I’ve said this before, but Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner was one of the weaker parts of Superman for me and yes I know that there are a ton of people that love him.

I know he’s SUPPOSED to be obnoxious. I know the ridiculous hair is comic accurate. I just don’t like him. So knowing Guy was coming into Lanterns didn’t exactly have me jumping up and down. And then something weird happened. I was pleasantly surprised. Not necessarily because Guy suddenly became one of my favorite characters, because he definitely didn’t. But we’ll get there.

First we have to go back to Rushville. Ten Years Later We’re finally completely back in the present-day timeline, ten years after everything went to hell in Rushville. And John Stewart seems to be doing pretty damn well.

He got out.

He’s an architect now, running a business with his brother Marcus, and they’re trying to land a major contract. He’s apparently built a life for himself that has absolutely nothing to do with Green Lanterns, Guardians or saving the universe. It seems like John actually did what he said he was going to do. He walked away. Then his mom calls…………..

Uh oh.

Bernadette tells John that Hal wants to apologize and convinces him to return to Rushville. John discovers that she and Hal have apparently become friends while Hal was in prison. That’s weird enough. But it gets weirder when John actually finds Hal. Because Hal has no freaking idea what John is talking about. His mom lied.

John thinks he’s there to finally get an apology from Hal for what happened ten years earlier, and Hal basically tells him they’re square. He went to prison. He served his time. What more does John want?  John understandably doesn’t see things that way.

Then Hal tells John that he’s not the only killer sitting at the table which is REALLY good way to poke at John but also just the truth, and starts poking at the real reason John refused the ring. Hal thinks John was scared. If he was, he doesn’t say or show it but John punches him square in the face. And that’s when the scene completely changes. Before John leaves, Hal tells him not to tell anyone that he was there.

Hal is scared.

That’s the last time John ever sees Hal Jordan alive. And that’s when this episode starts hitting you right in the feels. Hal Jordan Is Dead John barely gets home before Kerry calls. And now we’ve caught up to the scene from Episode 1. Hal Jordan is dead. Shot in the head and left sitting in the football stadium. John knows immediately that Hal’s ring is gone, but he doesn’t tell Kerry about their meeting the night before. He also doesn’t tell her that he’s the person who broke Hal’s nose.

And we finally learn why Hal came back to Rushville. Kerry. While Hal was in prison, he started writing to her. Eventually, after she and Billy had separated, Hal returned to Rushville and kept trying to make amends for what happened there. According to Kerry, he’d literally knock on people’s doors asking what he could do to help. She thought it was stupid. Pointless. And endearing. Somewhere along the way, Kerry and Hal became a couple. This adds another layer to Hal that I really liked. The arrogant asshole we’ve been watching all season apparently spent ten years trying to become something different. And maybe he actually succeeded. We don’t really know because we missed ten years of his life. That’s part of what makes his death hit harder.

Kerry obviously loved him. And John? John would probably tell you that he hated Hal. I’m not sure I believe him. I think John cared about Hal a hell of a lot more than he ever wanted Hal to know. And now he’ll never get the chance to tell him. Unfortunately, We Need a Green Lantern.

Hal’s death leaves John with a problem. There’s a giant locked box in Hal’s storage unit that looks pretty damn important, but it requires Hal’s live voice to open. Not a recording. Not a voicemail. Hal. That’s going to be difficult considering the whole bullet-in-the-head situation. So John does something he hasn’t done in ten years. He summons Green Lantern. And guess who shows up? Freaking Guy Gardner.

John is actually sitting in jail when they finally meet because turning on Rushville’s Green Lantern beacon didn’t exactly go over well with the people who watched their town get destroyed ten years earlier. Guy finds out Hal is dead and immediately starts talking about why he can’t get involved. “Bad optics.” Come on. This might be the part of the episode that irritated me the most. Isn’t this EXACTLY the kind of thing the Green Lantern Corps should care about? A former Green Lantern has been murdered. Nobody knows who killed him. And nobody knows whether Hal was murdered because of something he did personally or because he used to be a Green Lantern. If it’s the second one, GUY IS A GREEN LANTERN! You’d think he’d want to know! Unless, of course, the Guardians don’t want him asking questions. And at this point in the season, I’m not exactly giving the Guardians the benefit of the doubt.

Then John finally says something Guy desperately needed to hear: “Everything you have is because I didn’t take it.” THANK YOU. That shuts Guy up. And strangely enough, this is the first time I’ve actually liked him. For a second, the cartoon character disappears. Guy gets humbled. He feels human. He also ultimately comes through. John convinces him that Hal deserves to be buried as Green Lantern, and Guy retrieves Hal’s decommissioned ring and uniform from Oa. Maybe there’s hope for Guy Gardner and me after all. Maybe.

Hal Jordan Writes His Own Eulogy Because OF COURSE He Does Then we get what might be my favorite scene of the episode. Hal’s funeral. And it’s pathetic. Not the scene. The turnout. This guy was GREEN LANTERN. He saved people. He protected Earth. He spent decades wearing one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. And almost nobody comes to his funeral.

Then Carol Ferris shows up. COMIC BOOK FANS KNOW THAT NAME. Carol is one of the most important people in Hal Jordan’s comic history, his longtime love interest and eventually Star Sapphire. Her appearance is brief, but it makes Hal’s incredibly lonely funeral even sadder. Then she gives John Hal’s eulogy. Which Hal wrote himself. Because OF COURSE Hal Jordan wrote his own freaking eulogy. And it is PERFECTLY Hal. He apparently wrote it expecting this gigantic hero’s funeral filled with important people and dignitaries. Instead, almost nobody is there. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s arrogant. And then suddenly it becomes incredibly heartfelt.

Hal writes about willpower, carrying on after he’s gone and continuing even through “the blackest of nights.” It’s obviously playing with Green Lantern mythology, but within this episode it means something much more personal. Being Green Lantern destroyed a huge part of Hal Jordan. The ring gave him unimaginable power. It also left him incredibly lonely. We talked about that in my review of the first five episodes. Hal spent so long being Green Lantern that I don’t know if he ever really figured out who Hal Jordan was without it. And now John is standing over his grave. The guy who was supposed to replace him. The guy who refused the ring. The guy who thought he could walk away from all of this. And you can’t help wondering whether Hal’s eulogy is really telling us something about John’s future.

Being a ring bearer is apparently a lonely existence. LOTR pun absolutely intended.

This whole scene was SO damn good.

Of course, we already know where this is going. Earlier, John and Kerry discovered that massive box in Hal’s storage unit. It needs Hal’s live voice. Hal is dead. But now Hal has been buried with his Green Lantern ring.

Hmmmmmm.

I WONDER WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN? John waits until after the funeral, grabs a shovel and digs Hal back up. We could see this grave robbery coming from a mile away. I didn’t care. Because the payoff is great. John opens Hal’s coffin, takes the ring off his dead finger and puts it on. And somehow, after TEN YEARS, the damn thing still has 5% battery life. Apparently Green Lantern rings have better standby time than every electronic device I’ve ever owned. John uses what’s left of the charge to summon the Hal hologram. Hal looks down. Sees his own corpse. And reacts about as well as you’d expect Hal Jordan to react to discovering that he’s dead. That’s where we end.

And Then There’s This Stupid Blackmail Story

I loved this episode. Seriously. There is SO MUCH heart packed into this hour. Which is why I’m irritated that there’s one storyline hanging around that I absolutely hate. John listened to Hal. He didn’t tell anyone they met. That means, as far as we currently know, John is the last person to see Hal alive. He also punched Hal in the face that night. And he hasn’t told Kerry either of those things. Naturally, somebody at the diner saw them. Now Maggie is demanding more than $300,000 to keep quiet about it, framing the money as reparations for what happened to Rushville when she was a child.

I HATE THIS TROPE.

Because there’s such an easy solution. TELL KERRY THE TRUTH! Kerry has already proven she can be trusted. Go to her. “Hey Kerry, Hal asked me not to tell anyone this, but I saw him the night he died. We argued. I punched him. He was scared and told me not to tell anyone he was in town.” There. Done. Then tell Maggie to FO. Instead, we already know how this kind of storyline usually goes. John hides it. Kerry finds out from somebody else. Kerry gets pissed because John lied to her. John says he was trying to protect Hal. Kerry says he should have trusted her. Drama! Maybe Lanterns surprises me. It has surprised me plenty already. But PLEASE don’t make me sit through that.

Despite that complaint, “Bad Optics” might be one of my favorite episodes of Lanterns so far. Not because it has the biggest action sequence. It doesn’t. Not because it gives us some giant DCU reveal. It really doesn’t. It’s because it finally lets everything that happened during those first five episodes breathe. We spent five episodes watching Hal and John fight each other, reluctantly work together, betray each other, save each other and basically refuse to admit that they cared about each other. Then we jump forward ten years. Hal is dead. John is left standing there trying to figure out what the hell their relationship actually meant. And somehow the episode even made me tolerate Guy Gardner! That’s impressive. We have two episodes left.

John Stewart has Hal’s ring. Guy Gardner is Green Lantern. Sinestro is loose. The Guardians still can’t be trusted. Someone murdered Hal. And somewhere inside a giant locked box is something Hal desperately wanted hidden. After six episodes, I have absolutely no idea where this is going.