Lanterns spends most of its second episode explaining itself. “Trust Fall” runs 52 minutes, and a good chunk of that is Green Lantern history getting handed to John Stewart, and to us, in one sitting. I had a fine time with it. I’m not sure everybody did.
The Manhunter material is the heavy load. Antaan, played by Paul Ben-Victor, has John grabbed off a street in Coast City and lays out what the Guardians built before they built the Corps. Synthetic enforcers who could pass for anyone, and who eventually decided the fastest way to end disorder on a planet was to end the planet. Antaan’s people were one of the planets. Then he stops talking and puts a device to John’s temple, and the memory of that extermination goes straight into John’s head. He makes John live it rather than hear about it, and Aaron Pierre plays the next two minutes like a man carrying something that was never his to carry.
I knew what a Manhunter was walking in, so all of that landed for me. What I keep chewing on is how it plays for the viewer who showed up because HBO put a dead body in a Nebraska football stadium. There are a lot of proper nouns moving fast in that room. I’d bet a decent share of the audience came out of the scene knowing something terrible happened without being able to tell you what a Manhunter actually is.
Hal’s Empty House
The stretch I liked best is John poking around Hal’s place in Coast City, and Hal isn’t even in it. The house is enormous, somebody he saved once handed it to him, and nobody lives in it in any way that leaves a mark. Set dressing tells you how Hal Jordan lives when there’s no one watching, which is barely at all.
Then there’s the bird. John can’t fly. He can’t manage the construct Hal keeps calling instinctual. What he does manage is a small green bird, and it stays lit after Hal takes the ring back, which by the show’s own rules shouldn’t be happening. Hal is visibly thrown. Antaan later tells John it’s beyond anything he’s seen. Lanterns sets that down in the middle of the table and then walks away from it, and when Hal finally asks why a bird, John dissolves the thing rather than answer.
And the closet. John holds Hal’s uniform up against himself for about two seconds. That’s a guy who still treats Green Lantern as something close to sacred, even while the actual Green Lantern in his life keeps treating him like a nuisance.
The Two Leads
Pierre’s John Stewart is quiet work, and I think that’s where the “he’s stale” complaint is coming from. He’s a Marine before he’s anything else. Information goes in, gets sorted somewhere you can’t see, and what comes back out is a decision. If you’re waiting on a hero to show you his feelings on cue, that will look like nothing much. It looked like training to me.
Chandler is playing something a lot bigger and it suits Hal, who has a past he is actively keeping a lid on. The swagger is part of the lid. He robs the morgue of four alien corpses and hauls them across town in a Camry, which the episode plays for laughs and gets away with. Then he walks onto William Macon’s ranch to start a fight he can’t win and takes a sniper round for it. Later he says Sinestro’s name in his sleep, and Kerry hears him. Chandler keeps letting you see the cracks without ever letting Hal cop to one.
About That Sinestro Tag
Hal suits up at the end and flies to a prison somewhere out in the galaxy to ask Sinestro about Manhunters. It’s a tag. I don’t think the hour needed one. Antaan’s 48-hour deadline already gave the episode somewhere to stop.
What it buys is Ulrich Thomsen skipping the Manhunter question to ask about John Stewart instead, and the way he asks lands closer to interest than concern. Sinestro doesn’t look at John the way he looks at Hal, and I’d like to know why.
That sent me back to theories that have been kicking around online: the idea that the Guardians had eyes on John’s family from the time he was born, that he was raised toward the ring rather than picked by it. Nothing in the episode says so. But there’s a construct that shouldn’t work and a former Green Lantern who perked up at the kid’s name, and Lanterns is clearly enjoying letting us guess.
No rating from me this week. Two episodes into eight, a number doesn’t mean much, and I’d rather grade the season. What I’ll say is that the DCU’s Green Lantern corner got noticeably bigger, and I came out with a list of questions the show now has seven weeks to answer.
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