Frank Lourence sat in for Aaron Davies on the latest episode of Fandom Portals to break down Lanterns episode 6, “Bad Optics,” and with two episodes left, he came away with a suspect list and one very strange theory about who is actually lying in Hal Jordan’s grave.
Spoilers for Lanterns through episode 6 follow.
John Stewart Tries a Quiet Life
The 2016 storyline wrapped last week with Zoe dead, a ring forfeited, and Hal buried under rubble. Episode 6 jumps to 2026, where John Stewart has patched things up with his brother Marcus and is pitching himself as an architect. His designs are underground bunkers, and the pitch leans on what happened in Metropolis, which anyone who watched Superman already knows about. John says forty of them could fit in one small town. If a monster can split Metropolis in half, a few feet of concrete may not buy much.
The family scenes do quiet work. His brothers still call him “the chosen one” as a joke he doesn’t find funny. His father is in a nursing home, ignored and making trouble. He calls his mother Bernadette by her first name. And Bernadette is the one who phones to say Hal Jordan wants to apologize. John is surprised she talks to Hal at all, and he makes the drive to Nebraska anyway.
Hal Came Home to a Town That Hates Him
Hal served ten years in prison, then moved back to Rushville, the one place guaranteed to despise him. From the town’s point of view, life was good before the Lanterns showed up. Zoe kept everyone healthy enough that hospital beds went empty, and the Macon family kept buying things for the town. Then two Green Lanterns rolled in and kicked up trouble, and the people who died on that football field were mostly aliens. Rushville has a memorial for the victims and has conveniently forgotten that Zoe was the one who turned the guns on her own people.
Guy Gardner’s idea of making amends was installing a Batman-style spotlight next to that memorial with instructions to switch it on when needed. It is covered in graffiti. Hal took a humbler route and knocked on a different door every day offering to mow lawns, fold laundry, and walk dogs.
The Diner
John and Hal meet in a diner, and Hal plays it like he never asked John to come. The ten years show on Hal. He has done his stewing and come out a better man, while John is still carrying the old grudge. The exchange from the trailer lands hardest in context: Hal says he took the fall for both of them, and John answers that Hal simply fell. Hal still sees himself as the one who protected John. John reminds him that Hal earned his own sentence. Hal fires back that there are two killers at that table, since John pulled the trigger on Zoe and made his own calls during the battle of Rushville. Both of them are right and both are wrong, which is buddy cop storytelling at its core.
John ends the conversation by breaking Hal’s nose. On his way out, Hal asks him not to tell anyone he was in town. That line is easy to miss. It reads like Hal knew this was his last night alive, knew someone was coming for him, and wanted John gone before that person came for John too.
A Sheriff in Mourning
John makes it home to a drink by the fire in a house any architect would envy, and then Sheriff Kerry Kane calls. Kerry left her husband and ended up with Hal. She grew up in Gotham, so a Batman without a mask in a slow Nebraska town probably had some appeal, and a voicemail later in the episode suggests the relationship was sweeter than it looked from the outside.
Kerry found Hal shot in the head in the high school bleachers, the same scene from the series premiere, now carrying real weight. She tells John that whoever broke Hal’s nose likely pulled the trigger. John says nothing. He is a Black man in Nebraska, and he knows how badly a small interaction with police can go. He is also honoring Hal’s last request. Once he realizes Kerry was Hal’s partner and not just the investigating officer, John softens and decides to stay. Kerry hands him a key to Hal’s house with a warning to use the back door, since the front is rigged with a shotgun. When a whole town hates you, that stops sounding like paranoia.
Suspect One: Noah
John went home and Kerry is grieving, so both come off the board. Kerry’s son Noah goes on it. The theory is that Noah, the town’s so-called miracle kid, is a second Manhunter on Earth.
The clues are behavioral. Noah shows almost no emotion, the same flatness Zoe had. His mother gushes about him and a stranger praises his football talent, and he shrugs it all off like it’s just his life. He also has real ambition. He is the one who got FEMA into Rushville after the disaster, and he talks about becoming a senator and eventually president. Manhunters chase power, and if they can’t hold it, they stand next to whoever does. Noah also knows his mother was with Hal, and Hal is the one person in town who might recognize a Manhunter on sight. As for the location, any former football player can tell you that an empty stadium on any night besides Thursday or Friday has no witnesses.
Guy Gardner Protects the Brand
Noah brings John a suit for the funeral. The plan had been cremation, but John insists Hal be buried, and he has reasons beyond sentiment. That night he switches on Guy’s spotlight. A group of local men, with young Billy Macon’s help, try to rough him up. John puts five of them down and spends the night in a cell. Nobody bothers to turn off the light.
Guy arrives, and the episode fills him in well. He resents being called a gym teacher because he’s an athletic director. He cares about the brand, and after Rushville, the Green Lantern brand has never been worse. The soda commercials and constant TV appearances make more sense as damage control after the last two Lanterns on Earth than as ego. John asks Guy to bring Hal’s decommissioned ring and his old uniform from Oa so Hal can be buried in them. Guy refuses and walks out, then goes to Oa and gets them anyway. Hal was a mess, but he spent thirty years defending the planet, and Guy decides that still earns him the uniform.
The comics have a version of this. When Hal died after his Parallax run, his memorial was full of heroes who didn’t know how to feel, John Stewart included, and Superman was the one who reminded them how high Hal had flown before he fell.
Suspects Two and Three: Maggie and Billy Macon
Two more threads get pulled. Hal kept a large cube in storage that opens only to his voice. And Maggie, the waitress working the night of the diner fight, stays quiet about the punch because she wants something. She plans to blackmail John for $314,536.27, the exact amount of damage the Lanterns did to her the day they took out Zoe. It is easy to imagine she followed Hal out to the bleachers that night and decided it was her turn. The problem is that Maggie was nine years old in 2016 and is brand new to the story, and a good whodunit usually puts the killer in front of you from the start. She works better as a stand-in for a town full of people who could quote John a dollar amount.
Billy Macon fits that rule better. He knew Hal ate at the diner every night, he knew Hal was sleeping with his wife, and he could have followed Hal to the stadium and finally worked up the nerve to shoot. From there, he drinks, sees green light from a window, realizes John is in town, and goes after the second Lantern with his buddies. That part went badly for him.
The Funeral
Carol Ferris arrives for the service. Comic readers know her as Hal’s on-again, off-again love and as Star Sapphire. She loved Hal and she is new to the show, so she stays off the list. She brings a eulogy Hal wrote for himself long ago, and it measures how far he fell. He expected the president, dignitaries, and fellow heroes. Three people showed up.
After everyone leaves, John drives back to the cemetery that night, digs up the coffin, and pulls the ring off Hal’s finger. It’s possible Guy saw this coming and brought the ring knowing exactly what John had planned. John taps the ring against the headstone, a trick Hal once taught him, and a holographic Hal appears. Both of them look down at the body in the grave, and the hologram lets out a two-word curse. The buddy cop show is back.
The Wild Cards
Bernadette made the apology call that Hal seemed to know nothing about, so the question of why she wanted John in Rushville is open. She has never been shown handling a gun, though. John Stewart Sr. has, repeatedly. He once shot an apple off his son’s head, which is child abuse no matter how the show frames it, and he is being thrown out of his nursing home for brandishing a firearm. A man who can make that shot can make one to the head from a distance.
The Big Theory: Hal Isn’t Dead
This is where Sinestro enters. Episode 6 reveals Sinestro escaped his space prison while Hal was locked up, which Guy says would make Hal the first suspect if he hadn’t been in a cell on Earth. Sinestro was Hal’s mentor before he became his nemesis, and the show seems interested in a version where his complaints about the Guardians had some merit. Hal visited him in prison. Maybe they made a plan.
Here is the theory. Abin Sur had a Manhunter aboard his ship. The assumption has been that it was Zoe, but when Zoe hears that story while John is on the medical bed, her reaction is of someone hearing it for the first time. So another Manhunter was out there, possibly one that owed Abin Sur or a young, sympathetic Hal for sparing it. That Manhunter took Hal’s place in prison for ten years, leaving Hal free to break Sinestro out. To get fully off the board, Hal then needed to die, and the body in the bleachers could be the Manhunter. The real Hal could be anywhere, including inside a cube that only opens for his voice, which a hologram from his old ring could conveniently supply.
It is far-fetched and has holes, but the pieces are there. The best-case confirmation would have been John taking a knife to that body while he had the coffin open.
The title cards have also been getting yellower each week, and a series called Lanterns, not Green Lantern, may be building toward the origin of the Sinestro Corps. Expect Sinestro to show up in the final two episodes.
Frank’s full breakdown is on Fandom Portals, where he is covering Lanterns while Aaron handles some personal matters, and he wants to hear your suspect list before episode 7. Send it to the Fandom Portals or Geek Freaks accounts, especially if you can top a theory where Hal Jordan arranged his own murder.
Sources: The Ringer, IndieWire, TheWrap
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