Warning: major spoilers for Lanterns season 1, episode 6 follow.
What happens in Lanterns Episode 6, "Bad Optics"
The show finally returns to the body in the bleachers.
It is 2026, ten years after Rushville was devastated. John has built a new life as an architect, running a company with his brother that designs panic rooms. A call from his mother pulls him back to Rushville, a meeting with Hal goes badly, and within hours Hal is dead.
The next couple of days bring a morgue, a jail cell, a funeral and a favour asked of a Green Lantern who would rather stay out of it.
John moves, the story does not
Two different things are happening this week, and only one of them works.
The character material is genuinely strong. John arrives insisting he has left Rushville behind, and spends the episode proving otherwise. He hides that he was with Hal the night he died, talks Guy into retrieving Hal's ring under false pretences, digs up a grave and jeopardises the deal his company has built towards. That is a man sliding backwards in real time, and it is the most interesting thing the episode does.
The central mystery advances in frustratingly small increments. Much of the missing decade arrives through dialogue: Hal's prison term, Guy's new ring and Sinestro's escape are simply reported to John. Rushville's hostility and Hal's relationship with Kerry get more dramatic treatment, through the beacon confrontation and a voicemail, but those scenes are still carrying a great deal of backstory.
What the ten-year jump costs Lanterns
What this hour gets wrong is its placement in the season.
As a bridge after a time skip, it does its job, picking up where Episode 5 left off. Kerry, the townspeople and John's brothers each get a ten-year update, and the loose ends of 2016 are accounted for. But this is episode six of eight, the point where a season should be loading its ending. It spends its runtime explaining the past, and leaves two episodes to do all of the building.
John's architecture career
The idea is thematically neat. After surviving a superhero catastrophe, John now sells shelters from the next one, proving he never really left Rushville behind. His brother eventually says so to his face.
The episode returns repeatedly to the mechanics of that business, however, using it mainly as a deadline until John's obsession with Hal finally costs him the contract.
What the ending sets up
The closing minutes give the central mystery its first decisive push.
Guy returns Hal's decommissioned ring completely drained. At the grave, John uses Hal's emergency trick to coax five percent out of it, enough to summon the Halogram but not to recharge it properly. The Halogram may give him a way past the vault's live-voice lock, although the episode ends before he can try it.
It is real setup, and the reason to watch. It is also confined to a brief stretch before the credits.
Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre and Kelly Macdonald
Chandler has one scene before his character dies, and it is the best in the episode.
The café meeting turns on an accusation. Hal tells John there is more than one killer at the table, and then that John turned the ring down because he was afraid. Both lines land because both are at least partly true. John's answer is his fist, and it ends any chance of the two of them settling things.
Macdonald carries more of this episode than anyone except Pierre. Kerry is the one who brings John into the murder investigation, the one running it, and the one who reveals that Hal came back to Rushville for her. Her account of Hal knocking on doors every day gives his attempted atonement a weight the rest of the episode mostly leaves offscreen.
Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner gets a handful of scenes, and they are the liveliest in the episode.
What "Bad Optics" means
Guy uses "bad optics" as his excuse for staying out of the murder investigation, and the phrase describes much of the hour.
John's polished business life hides a man still trapped in Rushville. Guy treats the Corps like a brand that needs protecting. And Hal's self-written eulogy imagines a heroic public farewell, only to be read to three mourners at a nearly empty funeral: a man who once flew between stars, buried in a field.
The extortion subplot
A young woman from the café demands a precise six-figure sum from John, calling it reparations for what happened to her family.
It gives John another reason to conceal his meeting with Hal and makes him more exposed as a suspect. It is still the weakest material in the hour, and unless it pays off in a way that justifies the time, it is the kind of subplot that makes a short season feel padded.
Is Lanterns worth watching after six episodes?
Yes, but this is the first week the answer needs qualifying.
Taken across the season rather than this one hour, the weekly schedule is helping the show. A week between episodes spreads its long stretches of conversation thin enough to pass unnoticed. Watched six hours back to back, how much of this series is people talking would be much harder to miss.
Without the Green Lantern name attached, an episode this thin would be difficult to justify. Episodes 7 and 8 now have the setup they need. They have to use it. The open questions are tracked on the Lanterns Mystery Board.
Why Lanterns Episode 6 is a 2.5
The lowest score of the season, for the weakest hour so far.
The café scene, Guy's arrival, the funeral and John's slide are all worth having. Against them: a mystery that inches forward at the point where it can least afford to, an extortion subplot that has not justified itself, and a tone so heavy it drains what momentum there is.
Lanterns Episode 6 verdict
Watch it for the café, for Kerry, and for the closing graveyard sequence.
The rest is a credible character study stretched across the season's antepenultimate hour, at the moment when the murder story needed more than a final jolt.
The café. Bernadette tells John that Hal wants to apologise. Hal denies it, says he took the fall and served his time, and tells John they are square. John tells him he did not take the fall, he fell, and people died. Hal answers that there is more than one killer at the table, then says John turned down the ring because he was scared. John breaks his nose. Hal asks him to tell nobody he was there.
Why that matters. Hal is found shot once in the head at point-blank range, face to face, with no sign he fought back. Kerry's first reading is that whoever broke his nose probably killed him. John did, and he tells nobody. The FBI results on the nose swab are four months away.
Kerry and Hal. They were in a relationship. Hal wrote to her from prison until she answered, then moved to Rushville after his release to make amends, knocking on doors to offer help. Kerry is the one who calls John.
The vault. Hal's key opens a storage unit John guesses is called the Fortress of Storage. Inside is a vault that demands Hal's voice. A voicemail recording is rejected. It requires a live voiceprint, and a second attempt is warned against.
The ring. The Guardians forged Guy a new ring after John walked away, and Hal's was decommissioned on Oa. John tells Guy that everything he has is because John did not take it, and Guy brings the ring and uniform for the funeral. He warns John the ring is dead, then leaves before the service.
Sinestro. Someone broke him out of the Guardians' prison while Hal was locked up. Hal would have been the obvious suspect and had the best possible alibi.
Maggie. The waitress who saw John at the café that night wants $314,536.27 by midnight the next day, plus his watch, or she tells the sheriff he was with Hal. She was nine when Rushville was devastated.
The funeral. Kerry, John and Carol Ferris are the only ones who stay. Carol hands John a eulogy Hal wrote himself, years earlier, full of bravado. It ends with an apology to anyone he hurt and a line about hoping he mattered.
The grave. That night John digs Hal up, takes the ring and coaxes five percent out of it. He summons the Halogram, which looks down at its own body. John presumably intends to use the Halogram on the vault, but the episode ends before revealing whether the live-voice lock will accept it.
What it costs John. The colonel hangs up on him while he is digging, and the deal is gone. His brother tells him he never really came home from Rushville.
Bright Bulbs
- The café scene between Hal and John, the best in the episode.
- John sliding backwards in real time, from hiding evidence to robbing a grave.
- Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner, brief and exactly right.
- The funeral, which finds real sadness in how small it is.
Dull Bulbs
- The mystery advances in small increments at the point it most needs to move.
- John's panic-room business, a neat metaphor the episode keeps explaining after the point has landed.
- A tone so heavy it drains the episode's momentum.
Shattered Bulbs
- The extortion subplot, which has not yet earned the time it takes.
Cast
- Aaron Pierre as John Stewart
- Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan
- Kelly Macdonald as Kerry Kane
- Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner
- Amie MacKenzie as Carol Ferris
- Jason Ritter as Billy Macon
- Shea Pritchard as Noah Macon
- Hannah Christine Shetler as Maggie
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