“Pilot” offered a promising and compelling start to Lanterns and the DCU’s grounded mystery-procedural take on the Green Lantern franchise. It introduced two complex leads in Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), along with an intriguing mystery mixed into a character-driven narrative spanning several decades.
Now that the setup is out of the way and it’s confirmed that there are definitely aliens in Rushville, Nebraska, it’s time for Sector 2814’s old and grizzled Green Lantern and his moody protégé to solve the mystery and save the day.
SPOILERS BELOW!
I WONDER HOW “ALIVE” A LIVING CONSTRUCT IS. IF JOHN MAKES A CONSTRUCT OF A PERSON, ARE THEY SELF-AWARE? DO THEY HAVE EMOTIONS? CAN THEY FEEL PAIN?
Green Lantern Training 101
My review of the first episode already went over Hal Jordan’s questionable training tactics and treatment of John, and the second episode, “Trust Fall,” continues that trend, literally starting with Hal sneaking into John’s motel room and waking him up bright and early by dumping a bucket of cold water on him. John’s not very happy about it.
Hal decides it’s finally time to teach John how to use the ring to fly. While John can’t figure out how to imagine himself flying and literally will himself off the ground, he does accidentally create a living construct of a green bird with the ring. Hal is surprised by this, as he’s never used the ring to create a living creature before, but he doesn’t want to give John the credit.
The two spend most of the episode apart, with Hal sending John to his house in Coast City to retrieve his Green Lantern Power Battery so he can recharge his ring. Meanwhile, Hal stays in Rushville to continue investigating the murders. As a bonus training exercise, Hal tells John he needs to keep his little green bird alive until he gets back.
Oh, and John needs to feed someone or something named Earl. John’s a Marine, so he doesn’t question orders, even when those orders sound suspiciously like a White guy sending his one Black friend to pick up his stuff and do his chores while he’s there.
SO A MILLIONAIRE GIFTED HAL THIS MANSION? DOES THAT MEAN THE MILLIONAIRE IS ALSO SUPPORTING HAL FINANCIALLY SO HE CAN LIVE IN THE MANSION?
Welcome to Hal Jordan’s Sad Mansion
John arrives at Hal’s residence, which turns out to be a huge mansion awarded to Hal by a millionaire after he saved his son. The mansion looks great on the outside and just as impressive on the inside, but as John walks around, it becomes increasingly clear how empty Hal’s life really is. There’s virtually no furniture, with only a couch and big-screen TV in the living room and a plain bed in his bedroom. He’s got framed photos posing with Bush, Obama, and the cast of Harry Potter, but they’re propped against the walls instead of hanging on them. The only part of the mansion that actually feels lived in is his closet, where he keeps his clothes, Green Lantern uniforms, and Power Battery.
It’s a surprisingly sad portrait of Hal’s life. He’s completely dedicated himself to being a Green Lantern and doesn’t seem to have time for much else. He has no family to come home to, no friends to hang out with, and seemingly only uses his giant mansion for sleeping, eating, and watching television by himself. Oh, and it turns out Earl is a carnivorous alien plant living in Hal’s greenhouse. Obviously a cousin of Frank the Plant (RIP Legend) from the Harley Quinn animated series.
This simple look into Hal’s home life is fascinating and brings up even more questions. Who takes care of the mansion and Earl when Hal’s away in space? And, to repeat a question I had in my last review, how does Hal make any money?
The Manhunter Mystery
Things get more complicated once John retrieves the Power Battery, as he’s attacked and abducted outside Hal’s mansion. He briefly escapes, only for a foot chase across a busy highway to end with him running straight into the side of a van.
The fact that John receives only minor injuries after jumping out of a moving vehicle and running into another one, combined with Hal jumping out of a speeding car in the previous episode and falling several feet after his ring lost power without getting a scratch in this episode, makes me wonder if becoming a Green Lantern suddenly makes you extra durable.
John’s kidnappers are eventually revealed to be aliens wearing budget-friendly human disguises. Their leader, Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor), explains that they’re on Earth not for conquest, but for vengeance.
Antaan tells John about the Manhunters, the synthetic predecessors to the Green Lanterns who committed genocide in their sector of the universe. As someone who watched Green Lantern: The Animated Series as a kid, where the Manhunters played a very important role, this makes me very excited!
According to Antaan, a Manhunter secretly hid on their planet and engineered a holocaust before eventually escaping to Earth. They believe it’s now hiding somewhere in Rushville, and the victims of the football stadium shooting were actually Antaan’s men searching for it.
Antaan then has his men inject something into John’s temple that forces him to witness the horrors a Manhunter can cause. While Antaan insists they don’t want to kill innocents, they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves and blow up the Manhunter if John doesn’t find it within the next 48 hours.
This revelation makes the mystery much more complicated because these aliens aren’t technically the bad guys. They’re hunting an infiltrator who could potentially wipe out a massive number of people. John now has to figure out who the Manhunter really is, but in a town like Rushville, it could be anyone.
I also have to wonder if Antaan could secretly be Atrocitus, leader of the Red Lanterns, since the two share some similarities in their backstories. It’s a stretch, but it’s plausible.
Something Is Very Wrong With Rushville
Back in Rushville, Hal continues investigating the stadium shooting with a completely drained Lantern ring. His investigation leads to him stealing one of the alien corpses from the morgue and dragging it through one of the stadium’s metal detectors, which immediately goes off. Turns out it’s not actually a metal detector. It’s an alien detector.
Sheriff Kerry Kane reveals that she already knew this, adding another layer to the mystery. Hal also knows Kerry’s father-in-law, William Macon, and his men were responsible for killing the aliens. But William isn’t interested in answering questions, and Hal pushes his luck by walking a little further into the compound and getting shot by one of William’s snipers. It’s another telling example of Hal’s recklessness. He willingly walks into a heavily armed compound despite knowing his ring is completely drained, leaving him powerless and defenseless.
William mentioned in the previous episode that the ranch isn’t actually his and that he’s only “looking after it” for a client. Could that client be the Manhunter, using William’s anti-alien militia to prepare for the possibility of aliens and Green Lanterns coming after it? Or could William himself be the Manhunter?
Also, the gate to Macon’s ranch says “STORY THE PAST,” which I think is advice all writers should use when writing a comic book or comic book adaptation.
Hal later wakes up in the hospital, where Kerry asks him about Sinestro, whose name he kept saying in his sleep. Apparently, Sinestro is mentioned on Hal’s Wikipedia page, which is hilarious, and Kerry uses it to fill in some exposition. Sinestro was once a Green Lantern and Hal’s mentor before attempting a coup, killing a Guardian of the Universe, and getting thrown into space prison. You know it’s 2016 and Obama’s still President when being found guilty of attempting a coup can get you thrown in prison.
Hal’s injuries aren’t serious, adding more fuel to my Green-Lanterns-are-naturally-durable theory. But on his way out, he notices that he’s apparently the hospital’s only patient, and much of the medical equipment looks like it was just taken out of storage. That’s some suspicious North Korea-type stuff right there.
It makes me wonder if Rushville itself could somehow be populated by Manhunters. Kerry says she’s originally from Gotham, and in the previous episode she even called Batman’s favorite cop, Commissioner Gordon, so maybe she’s still human. But what about her family and everyone else? The residents also seem strangely uneasy about Hal’s presence when he interrupts a town meeting, which is pretty weird considering he’s supposedly there to protect them from a potential extraterrestrial threat.
John and Zoe
John eventually returns to Rushville and runs into Zoe again. The two have a conversation at a diner about their complicated relationships with the people in their lives. Zoe doesn’t reveal much about her relationship with William beyond saying that she lets him be his eccentric self, and it’s still unclear whether he knows about his wife’s infidelities. John, meanwhile, has his own complicated relationship with Hal. He puts up with Hal’s behavior because he has to, but he’s obviously disappointed that his childhood hero isn’t anything like the man he imagined him to be.
If Hal’s attitude toward the job is any indication of what being a superhero is actually like, apparently you’d be pretty sick of it after 30 years. There’s obviously more to Zoe than just being William’s wife, and it’s still unclear where her relationship with John is heading. But there are enough mysteries surrounding her, along with some interesting similarities between her and John, to keep me invested. Maybe she’s the Manhunter. Or William’s employer. OR BOTH!?
“WHAT ELSE WERE YOU DOING WHILE YOU WERE RUMMAGING THROUGH MY STUFF? DANCE AROUND IN MY BATHROBES? SING INTO MY HAIRBRUSH?” – HAL JORDAN
What the Green Lantern Uniform Means
When John returns to the motel, he gives Hal the Power Battery. Hal recites the Green Lantern oath so quickly that you can tell he’s probably said it a million times. John then tells him everything he learned about the Manhunter and warns him that they have less than 48 hours to find it and save Rushville.
The fact that John tells Hal everything shows that despite their differences, he does trust him. He’s less happy to discover that Hal got dead alien goo all over the seats of the rental car while he was gone. Just another example of Hal making John’s life harder for his own convenience.
Hal theorizes that the Manhunter must have arrived on Earth aboard his predecessor Abin Sur’s ship and escaped when it crashed. But considering how secretive Hal has been so far, it’s possible he knows more than he’s letting on. Maybe he or Sinestro had something to do with why the Manhunter wasn’t destroyed after being captured.
John also brought one of Hal’s old Green Lantern uniforms back from Coast City, which confuses Hal because he hates wearing it and prefers doing his job in normal clothes. As Hal pointed out in the premiere, you can’t go to the bathroom wearing a onesie. But John loves the costume.
While at Hal’s mansion, he poses with it in front of the mirror to see how it would look on him. It’s the same costume Hal wore during his 60 Minutes interview in 1996, back when John was a kid inspired by this superpowered space cop. John respects the costume because it represents the Hal Jordan he remembers and the Green Lantern he wants to become. It’s a nice little scene where John privately lets his guard down and reveals the comic book nerd hidden beneath the always-serious Marine.
Something Special About John Stewart?
John’s ability to create a living construct might turn out to be more important than it initially seems. Not only did he accidentally create the little green bird, but the creature remained alive even when John wasn’t wearing the ring. Antaan himself points out how impressive this is. Hal, meanwhile, refuses to acknowledge it and tries to devalue John’s accomplishment rather than giving him, to quote John, a “HOORAH.”
Part of that might come from Hal’s growing insecurity about John eventually replacing him. But it could also be hinting at something more. In the comics, John has recently developed the ability to create constructs without a Green Lantern ring. Maybe the series is setting up something similar.
Unfortunately, John casually destroys the bird before going to bed, which is surprisingly sad considering the tiny creature, despite all its annoying chirping, tried pecking at the aliens holding John captive in an attempt to save him.
SINESTRO JUST LOOKS LIKE A REGULAR HUMAN WITH RED SKIN. SO… BASICALLY HE LOOKS LIKE SINESTRO.
Sinestro!
After John goes to sleep, Hal finally puts his Green Lantern uniform back on, signaling that this qualifies as one of those “special occasions” he mentioned in the premiere. Seeing Kyle Chandler wearing a Green Lantern uniform and flying through space toward the Sciencells on Oa, home of the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps, is exactly the kind of superhero comic book imagery Lanterns has largely avoided until now.
So why does Hal finally put on the bathroom-unfriendly onesie again? To visit his old mentor Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). Hal asks the imprisoned Sinestro about the Manhunters, but Sinestro has a question of his own: What about John Stewart?
Sinestro calls the Manhunter “the second biggest threat” Hal is currently facing before asking about John. Is he saying John is the bigger threat because he’s going to take Hal’s job? Is Sinestro referring to himself because Hal is literally facing him at that moment? Could he be referring to Parallax, the embodiment of fear, which Hal has a very complicated history with in the comics and has already inspired plenty of fan theories about the show?
You decide!
More Green Lantern Goodness
“Trust Fall” also packs in plenty of fanservice without letting it overwhelm the story. Hal lives in Coast City, his voice password for opening his safe is “Mogo doesn’t socialize,” referencing the living Green Lantern planet and the title of the story that introduced him, and even Earl the carnivorous plant appears to be a deep-cut reference to Itty, a little alien plant creature who accompanied Hal in the comics.
These details work because they’re mostly woven naturally into the story rather than stopping everything for the audience to recognize them. More importantly, “Trust Fall” continues the momentum of the premiere and might even be better. The episode answers some questions while creating several new ones, expands on both Hal and John’s characters, and gives longtime Green Lantern fans more of the mythology they’ve been waiting to see.
The mystery surrounding Rushville is becoming increasingly strange, Hal and John’s relationship continues to develop in entertaining ways, and the introduction of the Manhunters and Sinestro opens the door to a much larger story. Two episodes in, Lanterns is still keeping me interested in finding out where all of this is going, and that final cliffhanger certainly isn’t making the wait for Episode 3 any easier.
HOPEFULLY THIS ISN’T THE LAST TIME WE SEE KYLE CHANDLER IN THE GREEN LANTERN COSTUME.
