After episode three gave us a hefty amount of flashbacks concerning the early life and recruiting of John Stewart, it’s time to leap right back into the central mystery thats been keeping the Green Lantern and his successor busy back in 2016. However, with every new episode, we continue to find that the aspects you’d expect to find from a property featuring the emerald-clad space cop coming more and frequently. With that first episode, most of the openly comic book shenanigans were delivered few and far between; however, we’re now seeing more and more each episode to the point where that trickle has become a little, green stream. After being drip fed the likes of planet Oa, the Guardians, Sinestro and more constructs each and every week, any fears that Lanterns wasn’t going to feel like a true Green Lantern show has all but dispersed like a giant, jade apparition that the titular hero doesn’t need anymore. However, you can’t deny that tension is really starting to build between Hal Jordan and his unwanted protege, and with “The Weenie” it finally explodes.
Before getting caught up in the history of John Stewart last week, we finally get to see more of that conversation that occurred between Hal Jordan and his former teacher, Sinestro, and it seems that the imprisoned Lantern turncoat also doesn’t like the idea of Stewart replacing his former student. While offering up vital details about the Manhunters, he suggests ways that the Lantern-in-waiting can be usurped in order to ensure that Jordan’s power ring stays exactly where it is – directly on that middle finger he keeps showing the world. However, on earth, we discover that Stewart is having a very similar conversation with the Guardian known as Lianna, who urges he take the ring by force the next time he gets to wear it while training. However, while both men are getting pressure to oust the other, they seem to actually be bonding when they reunite in Rushville to smoke out the identity of the Manhunter by infiltrating William Macon’s anti-alien militia compound. However, the pair finds that the high tech armoury contains weapons designed to fight Lanterns – something that’s bound to be a issue later down the line.
Matters take even more of an alarming turn when Zoe, the wife of Macon, returns to John for another highly questionable booty call. However, when she leaves, her car is obliterated by a laser bolt from the sky which Hal discovers has come from a satellite owned by one Hector Hammond. Believing him to be the Manhunter, both Hal and John visit one of his automated (and fairly creepy) slaughterhouses to interrogate the man only to discover he’s only a decoy.
This leads to Hal not only deducing that Zoe isn’t dead because it is she who is the Manhunter, he also works out that John’s already figured it out, but kept the information to himself. This ends up becoming the glowing, green straw that breaks the camel’s back and the mounting tension between both Lanterns causes Hal to eventually take extreme methods to remain Earth’s Green Lantern.
It seems that the preamble that Lanterns has been building is finally over, as the episode manages to give up a fair few of its secrets that’s been hiding within that complex plot. The main aspect is that we’ve finally learnt the identity of the Manhunter, who turns out to be Macon’s wife, Zoe – but while we’re yet to find out what this means for the big picture (or how John feels about having sex with an alien murder-bot twice), it seems like the show is giving up its secrets in order to build up another aspect of the plot to take the lead: the growing animosity between both Jordan and Stewart. The dislike this odd-couple have for one another has been apparent from the start, with Stewart’s straight-arrow student grating hard against the swaggering over-confidence of the reckless Jordan, but in “The Weenie” we watch their rivalry hit new heights after both recieve questionable pressure from outside forces to out-maneuver their rival to secure the power ring.
While it initially seems a foregone conclusion that Jordan’s in the wrong thanks to his oath-breaking advice coming from his teacher-turned-arch enemy, Sinestro, his prideful desire to remain the Lantern is also an ussue – however, on the flip side if that equation, there’s something somewhat disconcerting about the way Stewart’s ambition is being weaponised by both Lianna and his mother in order to take the mantle in unofficial ways. Urged to take control of the power ring by reciting the Green Lantern oath the next time he wears the alien bling for training, there’s something quite untoward about the methods the Guardians want their new Lantern to claim his birthright. Stewart seems to think the same, as he opts not to pull the underhanded tactic when the two break into Macon’s compound in a failed attempt to discover the Manhunter – however, the big irony is that even when secretly plotting against one another, the two are starting to make a pretty good team when they’re forced to be on the same page.
Watching them create a tunneling machine to avoid detection, having them play good cop, bad cop when having them interrogate “Hector Hammond” (no maniac with a swollen head here – yet), or try to act nonplussed when a naked Macon demands to be sketched by the artist of the pair, gives us a rather tragic snapshot of how good together they are when their peers aren’t enticing them to stab the other in the back.
But while the breakdown of the central relationship is key, the show is still expanding that all-important Lanterns lore with every episode. OK, so the trip to Hector Hammond’s slaughterhouse may not add much to proceedings other a string of red herrings and name drops (it turns out it’s not even Hammond they’re talking to in the end), but watching his unsettling, high-tech machines reduce a living cow into a pile of prime cuts in seconds is certainly memorable.
However, with the identity of the Manhunter now revealed and both Lanterns realising that whomever brings it in will most likely be the one to wear the ring, Jordan makes his play by betraying Stewart and leaping clear of their car just as it crashes into a lamppost. Has Hal taken Sinestro’s advice and killed John? Probably not, but after all the mistrust that’s built up between them, it was inevitable that one of them would pull some sort of underhanded trick to gain ground on the other (I’m not entirely shocked that it was Hal, either), but the act itself is still surprising. However, what’s truly interesting is that all this has happened and we’re still only at the halfway point of the season – which suggests that there’s a whole bunch of stuff still to come. Be it more paths into deeper Lantern lore (Lantern squirrel, Ch’p, is amusingly name-checked at one point), or an expansion in scale as the search for the Manhunter invites more overt, superhero action, there’s a sense that Lanterns is only getting started.
A return to the more detective show aspects of the season also allows more of the comic book aspects of the property to flourish. But while watch the power ring utilised more and more is finally adding the green to the grit of Lanterns, the real draw here proves to be the fact that Jordan and Stewart are done playing nice together.
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