This post contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Lanterns
Last week on Lanterns, the audience got to see firsthand what Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) has long suspected: His younger partner, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), isn’t just his backup — he’s his replacement as the Earth’s one and only Green Lantern. In fact, John was strictly trained by his parents from a young age in order to overcome fear — the main pre-requisite to wielding the Power Ring.
Right on the heels of that being confirmed for viewers, Hal gets to hear it himself from his old frenemy Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). The final scene of Episode 2 found Jordan journeying to an outer space prison to consult his former ally, who originally trained Hal in the ways of being a Green Lantern before breaking bad.
As we learn, Sinestro attempted a coup against the Guardians of the Universe, but was stopped by Hal, who still trusts his former mentor enough to ask him for advice. While Hal is primarily seeking information about the missing Manhunter that’s stiull on Earth, Sinestro also confirms Hal’s fears about John.
In this week’s episode, “The Weenie,” we learn that there’s even more to John than meets the eye. He tells Hal that he actually went to art school, which explains why he’s so good at drawing and also suggests that John’s own career ambitions are a little different than either his parents’ or the Guardians’ plans for him.
It also feels like a nod to one of the Green Lanterns from DC Comics, Kyle Rayner, who had an artistic ability that this version of Stewart seems to have inherited. While John has always had creative skills of his own— his comics creators Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams established him as an architect — but illustration was Kyle’s trademark.
Despite being more suspicious of each other than ever, Hal and John still have a Manhunter to find, so they team up to infiltrate the ranch that belongs to William Macon (Garret Dillahunt) — their prime suspect for being the alien robot in disguise. After all, Macon and his wife Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) do seem to run the town of Rushville, Nebraska, and his ranch boasts some alien technology.
In addition, he acts like an alien sometimes. For example, when Hal and John are captured and brought before him, Macon strips all his clothes off, and dares John to use that aforementioned artistic skill to draw him in the nude.
“There’s a lot going on in that scene, a lot of jives and weirdness,” Dillahunt tells Gold Derby. “I love the discomfort of Hal in particular. I think Aaron was sick that day, but he championed through anyway, and you can’t even tell.
“I don’t know why [William] thinks he can intimidate Aaron Pierre, or any Green Lantern for that matter,” the actor continues. “They’re fearless. He’s saying, ‘I’m not intimidated by you either. And that might be braver because I don’t have a power ring.’”
In fact, Dillahunt says that in one take his character actually tried on a Power Ring, though it didn’t make the final cut of the episode. “They cut it out,” he recalls. “It’s like I’m trying to manifest being tricky in this small little moment, but he’s trying to be the biggest swinging thing in the room and piss a circle around his wife. I guess he hasn’t been able to divorce himself from all the frailties of humanity. He’s a little jealous.”
Macon points Hal and John to a man called Hector Hammond, who he implies is the real Manhunter. That character is a fun nod to the Green Lantern comics, where Hammond is a recurring supervillain known for his gigantic head and telepathic powers. It’s also a reference to the notoriously not-great 2011 Green Lantern movie, where Peter Sarsgaard played Hammond alongside Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordan.
In a seeming nod to that film’s critical and commercial failure, this Hammond turns out to be a fake-out. Although he claims to be the Manhunter capable of wiping out the Stewart family, Hal i sable to out-bluff him with the click of a button.
John celebrates the near-miss by hooking up once again with Zoe. As she drives away from their motel, though, she appears to be killed by the Manhunter’s drone laser weapon. Then Hal shows up, and confirms that he and John are on the same page: Zoe isn’t dead — she’s the Manhunter, and was using her husband as a puppet and decoy.
“It’s completely the opposite of what you thought this relationship was,” Dillahunt says. Expect the hunt to kick into serious gear in Episode 5.
