Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Lights Out’
Hundreds of different Green Lanterns have appeared in the pages of DC Comics across the decades — sometimes for a panel or two, and sometimes for long runs as major or minor characters. DC fans have gotten to know multiple Hal Jordans, too.
Because of the franchise’s many reboots, retcons, re-imaginings and alternate universe stories, it is hard to pin down a definitive Hal. Even in the original run of Green Lantern stories in the 1960s and ’70s, Hal bounced between working as a test pilot, a toy salesman, an insurance investigator and a truck driver. His personality and point-of-view changed, depending on who was writing and drawing him.
So I would never suggest that the “Lanterns” version of Hal is off-model because there never really has been one model for Hal. Nevertheless, it is still shocking when in the latest episode Hal leaves John Stewart wounded and pinned in the car he crashed on purpose, explaining to John that he needed to move him “off the game board.” (“Here endeth your training,” he adds.) That’s coldblooded, even for this show’s scruffy, dissolute Green Lantern.
Even worse? After Hal leaves, the car explodes, leaving John trapped and burning. Fortunately for John, a Manhunter wanders by to save him.
This week’s “Lanterns” episode is a strange one. It is packed with action nearly from start to finish, as the aliens searching for the Manhunter descend on Rushville, killing locals. Meanwhile, Zoe — very much alive — mobilizes her husband’s militia and her own artillery to fight back, causing even more destruction. The change from relative calm to outright carnage happens fast. Even though were told repeatedly in the early episodes that this is where the story might go, the mayhem still feels abrupt.
There is a point to it all though. The dominant theme this week is evolution. Situations shift. People move on. Yesterday’s victories become today’s mistakes.
Some of these ideas are introduced in the episode’s prologue, which is set on the day in 2007 when Kerry Kane rolled into Rushville. The scene is fairly muted compared to what follows, although it is filled with startling new information. We learn that Kerry is the daughter of a man who snitched on his organized crime associates back in Gotham, and that she was traveling incognito when she arrived in Nebraska. We also learn that Zoe quickly killed one of the thugs on Kerry’s tail and sent the other away with Kerry’s severed pinkie as proof of her “death.”
All Zoe asked for in return was Kerry’s loyalty. And she had it, for many years. Then Kerry settled down, got a good job, and had a son. Even though Zoe is somewhat responsible for all of that, by the time the Lanterns arrive, Zoe is also responsible for Kerry’s home and loved ones being under imminent threat from violent aliens — and from Zoe herself, with her fleet of killer satellites.
So when Kerry runs into Hal — whom she is supposed to kill on sight, under Zoe’s orders — she instead fires her gun into his ring-generated shields while urging him to leave town and take the aliens with him.
Kerry’s mercy proves to be a huge mistake. As Hal explains to John before he leaves him in a crumpled car, his plan has nothing to do with protecting Rushville or its people. He wants to steer the aliens to the Macon ranch and let the E.T.s and the militia battle it out while he scoops up Zoe and delivers her to the Guardians, thereby winning back his bosses’ grudging respect and keeping his job. (This is more or less the plan Sinestro suggested, with the only difference being that Sinestro wanted Hal to kill John outright.)
The way this plays out though is catastrophic. Both sides in the skirmish wreak havoc in ways that quickly spin out of control. The images of laser beams from above methodically destroying Rushville are horrifying. The images of locals crying over the dismembered bodies of family members are even worse.
Hal’s machinations aren’t even that convincing. The leader of the aliens, Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) is skeptical when Hal insists the Manhunter took the form of Will Macon. Antaan knows that the Manhunters often worked their way into communities by seducing their leaders, through feigned humility and sexual wiles. In fact when Antaan confronts Will — who is pretending to be the Manhunter — he asks why Will took “the form of an elite” before grilling him with some personal questions, including, “What were our children’s names?”
Antaan ultimately proves his point by cutting into Will’s chest and pulling out his bloody, meaty human heart — which is not crystalline, as a Manhunter’s should be. We later get to see the right kind of heart, after John recovers from his injuries and clobbers Hal, leaving him battered and bruised for Zoe to find. Before Zoe can finish off Hal, John uses his sniper skills to take her out, then cuts out her jagged, shiny heart.
John hands that heart over to the Guardian we have come to know, whose name is Lianna. John calls the trophy “your sins and consequences.”
He is referring to what Zoe told him while she was using her advanced technology to heals his burns and breaks. She explained the Manhunters’ origins, telling how the Guardians created them as the universe’s first protectors, then destroyed all but Zoe in response to the Manhunters’ brutality. The Guardians felt they had made an error, so they erased it.
The conversation between Zoe and John is another of this episode’s rare quiet moments. After John submits to having his skin healed — while joking, “If I come out white, deal’s off” — the two of them talk about why the last surviving Manhunter chose to live on Earth as a woman with brown skin. She says, “The fastest way to understanding a civilization is to start from a disadvantage.” This also happens to be one of the main reasons John has always thought he would make a better Green Lantern than Hal. John has spent his whole life being underestimated on sight. He has turned that into an edge.
But this is also, at the end of the episode, one of the reasons John rejects Hal’s ring, leaving it with Lianna. He describes how the power and privilege the ring bestows corrupted Hal, who became a whole different person — betraying his core beliefs — just to hold onto it. And maybe John thinks about what Hal said after John knocked him around. “They replaced me, they’ll replace you.”
Hal is right, of course. He would know better than anyone: Everything changes.
Brightest day, blackest night …
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The most extreme reinvention of the comic book Hal Jordan happened in the 1990s, when he became so frustrated with the Guardians’ rules that he usurped their power and became a mass murdering supervillain named Parallax. He later atoned for this by transforming into the Spectre, an avenging angel of justice. So while the “Lanterns” Hal is a jerk, he could be worse!
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The digital backup of Hal’s consciousness that lives inside his power ring reappears in this episode, acting as Hal’s sentry atop the water tower during the battle royale. This ersatz Hal — so much cheerier than the real guy — immediately wants to say hey to John, whom he recently met. Like I said: There have always been many different kinds of Hals, even within the same continuity.
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Antaan, speaking from personal experience, assumes the Manhunter had “coitus” with Hal, John or both — which is another reason Antaan is unconvinced the Manhunter is Will. Antaan also assumed Hal was straight, given that he has always “presented” that way. Hal waves those doubts off, saying, “When you experience the pleasures of the galaxy as much as we have, it’s less about preference, more about opportunity.” He’s lying to Antaan about Will, we know — but maybe not about being, by circumstance, kind of fluid. That would be on brand.
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