The first episode of Lanterns set the table. Now, the second episode served the full meal. With Green Lantern Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and his trainee John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) in Rushville, Nebraska, with proof that there are aliens around, it’s time to do some detective work. But first, Hal needs to teach John a thing or two, which sets both men on their paths ripe with narrative revelations. Let’s recap the second episode of Lanterns.
Hal dumps a bucket of water on John to wake him up, definitely starting the day off on the wrong foot. John is super agitated but calms a bit when he realizes Hal wants to teach him how to fly. He puts on the ring, thinks “flight,” and…nothing. It’s almost embarrassing except that a green bird appears out of nowhere. Hal seems shocked by this, John is confused, and Hal has a backup plan. He’s already pre-bought John a ticket to fly back to Coast City to get the Lantern to charge the ring. John is rightfully insulted because it shows that Hal never thought he was going to fly. But also, Hal now wants John to keep the green bird alive and bring him back.
As John heads cross-country, Hal goes into detective mode. He notices the football field where the murders happened has metal detectors that don’t seem to detect metal, and he finds the same metal detectors at a large town meeting that he was not made aware of. There, he’s informed that the charges against him have been dropped and he’s free to go home. But everyone wanting him to go home makes him think that’s a bad idea.
Hal has to leave the meeting because John calls him from his house. The house is massive and, apparently, was given to John by a rich person he helped at one point. As the conversation is happening, Hal breaks into the town morgue to steal the alien bodies from the football field. He doesn’t make John aware of that, however. John searches through Hal’s house and finds the voice-activated safe that contains the pocket dimension that contains the Lantern that will charge the ring. John grabs it, and then feeds Hal’s pet Earl, who just so happens to be a massive carnivorous plant in the backyard. Which is a very weird wrinkle in the story of who Hal Jordan is.
As he expected, Hal takes the alien corpses back to the football field, and wouldn’t you know it? They set off the alarm. Somehow, Rushville, Nebraska has alien detectors so advanced that Hal later says he’s never seen them in all his travels across the galaxy. He even heads to Macon’s ranch to confront him about it, and leaves with a bullet through his shoulder. A warning shot. Leave Rushville, or else.
John leaves Hal’s place, only to get jumped and kidnapped. In the van, he escapes again, setting up a fun little highway chase before he’s hit by a car and kidnapped…again. A little repetitive? Sure. But the episode was lacking in action.
The people who snatched John are revealed to be the same group whose members were killed at the football field. Aliens. Aliens who are on Earth looking for a Manhunter. John doesn’t know what a Manhunter is, and so the lead alien, played by The Wire‘s Paul Ben-Victor, decides not just to tell him, but to show him. He’s also very, very impressed that John, not Hal, created the bird that has been chirping around this whole time.
After the bird envy, the aliens hold John down and hit him with a device that imprints memories. The memories, we’re told, are of a Manhunter who invaded their planet and basically committed mass genocide. It’s explained that no one knows where Manhunters came from, but it was believed they were all killed. Until the incident on their planet. After the tragedy, a Green Lantern came to apprehend the Manhunter and vowed to kill it. That never happened, though, and after years of searching, they’ve tracked it to Rushville, Nebraska.
The task is simple. John is to identify the Manhunter – who can assume the shape of anything or anyone, so it could be anyone in town – and call the aliens. If he doesn’t do that in 48 hours, they’re going to blow up the entire town.
As John, and the audience, are dumped with so much exposition it makes our heads spin, we go back to Hal, and the info dump continues. He’s in the hospital, and the sheriff is by his side. The two have a good, open conversation about why Hal is acting how he’s acting, why she’s acting how she’s acting, and that Hal needs to respect her authority. He agrees. We also learn that he kept saying the word “Sinestro” in his sleep, and while Hal doesn’t want to talk about that, the sheriff is able to discern that he was a Green Lantern who went against his own, killed a Guardian, and was arrested by Hal.
As the pair leave the hospital, we learn that that Sherrif is from Gotham City and came to Rushville on a whim. Hal doesn’t buy it. He’s also confused as to why there is literally no one else in the hospital and all the equipment is brand new. She says people are generally smart enough not to get shot as he did.
Finally back in Rushville, John goes to the diner to grab a cup of coffee and runs into Zoe. It’s the first time they’ve talked since the revelation that she’s married to the most powerful, evil, alien-hunting man in town. Each talks about how they are beholden to a white man, but while John doesn’t trust Hal, Zoe loves and trusts Macon. She feels security with him. John can respect that.
Finally, after a whole episode apart, John returns to the hotel to see Hal in a sling. He’s kind of happy to see Hal taken down a notch by a fellow sniper, but everything changes when John mentions Manhunters. He fills Hal in on the whole ordeal – the abduction, the aliens, the genocide, the bomb that’s coming in 48 hours if they don’t figure out who it is – as well as the fact that they didn’t want John to tell Hal about any of it.
This confirms every feeling Hal had in his gut. He knew there was something larger happening here. And it has to do with the last Green Lantern, Abin Sur, who must’ve been the one to capture the Manhunter, only to be killed and crash on Earth, which is when Hal got the ring. It’s a big deal. Almost as big a deal as John being able to bring, and keep, a living thing to life with his subconscious. Hal agrees that was a big deal but asks, why the bird? What does the bird mean? Nothing, John says, as he crushes it into nothing.
That would have been a powerful end to the episode, but there was one more scene. Hal flies into space to talk to, you guessed it, Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). Hal asks him what he knows about Manhunters, to which Sinestro replies that if one was still alive, it would be Hal’s second-biggest problem. He wants to know about Hal’s biggest problem, John Stewart.