00:00:00
Speaker 1: Warning!
00:00:01
Speaker 2: Today's episode contains spoilers for the season finale of Lanterns on HBO.
00:00:07
Speaker 3: Be warned.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: Hello!
00:00:24
Speaker 2: My name is Jason Concepcion.
00:00:26
Speaker 1: And I'm Rosie Knight.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Extra Vision, the podcast where we dive deep into your favorite movies, comics, and pop culture coming to you from our heart, where we're bringing you three episodes a week.
00:00:36
Speaker 3: Plus news, okay? Plus news.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: In today's episode, we are breaking down that lantern's finale. Did it land? Who was the killer? Does it matter? Were they punished? We will be breaking it all down. And talking about how it will lead in to Man of Tomorrow and the rest of James Gunn's DCU.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: Okay, Lanterns. Season finale. We open in 2016, the aftermath of the Battle of Rushville.
00:01:07
Speaker 1: Sorry to the town. Fucked.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: The water tower is collapsed. The buildings are in ruins. There's body parts in the street. There's bullet casings everywhere. We see John walk out of the motel. carrying Hal's lantern after sniping Zoe the Manhunter in the head, his girlfriend. The militia guys run up and they're about to, I don't know, just maybe vigilante justice him right there in the street. But Carrie comes.
00:01:41
Speaker 1: Up and is like, stand down!
00:01:43
Speaker 2: And they all stand down. And she's like, where's Hal? He points her to Hal. Hal is lying still in the ruins of the motel having been beat up by Jon Stewart. He's bloody. He's just kind of half out of it. She gives him the update. Basically, it's really bad. Town's fucked. A lot of people dead. We won't know how many for a while. And then she asks him, was it worth it? And So what is what was what worth it? I understand what like killing the Manhunter. Is that what she's asking?
00:02:21
Speaker 1: I think what she's actually asking here is this is an acknowledgement between her and him. Like, was it worth what's about to happen for protecting my son? Like she's saying, like, is it worth it to love me? That's what I think she's asking. I think she's basically like, fuck, well, you've done it now. And yeah, sure. They do think she's the only manhunter and like, was it worth it? And he's basically like, well, yeah, let's talk about your worth it. Let's talk about this because I agree with that read. However, narratively blurry this episode. I think we can say that in general.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: I will say, let's pause here to just say this. I think that, perhaps because of budgetary reasons, this season, which is a really good and almost great season of television, was very much like edited and re-edited and chopped and screwed and put in different order. All of which is to say, hold on, Rosie, your reading, I think, is right. And that will play out over the rest of this conversation that we're going to talk about. But when you get to the end of the episode, Mm-hmm. It seems as if Hal finds out then that Noah is a Manhunter, but it does seem here that he knows it now and there's an unspoken thing between them. So all I wish is to say, I think they edited this entire season in a way to cover up whether, you know, budgetary restrictions, whatever it was in order to make it cohesive. And it largely did that. But there are a lot of things that ring strange.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: When you look at it. I just want to say, I agree with you. And look, all I want to say is one of my takes that annoyed everybody the most this season was that episode three felt like it wasn't the third episode. And I want to say that I feel like at the end of this season, I have been validated that this show definitely was in a different order. We don't know what order, but I'm excited as we learn more because I do think, and we're going to talk about this more as we talk about the show, the performances are so good.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: So good.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: That it really elevates the show out of what are some clear, like plotting issues, pacing issues and choices to do with, like you said, I think budgetary issues. Cause there is not a lot of Green Lantern action. They very much heavily played on this kind of murder mystery, but then does that pay off? It's really interesting to see, but again, these three core performances just keep us going through it.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: So good. So, um, she asks, was it worth it? He says, it's funny you say that because I asked Jon Stewart the same thing. She asks, because again, protecting her son, what will the Guardians say? And seeming as if Hal understands the subtext of her question, that she's concerned about her son, he says, well, the Guardians are going to be happy because a Manhunter is dead. They're going to be unhappy because I broke the rules to make that happen. But when I take the full rap for this and go away to prison, they're not going to have much incentive to look any further. Essentially, he's saying, hey, don't worry about it. Your son is safe. That's what it seems like to me.
00:05:42
Speaker 1: What if actually I give a different read because as we're breaking it down, I'm working. I think this could narratively work with the timeline. What if right now he thinks Kerry is the manhunter? And that's who he's trying to protect. He can just tell that there's something else going on. So his bigger thing is just don't investigate. So it's not that he knows it's Noah, which would explain why he's still surprised. It's just that in that moment, he's like, they're not going to investigate anymore. You can keep whatever weird shit you've got going on here. If you're a manhunter, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I think, And then obviously the love story goes from there, but something that I think we both agree on, Jason, not enough of that on.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: The page for me. Again, you put your finger right on it. Kyle Chandler, Kelly MacDonald, and Aaron Pierre absolutely killed this, carried it, and they were so good.
00:06:38
Speaker 1: However.
00:06:39
Speaker 2: for this love story to like, they make this love story work when there's nothing on the page. There's like, it's like, they just kind of fall in love and their performance lets you buy it. But there's none of the kind of like hard work of like building that relationship really on the screen. Because then we fast forward 10 years, Carrie, who is now deeply in love with Al is waiting for him outside of prison. She's brought Schlitz beer. Um, She then drives off with him back to Rushville. They are eating. It's been like a week or a couple of weeks or something. They're eating at the local pizza restaurant. Everybody in the literally everybody in the restaurant is staring daggers into Hal. And he's like, fuck, you know, maybe this was a bad idea. You know, like, should we have gone public so soon? She's like, I don't want to sneak around anymore.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: And it's been 10 years. Yeah.
00:07:34
Speaker 2: For 10 years to be sneaking around. And now for two weeks in town, she's been sneaking around. So she stands up and she makes this speech basically saying, hey, I understand that because of the brutal destruction of the town and the deaths of many of your loved ones and the fact that you no longer receive free medical care from the Manhunter, you hate this man.
00:07:54
Speaker 1: But he dicks me down really good, so he's here. And we've been letter writing each other for 20 years and the anticipation is crazy. Like, come on, guys. What was she expecting? This is so... Also, can I just say, Kerry, you are kind of sly because this has also got like a... I do have a kind of Gone Girl read on this where like, Kerry is always telling everyone how much everyone hated Hal, but is that true? Or is that just what she tells everyone because she fucking killed him? Like, we don't actually know if these people hated Hal. Like, this is just her journal version of it. Because you are the killer. You're just making up suspects.
00:08:34
Speaker 2: So she makes that speech, which everyone does not accept, but.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: It keeps everybody quiet in that moment.
00:08:42
Speaker 2: She's like, listen, you're going to have to deal with it. Like, his dick is real good. And it was worth waiting 10 years.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: 10 years in jail? Like, what was this man saying?
00:08:53
Speaker 2: So later, after some great sex, apparently, Hal would like Carrie to stay, but she can't yet because of Noah.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: Kind of cold to not stay after the first post-conjugal sex of 10 years. She just walks straight out after. She's hardcore. That's how you know about Sheriff Kerry.
00:09:10
Speaker 2: That's why he probably thinks she's the manhunter. True.
00:09:13
Speaker 1: It's also probably why he thinks she's hot. Because she won't sleep in the bed.
00:09:17
Speaker 2: So she's like, no, I can't because of Noah. And he's like, well, Noah probably knows about us. And he's like, yeah, but there's a difference between knowing and knowing. Accepting, yeah. I don't want him to wake up alone yet. Later, after she leaves, Hal is preparing Earl's meal when his home is firebombed. And Earl is screaming horribly as Hal is running to and fro trying to find like a window he can jump out of or something. But the flames are growing too high and he can't get to the front door. It's curtains for him and Earl. And it certainly seems like he dies. And I will say here's another place where now we know that Earl survived. because we see that John when he comes to Rushville in 2026 like that yeah Earl's there but also can I it does seem like Earl dies in this moment because there is no closure about it there you don't see where he is I need.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: To understand what happened to Hal Jordan's other house and his money. Because why is he living brokely in the town when he had that giant ass house that somebody gave him? He could have sold that house.
00:10:28
Speaker 2: He probably sold it and had to pay restitution to the town.
00:10:31
Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: True, true, true.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:10:33
Speaker 1: I mean, again... A little bit of telling and showing wouldn't hurt, guys. Like, just a little bit. Just a little bit. But still, the good thing is these performances do carry it.
00:10:44
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:10:44
Speaker 1: And then we see that Hal is not dead. He's not dead.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: He wakes up in the slaughterhouse, in the high-tech alien slaughterhouse, and Noah is there. The Manhunter has healed him. And he's like, yes, I healed you. You've got new skin now, just like my mother. my grandmother did with Jon Stewart. Now don't tell my mom because she doesn't know that I know what I am. So let's just keep it quiet. We go to the present. We are in the weird factory in the middle of the lake of the fear planet. Sinestro has just been telling Jon Stewart this entire tale and he's chained to a chair. Sinestro is like, Noah's very powerful now. You know, he was growing up, and now he's a full-grown Manhunter man. And John's like, what the fuck are you doing here, Sinestro? Like, why were you here?
00:11:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, what's even going on?
00:11:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's even going on? And Sinestro's like, well, Zoe, who you were fucking, the grandmother of the Manhunter, built this facility and used the portal to visit this planet because she basically felt really bad that she did a huge genocide and killed an entire planet. Now she feels bad about it. Isn't that nice? And I would tell you more, Jon Stewart, but you're like not even a trainee. You're like a nothing. I want to talk to Hal, AI Hal. I know that real Hal is dead, but I want to talk to AI Hal. I want to talk to him right now. Jon Stewart's like, no. And then takes Sinestro out to the water, which remember has all the fear chemicals in it.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: The nightmare water.
00:12:18
Speaker 2: And waterboards him in the fear water.
00:12:21
Speaker 1: He was a marine. Don't forget, he's a marine. He's like, I'm going to waterboard you in this hell water. Like, fuck you.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: Sinestra's like, oh, no, no. Okay, okay. I'll tell you everything. So he's like, okay, here's what happened. Noah broke me out of Oa so that I could forge Noah a lantern.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: And Insane plot twist, by the way.
00:12:45
Speaker 2: And that he would then use the power of the lantern, right, to kill a guardian. That's his plan.
00:12:55
Speaker 1: Basically, because he knew Sinestro had beaten a guardian with the ring, right? And he felt like that was a way to protect himself.
00:13:01
Speaker 2: Just in case the guardians came after him.
00:13:03
Speaker 1: Although, he'll lay that out later. The fact you can forge a lantern and a ring just casually like.
00:13:09
Speaker 2: That, I feel like has to be a larger.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: Sinestro's the best to ever do it. But that has to be a larger plot point in the coming DCEU, because that feels huge.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I hope we will discover more, but it just proves, again, Sinestro the greatest to ever do it, certainly at this point. And... Sinestro then explains that like, listen, this lantern is not like other lanterns.
00:13:29
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:13:29
Speaker 2: And we will talk, Rosie, you will explain to us the green verse, yellow impurity verse, uh, fearless verse fear dichotomy that exists in the comics lore that they kind of just barely touch on here. So Sinestro has built this lantern, um, from the distilled energies of this planet and the genocide that happened here and the great amount of fear that was here of the people as they were dying, their souls. And John's like, but that's bad, right? I thought Green Lantern's fearless and all that stuff. And I was like, no, no, no, no. And Sinestro here lays out the kind of philosophical issue that he had with the Guardians that caused his break with the Guardians, which is, his pursuit of yellow and the yellow impurity, what it really meant. And he had come to discover that no, actually yellow and fear is actually good. If you get the balance, right. Because fear makes you careful fear, like show me a fearless species and I will show you species on the edge of extinction. You don't learn if you're not afraid. And he's like, go ahead, charge it up. See what happens in the rink. Hal appears AI, Hal. And Sinestro's like, oh, good, Hal. There's some great actually acting here. Because the way that Sinestro reacts when Hal appears and he kind of like jerks forward and there's this immense relief on his face is really something. And Sinestro's like, Hal, listen. You're realer than just a hologram because of Jon Stewart.
00:15:09
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: If you team up with me, help me right now against Jon... Take the ring. Get the lantern. I can bring you back to life for real. Like, really bring you back to life. It can really happen. Hal mulls it over. You know, he never really gets close, but he does think about it. And he says, you know what? You talk too much. You're annoying. I'm not going to do that.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:38
Speaker 2: So... We learned that if Jon Stewart charges the ring because AI Hal is coming from the 7% or 5%. By the way, previous it was 5%, now it's 7%. This is showing you again, there's a lot of chopped and screwed stuff that happened.
00:15:51
Speaker 1: Right, I'm saying. Also, Super Producer Joelle, who this is why we love her and our Super Producer team. Episode 3 was originally supposed to be Episode 5. It has now been confirmed. So we are starting to get these confirmations that it went out of order.
00:16:07
Speaker 2: Right?
00:16:07
Speaker 1: So that's really interesting.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: So... So, of course, AI Hal is based inside the ring, a download of real Hal's consciousness, but from 10 years ago. And if Jon charges it off of this new unofficial lantern, it will basically do a full reboot on the ring and erase AI Hal from the ring. Sinestro tells Jon Stewart now, in this wonderful Hannibal Lecter playing all sides, says, Well, don't trust Hal, who's saying don't charge the ring because Hal knows.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: If you charge the ring, he will disappear.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: And so you really, there's this like ominous feeling of like what could happen if John charges the ring off this lantern. John and Hal leave Sinestro chained to the chair on the island. As they row away, Hal suggests that, you know, maybe Sinestro's right. Like I understand like we don't trust this lantern. Comes from a very ominous type of energy. But if you face Noah alone, he will kill you. Like, you do not have the power to deal with a Manhunter as a regular human man. And Hal then asks, what were my last words to you, Jon Stewart, in real life? Like, when you had punched me in the face and then what happened? And Jon goes, you told me not to tell anybody I was in Rushville. Why? Because Noah would assume... that Hal told Jon Stewart about Noah being a man.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: Exactly.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: Hal now insists like, you know, Junior, I'm trying to protect you. I'm trying to protect you, Jon. And Hal's like, yeah, now you're trying to protect me when you're dead. And it's like, he doesn't really, it doesn't mean that much to him. Although I think it does affect him, but on the surface, he reacts to it very negatively. Hal says, listen, you better charge the ring. They go to the portal and Hal's like, what's the plan? And Jon says, well, Noah's got a big football game, championship game, and so that will buy me some time to figure out what to do. I'm not sure what to do, but I'm betting that if I don't charge the ring, I'll be fine because Noah won't kill me based on my gut. You know, the show's been a lot about gut instincts, and this is Jon Stewart's gut instincts.
00:18:28
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: He drops through the portal, and Noah is there and just kicks the shit out of Jon Stewart easily. They then get in. John Stewart's truck and drive off ostensibly towards the football game. And they arrive at a crossroads. This is like literal storytelling right here.
00:18:49
Speaker 1: I know. I was like, guys, when you were cutting up, you didn't have a time to like make this a bit less literal, but it's okay. It's okay. We like it. They're at the crossroads. They're at the crossroads of the road.
00:19:02
Speaker 2: And clearly if Noah, uh, tells John to drive straight and go towards the game, then he's going to let John live.
00:19:10
Speaker 3: Exactly.
00:19:11
Speaker 2: But if he makes him drive somewhere else, he's probably going to kill John, right? But then Noah, who hasn't made up his mind yet, is like, yeah, keep going towards the game. They arrive at the school and they make some small talk about high school bands and about football. And then Noah tells John, you know what? I didn't burn Hal's house, by the way, just so you know. Yep. I, in fact, saved him. life and john stewart is like great that is showing that my gut is right because that shows that that's the opposite of your programming helping the green lantern or former green lantern when he's a threat to you and really what you should do is.
00:19:48
Speaker 1: Kill him um and.
00:19:53
Speaker 2: He then, but then Noah says, complicates it by saying yes, but also when Hal found my portal and figured out what I was doing, then I did kill him. I had to kill him. John Stewart seemingly accepts this, but, but he, There isn't like, he's like, this is great acting again by Pierre, because.
00:20:13
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, man, this had me so emotionally engaged. it's also a conversation about himself and his family and his own expectations. It works so well. This is the reason that I do say, in the end, I buy Noah being the Manhunter. Simply, I understand why they went with it because the echoes between his life and John's life make so much sense. And it does emotionally hit when it works.
00:20:38
Speaker 2: That's a great point. Just to kind of like step aside, for me, this show is a good show that was almost great. And I think it transcended a lot of, clear like sequencing issues and perhaps budgetary issues. And the reason it's, it's even that good, which is very good is because, you know, the three, the talent of the three leads and two is, Every important scene, like if there are five or six important scenes in a season of TV, this being one of them, the conversation in the car, it nailed every single one of those scenes. The other scenes are rocky.
00:21:18
Speaker 1: The same as episode three.
00:21:19
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:21:19
Speaker 1: Right? Where it smashed all the stuff it needed to to establish the baseline of what the show was about. I totally agree with you.
00:21:27
Speaker 2: So, again, great acting by Pierre, who... makes it seem like John accepts this explanation that Noah killed Hal, but you can tell the light doesn't go on in a certain way and that he is still, he doesn't believe it.
00:21:42
Speaker 1: Even though he's saying he believes it. Great echo here in that moment from where he's with Zoe and he says to her, I see you. And she says, I know. And she feels like he means in the moment that he is seeing who she is and what she wants to show him, but he's telling her, I see exactly what you actually are doing and what your plan is and what you need from me. And I like that here, it's that same kind of like, yeah, Noah, sure. But his mind is still going. He's still working out what the real play is.
00:22:12
Speaker 2: So Noah is like, I bet you're wondering if I'm going to kill you. And Jon Stewart's like, yeah, I really am. And it's clear that Noah himself isn't actually sure. Like it's kind of hanging on a knife's edge. But they end up, Like, again, at the game, and that's a good sign, does Jon Stewart believe that Noah can overcome his programming? This is what Noah kind of wants to know. And Jon, as a way to say yes, tells Noah about his own upbringing, the kind of brutal, abusive childhood that he was raised under, and how, after it all, he began to question everything that all the ideals he was instilled with, and that just that questioning, that crack in the door, showed him that he could live his own life. He didn't have to be the person that he was raised to be. He could be anybody he wanted to be. And so he's basically telling Noah, like, you can be a good person. It's your choice. You don't need to be a manhunter.
00:23:12
Speaker 1: Right.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: So Noah then tells Jon Stewart how. Well, that's good to hear because, like, one part of me just wants to be a normal guy, you know, and get a— Mm-hmm. meet a nice girl and get married and have a normal job and go to work and come home and have kids and yada, yada, yada. However, the other part of me thinks, you know, it would be so easy. Ride football to the heights of political power, get into the Senate, maybe the White House, get access to all the best weapons and then run the, basically take over the world. And if anybody tried to stop me, I would have a ring and a lantern, which Sinestro forged for me, and I would kill anything that comes between.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: Me and power, including a guardian.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: And he then says to John, by the way, if you could see the inside of my head, you would never stop screaming. Yeah. And then he gives the ring back.
00:24:09
Speaker 1: I want to say. Yes. I think this is so interesting because I was talking to Joelle about this sequence. I think it's a great sequence. I also think. That with the way we are in 2026, we're again at the subtext texting. because this is also kind of just the statement about being a white kid in a town where everyone's supporting you to go to college, like being a white man, being a white person, it is kind of easy to just rise up the ranks and become evil, right? So I kind of also love that once again, the text is catching up with the show and it's like, yeah, that's really nefarious and evil, but also like there's already people in power doing that kind of shit. Like it feels scarier than ever. I thought this was a great moment again, they smashed this scene just where they needed to smash it.
00:24:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: I will say that.
00:24:59
Speaker 2: I have issues where John lands with regards to Noah, but we will talk about that later. Okay, so Noah gives the ring back. He then asks Jon Stewart for a favor. He's like, kill me. I'm not sure.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: Can you just kill me, please? No, leave my son.
00:25:32
Speaker 2: Can you please kill me? Give me the mercy that you gave my grandmother. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to hold it together and not become like a super villain that takes over the world. And so at some point, just snipe me, don't let me know it's coming, let me finish the game, and then snipe me, bye. And he gets out of the car to go play the game.
00:25:53
Speaker 1: Crazy thing to ask somebody, by the way. Truly. Just insane.
00:25:56
Speaker 2: John Stewart then tries to conjure Hal, but Hal does not appear. John Stewart goes and finds Carrie on the sidelines. They're watching Noah, who is very tiny, running behind his tiny offensive line. And he's apparently five for five with an unknown amount of running yards. They chat about football for a little while, and then she drops a hammer. She's like, you lied to me. You were supposed to wait for me to go to storage unit, and you didn't go.
00:26:22
Speaker 1: And is it because.
00:26:25
Speaker 2: You don't trust me? And Jon Stewart's like, yes, it's because I didn't know if I could trust you. And then he tells her some of his upbringing and the way he was raised and basically says, like, I understand you because you're just like my mom. You're scared. because you know what Noah is. And then he confronts Carrie about Noah and is like, you're, you're scared, scared. People can do anything and, you know, are capable of anything. And then she says, no, not scared, actually terrified. And then she admits it was in fact her that killed Hal, because when Hal confronted her about the truth of who Noah was, and again, this scene living, um, next to the previous scene where the flashback from 2016, where it seems like Hal knew. I think your read is right that he was suspecting she was the Manhunter, not that Noah was. So Hal confronts her about Noah's true nature and terrified says, listen, how many more are there? And she's like, I think, and she's like, just him. And he's like, listen, we got to run. Maybe we run to Mexico. Maybe we run to another planet, but whatever we do, we got to get out of here. It's not safe for us because he could, he, if he realizes that I know, well, he does know who I know, but if he considers at some point that I am no longer of any use or I'm a threat to him or you're a threat to him, he'll just kill us. Like he's a man hunter. And he's trying to convince her to do this when, She just basically loses it, pulls out her nine and shoots him right in the forehead.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: She fucking murders him in cold blood in a fucking high school football field. As, by the way, he's saying I love you. He really does say I love you to her. He says, hey, I love you. And she turns around and shoots him in the head. Completely crazy.
00:28:17
Speaker 2: It's absolutely insane.
00:28:19
Speaker 1: I also want to say.
00:28:20
Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk about this more in a little bit because it's.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: I just... I do want to just say... It's too crazy. We were right. We were right. We did call this, but it's crazy that this woman had the chops to call Jon Stewart and be like, hey, how Stewart's dead, but she killed him. Serial killer behavior. Jon Stewart then says....
00:28:40
Speaker 2: Noah gave me the lantern. Well, Noah gave me the ring and admitted all his plans, including forging this lantern. He doesn't tell Carrie the details of the plans because he thinks she would be too troubled by it, but basically says like he was planning something, but like, it's all good now. And he gave me the ring and I think he's cool. I think he's going to be a good guy, but obviously it's a risk. We're rolling the dice on that one. And then he's like, listen, Carrie, Your son asked me to kill him. But it's actually good because it shows that he's scared of his nature, which means he can change. He can be a good guy.
00:29:17
Speaker 1: He asked for God rails. Right.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: And she's like, well, what if he gives into his worst instincts? And he says, well, then the world is going to need someone who's going to stop him. And obviously that means him. And Noah wins the game and everything is.
00:29:32
Speaker 1: Going to be good.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: I'll just say like, hold on.
00:29:33
Speaker 1: I just need to say this. I just need to say something. I got to say this. Eat.
00:29:40
Speaker 2: It is fucking insane to me that Carrie murders Hal Jordan himself. a fucking superhero, a hero of Earth in cold blood. Yes, she was emotionally whatever. It'd probably be manslaughter, whatever.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: She's a hysterical woman, Jason. She couldn't control herself. She had to just shoot him in the head. And Jon Stewart is just like, It's all good. You're good. Bitch, I got a service.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: You're good.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: It's good.
00:30:11
Speaker 2: It's fine.
00:30:12
Speaker 1: Where's Mogo? Where are the Guardians? Where's fucking Chip?
00:30:15
Speaker 3: Like, who?
00:30:16
Speaker 1: What are they doing? Where's the fucking, like, aren't the Guardians meant to be?
00:30:19
Speaker 3: It's good.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: DC's the watcher?
00:30:21
Speaker 3: Like.
00:30:21
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it.
00:30:22
Speaker 1: You don't care? He's that much of a dickhead that nobody cares that a sheriff just.
00:30:26
Speaker 2: Now the birds aren't watching.
00:30:28
Speaker 1: By the way. Now the birds aren't watching. Where are those birds, huh? You don't want to bring that into it? No, I will say, if you want to start plot hole picking, you can. I'm not plot hole picking. No, no, no, no. I'm not saying you should. No, no, no. I'm not saying you should or you are. I'm saying that... The show is lucky that their performances are so good.
00:30:46
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:30:47
Speaker 1: Because you can start to pick things apart. And this is one of them where I'm like, I don't understand unless there is some kind of celestial grander plan why we are allowing a human to murder a Green Lantern. I guess because the Lanterns wanted to get rid of Hal?
00:31:08
Speaker 2: I think it's because... Well, let's take the O a piece out of it. I think John's calculation, and I will tell you that I think it's crazy, is that without Carrie, Noah will 100% go off the rails and become a supervillain. And so I need her to keep him in a loving home environment with a loving mom in order to keep him from becoming a supervillain. Therefore, I'm not going to prosecute her for murdering Earth's Green Lantern, which is fucking, that's crazy.
00:31:43
Speaker 1: Jonathan, you're making a mistake. I got to tell you. This woman is an enabler. She was loyal to a man for 10 years in jail. And then she shot him in the head because she didn't want to go drink pina coladas on a different planet with her son because her son was going to get a college scholarship. Like this woman, you cannot trust her around.
00:32:06
Speaker 2: It's... More on this later. I think it's a crazy decision. And basically, TLDR, house murderer, gets away with it because John is just like, it's all good. Don't worry about it.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: I do just want to say as well, I do think it's kind of funny that, like, they built the whole show around a murder mystery and then they were like, yeah, crazy woman did it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And by the way, if this was.
00:32:33
Speaker 2: not to be that guy, but if this was a man shooting a woman in the head and they were in a relationship and then at the end of it, the hero's like, don't worry about it. You're good.
00:32:43
Speaker 1: Well, I do also want to say that this is not a good for her type case either. Like Hal was not bad to her.
00:32:50
Speaker 2: This is crazy that this happens like this.
00:32:53
Speaker 1: I was the Hal Jordan hater. I do think this is a canonically correct representation. I think there are moments where he sucks. I think there's moments where he's great. But you raise a great point, Jason. She just shot her partner in the head to protect her evil genocide son. He's not a murderer. This is not an evil gong girl type situation where Ben Affleck sucks and was having an affair with a child. This is like a man who said, hey, I'll escape you to a romantic planet where we can like have sex and your son can just be a normal alien. And she just shot him in the head because she likes her job as a cop.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: Her son has broken a super criminal out of Oa jail.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: To make a nuclear weapon.
00:33:38
Speaker 2: To forge a weapon of mass destruction and to protect him, she kills her partner. And John Kennery's just like, that's fine.
00:33:46
Speaker 1: I like Jon Stewart's like entire plan here is like, oh, I'll just American sniper him. I'll American sniper him if he becomes too crazy. That to me, surely that immediately makes Sheriff Kerry his enemy because she's going to want to kill him so he doesn't kill her son. I don't know. More on that in a bit.
00:34:05
Speaker 2: All of which is to say, this is, again, a very good show. This is a crazy decision, in my opinion, from Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart then goes to the Green Lantern signal and calls Guy.
00:34:17
Speaker 1: Love this. This is another scene that they nailed it.
00:34:21
Speaker 3: So good.
00:34:21
Speaker 1: Delivered him what I needed to for sure.
00:34:23
Speaker 2: Absolutely nailed it. So Guy shows up and Jon Stewart basically like fucking pulls rank on him and is like, listen, Guy. Yes, I dug up fucking Hal. That's the ring.
00:34:37
Speaker 1: Look at that.
00:34:38
Speaker 2: I'm carrying an unofficial lantern. Guy's like, oh, look at this. A dead man's ring and an unofficial lantern. I guess I'm going to have to what? And Jon Stewart's like, what? What are you going to do? I guess you're going to have to take it from me. Guy immediately backs down, knowing that Guy, who is essentially Oa's errand boy, because he is feeling insecure in his position. So he's basically Mr. Buy the book, like I'll do anything Oa says. So he won't do shit.
00:35:05
Speaker 1: Also, not just that. He's scared of the lantern. He doesn't know it. The truth is, the thing I will say I think they did really, really well here that they set up beautifully through Jon Stewart's abusive childhood is that his notion of what fear is or how he approaches fear he has basically become so fearless that he isn't even afraid of taking this lantern, right? And that's going to give him the power, but accepting the things he is scared of is part of that. Guy is nowhere near that. He's never going to admit he's scared. He's never going to really be fearless because he hasn't been through the things that Jon has been through. And I really love that in that moment, there is nothing Guy can do, apart from cry to the Guardians.
00:35:50
Speaker 3: So....
00:35:52
Speaker 2: Jon Stewart basically tells Guy, listen, I solved Hal's murder. Guy's like, oh, really? What happened? He's like, don't worry about it. I took care of it. I found his murderer. I let her go. He doesn't tell him anything, but he's basically like, don't worry about it, which is another crazy thing to say to Guy. And then he says, listen, congratulations, you're the Green Lantern. You're Owe's man now. in sector two, eight, three, one, you keep the sector, but I'm going to take earth off you. I will handle earth. You will handle the sector.
00:36:24
Speaker 1: Everything else. You do the sky. You do space.
00:36:27
Speaker 2: I'm doing earth.
00:36:28
Speaker 1: Guy's like, but he's like, shut up.
00:36:31
Speaker 2: And then guy flies away. I will say that one of the, one of the hints to me that they, by this point had no budget is the fact that guy descends from flight and like you're watching Rock of Ages off Broadway, like a guy, like a guy on a wire.
00:36:49
Speaker 1: He goes like this, comes down. And when he flies away, it's the same. He gets like straight up and then they just shoot him into the sky. I mean, there will be many conversations. We don't need to have another one about the amount of green lanterning in this. I do wish we got to see Jon Stewart suit up, but at the same time, I hope that if we get to see him suit up in Superman, they got the budget for it and we get to see him looking good as hell. You know what I mean? Also, I will talk about this when we talk more about the green-yellow stuff, but this isn't totally out of comic book canon. There is stuff they can lean into with Jon in this, including how his suit looks and stuff. So I'm really excited.
00:37:30
Speaker 2: There's a lot of rivalry there. Between Earth's various lanterns. And this is exactly like how it would play out. Oh, before Guy flies away, he basically says, listen, when Oa finds out that you're here with an unofficial lantern doing stuff like on your own, they're going to send an army after you. And Jon Stewart then says, tell them to look in their hearts, which is like, is that a code? It's like, yes, that's code. And then Guy flies away after Jon tells him to ditch the gold tooth.
00:37:57
Speaker 1: Oh, he tells them to look in their hearts, like thinking about the Manhunter and the Crystal Hearts and letting them know, like, I know you created the Manhunters.
00:38:04
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:38:05
Speaker 1: Okay, I like that. I kind of didn't clock that that was what he meant when he first said it. Yeah, you're right.
00:38:11
Speaker 2: AI Hal then appears and tells John, like, man, you're taking a huge risk because, like, what if Noah breaks bad, then... Basically what happened in Rushville, this is not what he says, but this is my read. What happened in Rushville will happen all over the world, basically. Like it's going to be really bad. And Jon Stewart is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but my gut, trust me. And he asks Hal what Hal would do. And Hal's like, well, you know, my gut says that you're going to be better at me, better than me at this job than I ever could have hoped to be. And you're ready to do it and you should charge the ring. And he's like, and then he says, don't be afraid to be afraid, which is a great, that's.
00:38:49
Speaker 1: The thesis of the show. Yes.
00:38:52
Speaker 2: Very great tagline for the whole show. Jon Stewart is like, yeah, but what about the, what do I do about the oath? And Hal's like, well, we're off the map. You know, you can make up your own oath. You can do whatever you want. So then Jon's about to charge the ring, but then Hal gets scared because this is really it now for Hal. And he says, oh, when you were talking to Carrie, I kind of fritzed out a little bit. What were my final words before she brutally murdered me in cold blood in this football field stands, and then covered up my murder and lied to everybody that she murdered me.
00:39:24
Speaker 1: And now I'm okay with it. Everyone's okay with it.
00:39:26
Speaker 2: And now I'm okay with it. And he says it was, I love you. And he then says to Jon Stewart, I love you too, Junior, which is very.
00:39:36
Speaker 1: He tricked him. He tricked him because he knew his last words and he wanted to get to say that. And I actually have to say, You were right, Jason. This paid off. I like this moment. They made me care about the two of them together. They did another scene that they worked on and they made work.
00:39:52
Speaker 2: We then get a montage where Jon Stewart is like kind of setting everything right. I don't want to talk about it. He puts the stuff back in the vault. He gives Maggie the bag of cash, which is to me ridiculous. This whole subplot that he would allow himself to be extorted by her. Why is she even in the show? Cut Maggie out and a wig. Very confusing to me. Why didn't he just, he has so much money. Just build them one of those fucking bomb shelters under the town and buy, build a strip mall. You don't need to give this girl $ 300, 000. What does she have to do with anything?
00:40:25
Speaker 1: Calm down. But I guess we're just rewarding criminals in this town, so I kind of dig it.
00:40:29
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, like, this is a manifestation of John's guilt about what happened, but, like, again, the entire town suffered, but she's the one that extorted you, so she gets the benefit? This is stupid. I'm sorry.
00:40:41
Speaker 1: Rewarding bad behavior. Yeah, we're rewarding bad behavior.
00:40:43
Speaker 2: This is crazy.
00:40:45
Speaker 1: He then goes home and we get this. He rewards Kelly, too, so, I mean, look, I'm not gonna... I want to say something. I'm not saying I want this to happen. I don't think it's where we're going. I will talk about how the comic proves it's probably not where we're going. But there is a read of this where you could say that once he picks up that yellow lantern and goes rogue, he starts to make some dodgy choices. We will talk about that in a bit when you lay out the rule.
00:41:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will.
00:41:07
Speaker 1: Because I think that's... I think one thing that... I think it's a red herring, but I think it's like meant to... I agree with you.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: Because I think it's... Listen, I think if you go by lore, it's ambiguous at the very least because it's a green lantern ring forged for green energy, but then it's a yellow inflected lantern. So it's not a yellow ring and a yellow lantern. Whatever, we'll get into it later.
00:41:30
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it because there's some interesting places to go with it.
00:41:33
Speaker 2: So, and this to me proves that I think they were I think they didn't know if they were going to get a season two because the way that Jon Stewart arrives home in this montage, slow-mo montage, there's his dad. He's fucking, you know, dapping up.
00:41:53
Speaker 1: His dad's out of the place? Out of the place.
00:41:55
Speaker 2: The family's back together. It's slow-mo again. He's like happy music. He's dapping up his brothers. There's his mom they embrace. It felt very final without any of the, complexity that made their relationship interesting. It just seemed like it's over.
00:42:13
Speaker 1: I know he was giving Aaron a slap on the head at least one time after he spoke to him like that on the phone.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: Come on. And then we go back to John next to the Green Lantern signal. Hal has gone away. He's charging the ring and he's got the new oath. In brightest day, in darkest night, I'll embrace my fear and do what's right. I choose this ring. I choose this fight. in service to this lantern's light. And then he, like a off-Broadway show of School of Rock, goes.
00:42:45
Speaker 1: Straight up into the air. It's the end of Cats. The Jellicle Ball. Going to the Jellicle Ball.
00:42:57
Speaker 2: And flies straight up into the air.
00:42:59
Speaker 1: In front of a giant green lantern.
00:43:02
Speaker 2: That is the finale. I think, again, a very good... season of television a very good show it could have been great it was so close to being great but i think they had to do some stuff in post to even get it to be this level and what a job they did yeah of course we have some gripes that i will we'll talk about that in a bit let's take a break we'll be right back Okay, and we're back. Rosie, I think one of the things, as we talked about in the recap, this show could have used is more of an understanding for the audience, a little bit of a lore dump about green versus yellow. Agreed. What is the relationship between the two colors and energies with regards to Green Lantern lore? And why is what Sinestro is doing so kind of anathema to the Guardians and Oa? Tell us about Green vs.
00:44:05
Speaker 1: Yellow. Yeah, so I think that, you know, people have noticed who are big fans of this stuff. Like we mentioned it in the show, over the time the lanterns is turning, logos turning from green to yellow, right? But they never really sat down and gave us a Sinestro backstory or a yellow lantern core backstory. We don't even know if there is a full yellow lantern core yet, or if a yellow lantern has even truly been forged, if this is our first look at it. But essentially in the green lantern universe, the colors have different energy patterns, right? And yellow is the energy of fear. And the idea is that if you are a Green Lantern, the joke we always has is like, he's scared of anything yellow. So he's like the opposite of Superman. Anything yellow can fuck with him.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: And.
00:44:49
Speaker 1: In the comics, there is this parallax entity that is essentially the embodiment of fear. And depending on where you believe or join the canon, parallax is either trapped inside the central power battery at OR or can be trapped in it, which is why I think there's very interesting things here when we look at where the comics come from. Because also the green is like willpower, right? That's that kind of big power we have. Star Sapphire is the pink. We have love. So what I will say, we did not get a lot of this lore, but Sinestro... Yeah, because we don't know how... We don't know how Sinestro broke out.
00:45:26
Speaker 2: We don't know if Sinestro knows about parallax and we don't know how far he got into his research about yellow.
00:45:32
Speaker 1: Exactly. All we know is that seemingly by... The Manhunter's doing the genocide. Sinestro has been trapped on this fear planet, which is allowing him, I think, to explore and understand the notion of fear. What I will say is that when Noah came and asked him to forge it on that planet, I think that the planet's influence or Parallax's influence or fear's influence basically allowed the lantern to imbue something from there, right? And the idea is because Noah's going to use it, he's going to use fear for negativity. But... what we have here is Sinestro ends up with John getting it. And that is actually something that has happened before in the comics. If you ever read the Green Lantern Earth One series, by the second volume, they're introducing multiple different Green Lanterns, right? And this is such a cool comic. It's the Gabriel Hardman stuff that they did in 2018. I think that It was, Karina Bekcho was the writer. I love Hardman's art so much. And in that story, in the second volume, in issue two, there is actually a yellow lantern in Earth One who breaks Jon Stewart and two other doctors out of jail and gives them the yellow lantern and the ring. And then Jon is the only one who is able to wield it safely. So in the comics, in the Earth One, so separate universe, right? Jon has a yellow lantern ring and what they teased with it was the notion that it would essentially be the ring for people who weren't protected by Green Lanterns. It was like the underdog's ring, right? So I think that they are pulling a little bit from that here, where whoever holds this kind of fear-imbued lantern, it is about their will. So if Noah held it, it could become evil. If Lex Luthor held it, you could use the power of fear terribly. But what this show has been about is about how actually if you embrace your fear, it can give you power. So I think while Jon wields it, I think his will will mean that he is able to wield power in fear in a positive way. That's what I think that we're gonna get. But I think there's a potential for season two to explore the idea of a parallax. And also, Jason, you mentioned something I think is really key. There is a history of Green Lanterns on Earth battling for these powers. And if Guy admits that he is not the lantern for Earth and he's happy to just be the sector lantern, Oa is likely going to try and find a new approved lantern for Earth, which is probably going to be Kyle Rayner. So I think that is what we will see in season two is John is going to be rogue. John's going to be able to utilize yellow as something positive. But at the same time, Sinestro will probably be building the corpse or his version on the planet. Because by forging it, I'm sure that has already created, you know, he knows how to do it on the planet. There's only the planet's only going to become more powerful. Think about him. essentially a Sauron forging the rings, right? So I think that we will see Jon as this rogue in between because the creators did say this morning, He is utterly unique. He's not a yellow lantern. He's not a green lantern. He is something new. So I think we'll see him in that rogue space working with Clark. And then I think we will see Kyle probably come in as the approved lantern of Earth. And then we'll get a bigger idea. Because Jason, I will say, moving away from the comics back to the show, one of the big things you talked about that I think we will get in season two is some kind of Oa conspiracy. Can you talk a little bit about how that didn't pay off here? probably budgetary concerns, but also like there must be a reason we haven't seen them, right?
00:49:09
Speaker 2: There must be. And it seems like now that with ending with John's coded message through guide to oa it seems like the conspiracy is something around just basically covering up which would which tracks with the comics right covering up the fact that they created manhunters exactly and were not able to control them and that they went off and did massive war crimes across the.
00:49:37
Speaker 1: Galaxy Okay, this is kind of crazy. Unexpected, not what I was thinking at all. Don't know if it's going to tie in this much, so sorry if this is a Rosie and Jason tinfoil hat theory. But we know Brainiac's going to be in Man of Tomorrow, right? Obviously a big villain. But think about this. If the Guardians have Manhunters they couldn't control on Earth, what if there are other Manhunters across the universe that are on different planets... that are ready to take over. That could actually be a threat that would bring together Lex and Superman, right? Maybe Brainiac finds out. Maybe there is some connection there. Because I feel like Oa being alerted hints that this is going to expand outside of Earth, whatever Jon wants.
00:50:21
Speaker 2: I also think that the.
00:50:24
Speaker 2: To your point about Parallax, so much of this is the show, the series, this season has been based on slow morph from green to yellow. I do think another possibility is that, you know, Sinestra has always been researching, wanting to understand why there was this yellow impurity in the green rings, why green, why the rings don't work against things that are the color yellow or yellow energy, yellow energy in the spectrum is the weakness of the rings.
00:50:57
Speaker 1: And it can literally be like a daisy, a yellow daisy. Like in the comics, it's been all kind of silly things. And then it's become a joke almost, which is why I think in the 90s and zeros, they tried to make it more terrifying, more obviously about energy and weakness in the rings.
00:51:13
Speaker 2: And I think Sinestro was researching this. This is essentially what got him in trouble with the Guardians. Because he thought, oh, they're hiding... something about the yellow impurity and actually like the rings can be a lot stronger if we figure out how to, how to harness this. Well, in while in reality, it's because the guardians know that parallax is trapped inside the.
00:51:37
Speaker 1: Energy battery, the central battery.
00:51:40
Speaker 2: And that to harness yellow is to basically allow him to escape. And so I think clever Jason, I think that's the other conspiracy that they have is they understand like they are, containing parallax in the central battery and that they will do anything to not let anybody understand that this is the case.
00:52:00
Speaker 1: Also, doesn't that make sense? Because isn't every kind of story, whether it's Superman and the fall of Krypton, or whether it's any kind of supremacy, like mutant supremacy regime, it's all about the arrogance and assumption that you can do it better, that you know some way that's gonna stop. And actually, oftentimes, you just do that by complete suppression. Whereas it's clear that fear is obviously a feeling just like anything else that could be utilized. And John is going to prove that. And it's going to make other people ask, why can't we utilize fear? And I think the parallax conspiracy will come out.
00:52:37
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:52:37
Speaker 1: Yes, Jason, I think you clocked it. I think that's so real. It would be cool if.
00:52:41
Speaker 2: That is the case.
00:52:42
Speaker 1: It would be really cool.
00:52:43
Speaker 2: You know, another thing I wanted to ask you about is that I think this show, part of what made it so effective is it, as a more grounded in terms of the characterizations of the people show made it, it gave the fact that these are characters with godlike powers, a different, a different and very interesting feeling with regards to superhero storytelling. Like, Much has been said about the Marvel Feet of Clay versus the DC, like, you know, monsters and gods and stuff.
00:53:20
Speaker 1: Oh, this is.
00:53:22
Speaker 2: And I do think, like, that question in Marvel, like, if we take Civil War, for instance, is.
00:53:33
Speaker 2: It's interesting in that as rich as Tony Stark is, as powerful as the Hulk is, they're still kind of just... guys compared to Thanos, who everybody in DC is basically a Thanos level guy. All of which is to say, I think that there's, it's, it's crazy to think like what the normal guy on the street, guy gal on the street would think if this Jon Stewart whole thing was revealed to them. So here's what, like, imagine you learn this. Oh, um, There was a intergalactic war criminal living on Earth who had an affair with a future Green Lantern.
00:54:15
Speaker 1: Who's now the Green Lantern of your Earth, specifically.
00:54:17
Speaker 2: Who's now the Green Lantern of your Earth. And that Green Lantern allowed the intergalactic war war criminal's offspring who is also perhaps a war criminal in the making and has openly said, you know, I don't know if I'll destroy the world. Maybe I will.
00:54:36
Speaker 1: Maybe.
00:54:36
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:54:37
Speaker 1: I could do it.
00:54:38
Speaker 2: Every day I struggle with it. And by the way, I was building, like I was, I had a weapon of mass destruction built.
00:54:46
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I'll use it. Buy another war criminal.
00:54:49
Speaker 2: I'll see if I'll use it. And that green lantern basically like let that kid live because his gun instinct told him it'd be fun that's actually like a crazy you're rolling the dice with everybody's lives on earth it's actually insane.
00:55:10
Speaker 1: I will say i think something that james gunniverse needs to explore in superman man of tomorrow which i think it could and i'm excited to see if they do They are very much setting up a world where superheroes are so common that humans are essentially a secondary thought in this world. They're collateral damage. They're ants. Now, that is true to the experience of being a human in the DC universe. I feel myself becoming pro-Lex Luthor all of a sudden. I was going to say, right? It does seem like they're kind of setting up this notion, their very own mutant threat of... wow, there are all these stealth agent aliens living across the planet who could at any time attack, you know? That seems like they're setting up something quite dangerous and quite contrary to what we saw with Superman. So I'll be interested to see how it plays out. I do think it is honestly probably more of a thematic fluke that it feels like that to us because I think this show was chopped and screwed and redone and remade and has come out... Honestly, on top, becoming, like, the biggest show of the season post-Widow's Bay. This is, like, the talkie-about show. This is the show everyone was waiting for the finale. So I think... for whatever production troubles it clearly had, it has really come out as like a winner. Is it going to play into the future of the DCU as much as we want it to? I don't know, because James Gunn did give that weird statement where he was like, Superman's not going to have that many characters that are important from outside of the movie, which worries me, because this is the most interesting thing you have right now. I need to tell you, they lit Aaron Pierre in this episode. They understood that he was the leading man. There is something about, and I want to say, I do want to say, I'm pushing, I'm putting this out there early. I'm pushing back on the idea that we only like Aaron Pierre because he's conventionally good looking, right? I actually think, I think he has... I think he has a Keanu Reeves element to him that people underrate, which is he is so good at acting within action and narratively acting within an action showcase that some people might say he's wooden. Rebel Ridge. They used to say that about Keanu Reeves and now they understand that he is essentially doing Hong Kong style acting where you tell the story through the narrative, kind of like what we were talking about when we were talking about Jackie Chan in our Shang-Chi and Penning Doomsday episode you'll be able to hear soon.
00:57:39
Speaker 2: And.
00:57:40
Speaker 1: Trust me, there is something about this man where in this episode, I was texting Joel and I was just like, they understood by this time they had a star. Even if it's only this episode, the scene in the car, they are lighting him and I'm like, this could be in Superman. This looks as good as a scene in Superman. Make sure you understand that he needs to be on screen. Also, Jason, silly thing to say, but the internet's saying it. I agree. I had the same thought. this perfectly sets up Jon Stewart to want to fuck Hawkgirl because he likes an old soul. And he doesn't care. He doesn't care if she's a killer.
00:58:16
Speaker 3: He doesn't care.
00:58:17
Speaker 1: And he likes to fuck an old lady. That's Superman. We need to see it. Hawkgirl, Jon Stewart. We knew it was coming. They're going to be a match made in heaven.
00:58:25
Speaker 2: I will go one further. I think like, Comic book storytelling on the page and on TV and in movies, to me, it becomes really great when it steers directly into the contradictions. I think that there is a world in which it's actually really great when a Justice League begins to be assembled that Jon Stewart has secrets that Batman would think are, like if Batman found out about this, wait a second.
00:58:59
Speaker 1: Oh, true. Batman does have a file on all of them and he needs the secrets, right?
00:59:03
Speaker 2: If Batman found out about this, he'd be like, that's actually fucking crazy. So you know who murdered Hal and you just let him know.
00:59:10
Speaker 1: It go.
00:59:10
Speaker 2: Also, you're harboring and protecting the child of an intergalactic war criminal on Earth.
00:59:16
Speaker 1: But then what would happen?
00:59:17
Speaker 2: I think Clark could go either way because, like, he is an alien on Earth, so unclear how he would go, but he would feel really weird about the Hal thing. But I think, like, the fact that all of these characters could come to a group with their own different agendas that are at times, like, in conflict and have secrets that, like, they want to hide from each other could be really interesting. great for story.
00:59:43
Speaker 1: I agree and I also think they gave a great out here by making Sheriff Kerry from Gotham because everyone knows Batman has terrible taste in women so if it did ever come out it would probably just turn out that she was his ex yeah and he'd protect John anyway but no Jason I I love that read I think this is exactly the kind of shit Batman would have in his files and also despite all of this you come away from the show wanting to see more John We are joking about his decisions, but it is really, really funny how you come away and you're like, this was great. I love this guy. Good job. Crazy job, but good job.
01:00:18
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to be talking more about Lanterns on the next episode of X-Ray Vision. We have our Lanterns season finale roundtable with the entire crew.
01:00:29
Speaker 3: Woo!
01:00:30
Speaker 2: Also coming up on X-Ray Vision this week, our episode of Impending Doomsday, which is Avengers Endgame, including the bonus scenes from Endgame Encore. That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
01:00:41
Speaker 1: Bye!
01:00:47
Speaker 2: X-Ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
01:00:52
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Joelle Monique and Aaron Kaufman.
01:00:56
Speaker 2: Our supervising producer is Abu Safar.
01:00:58
Speaker 1: Our producers are Carmen Laurent, Ian Johnson, and Baywax.
01:01:02
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Brian Vasquez with alternate theme songs by Aaron Kaufman.
01:01:06
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Sol Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman, and Heidi, our Discord moderator.
Speaker 1: Warning!
00:00:01
Speaker 2: Today's episode contains spoilers for the season finale of Lanterns on HBO.
00:00:07
Speaker 3: Be warned.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: Hello!
00:00:24
Speaker 2: My name is Jason Concepcion.
00:00:26
Speaker 1: And I'm Rosie Knight.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Extra Vision, the podcast where we dive deep into your favorite movies, comics, and pop culture coming to you from our heart, where we're bringing you three episodes a week.
00:00:36
Speaker 3: Plus news, okay? Plus news.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: In today's episode, we are breaking down that lantern's finale. Did it land? Who was the killer? Does it matter? Were they punished? We will be breaking it all down. And talking about how it will lead in to Man of Tomorrow and the rest of James Gunn's DCU.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: Okay, Lanterns. Season finale. We open in 2016, the aftermath of the Battle of Rushville.
00:01:07
Speaker 1: Sorry to the town. Fucked.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: The water tower is collapsed. The buildings are in ruins. There's body parts in the street. There's bullet casings everywhere. We see John walk out of the motel. carrying Hal's lantern after sniping Zoe the Manhunter in the head, his girlfriend. The militia guys run up and they're about to, I don't know, just maybe vigilante justice him right there in the street. But Carrie comes.
00:01:41
Speaker 1: Up and is like, stand down!
00:01:43
Speaker 2: And they all stand down. And she's like, where's Hal? He points her to Hal. Hal is lying still in the ruins of the motel having been beat up by Jon Stewart. He's bloody. He's just kind of half out of it. She gives him the update. Basically, it's really bad. Town's fucked. A lot of people dead. We won't know how many for a while. And then she asks him, was it worth it? And So what is what was what worth it? I understand what like killing the Manhunter. Is that what she's asking?
00:02:21
Speaker 1: I think what she's actually asking here is this is an acknowledgement between her and him. Like, was it worth what's about to happen for protecting my son? Like she's saying, like, is it worth it to love me? That's what I think she's asking. I think she's basically like, fuck, well, you've done it now. And yeah, sure. They do think she's the only manhunter and like, was it worth it? And he's basically like, well, yeah, let's talk about your worth it. Let's talk about this because I agree with that read. However, narratively blurry this episode. I think we can say that in general.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: I will say, let's pause here to just say this. I think that, perhaps because of budgetary reasons, this season, which is a really good and almost great season of television, was very much like edited and re-edited and chopped and screwed and put in different order. All of which is to say, hold on, Rosie, your reading, I think, is right. And that will play out over the rest of this conversation that we're going to talk about. But when you get to the end of the episode, Mm-hmm. It seems as if Hal finds out then that Noah is a Manhunter, but it does seem here that he knows it now and there's an unspoken thing between them. So all I wish is to say, I think they edited this entire season in a way to cover up whether, you know, budgetary restrictions, whatever it was in order to make it cohesive. And it largely did that. But there are a lot of things that ring strange.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: When you look at it. I just want to say, I agree with you. And look, all I want to say is one of my takes that annoyed everybody the most this season was that episode three felt like it wasn't the third episode. And I want to say that I feel like at the end of this season, I have been validated that this show definitely was in a different order. We don't know what order, but I'm excited as we learn more because I do think, and we're going to talk about this more as we talk about the show, the performances are so good.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: So good.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: That it really elevates the show out of what are some clear, like plotting issues, pacing issues and choices to do with, like you said, I think budgetary issues. Cause there is not a lot of Green Lantern action. They very much heavily played on this kind of murder mystery, but then does that pay off? It's really interesting to see, but again, these three core performances just keep us going through it.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: So good. So, um, she asks, was it worth it? He says, it's funny you say that because I asked Jon Stewart the same thing. She asks, because again, protecting her son, what will the Guardians say? And seeming as if Hal understands the subtext of her question, that she's concerned about her son, he says, well, the Guardians are going to be happy because a Manhunter is dead. They're going to be unhappy because I broke the rules to make that happen. But when I take the full rap for this and go away to prison, they're not going to have much incentive to look any further. Essentially, he's saying, hey, don't worry about it. Your son is safe. That's what it seems like to me.
00:05:42
Speaker 1: What if actually I give a different read because as we're breaking it down, I'm working. I think this could narratively work with the timeline. What if right now he thinks Kerry is the manhunter? And that's who he's trying to protect. He can just tell that there's something else going on. So his bigger thing is just don't investigate. So it's not that he knows it's Noah, which would explain why he's still surprised. It's just that in that moment, he's like, they're not going to investigate anymore. You can keep whatever weird shit you've got going on here. If you're a manhunter, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I think, And then obviously the love story goes from there, but something that I think we both agree on, Jason, not enough of that on.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: The page for me. Again, you put your finger right on it. Kyle Chandler, Kelly MacDonald, and Aaron Pierre absolutely killed this, carried it, and they were so good.
00:06:38
Speaker 1: However.
00:06:39
Speaker 2: for this love story to like, they make this love story work when there's nothing on the page. There's like, it's like, they just kind of fall in love and their performance lets you buy it. But there's none of the kind of like hard work of like building that relationship really on the screen. Because then we fast forward 10 years, Carrie, who is now deeply in love with Al is waiting for him outside of prison. She's brought Schlitz beer. Um, She then drives off with him back to Rushville. They are eating. It's been like a week or a couple of weeks or something. They're eating at the local pizza restaurant. Everybody in the literally everybody in the restaurant is staring daggers into Hal. And he's like, fuck, you know, maybe this was a bad idea. You know, like, should we have gone public so soon? She's like, I don't want to sneak around anymore.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: And it's been 10 years. Yeah.
00:07:34
Speaker 2: For 10 years to be sneaking around. And now for two weeks in town, she's been sneaking around. So she stands up and she makes this speech basically saying, hey, I understand that because of the brutal destruction of the town and the deaths of many of your loved ones and the fact that you no longer receive free medical care from the Manhunter, you hate this man.
00:07:54
Speaker 1: But he dicks me down really good, so he's here. And we've been letter writing each other for 20 years and the anticipation is crazy. Like, come on, guys. What was she expecting? This is so... Also, can I just say, Kerry, you are kind of sly because this has also got like a... I do have a kind of Gone Girl read on this where like, Kerry is always telling everyone how much everyone hated Hal, but is that true? Or is that just what she tells everyone because she fucking killed him? Like, we don't actually know if these people hated Hal. Like, this is just her journal version of it. Because you are the killer. You're just making up suspects.
00:08:34
Speaker 2: So she makes that speech, which everyone does not accept, but.
00:08:40
Speaker 1: It keeps everybody quiet in that moment.
00:08:42
Speaker 2: She's like, listen, you're going to have to deal with it. Like, his dick is real good. And it was worth waiting 10 years.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: 10 years in jail? Like, what was this man saying?
00:08:53
Speaker 2: So later, after some great sex, apparently, Hal would like Carrie to stay, but she can't yet because of Noah.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: Kind of cold to not stay after the first post-conjugal sex of 10 years. She just walks straight out after. She's hardcore. That's how you know about Sheriff Kerry.
00:09:10
Speaker 2: That's why he probably thinks she's the manhunter. True.
00:09:13
Speaker 1: It's also probably why he thinks she's hot. Because she won't sleep in the bed.
00:09:17
Speaker 2: So she's like, no, I can't because of Noah. And he's like, well, Noah probably knows about us. And he's like, yeah, but there's a difference between knowing and knowing. Accepting, yeah. I don't want him to wake up alone yet. Later, after she leaves, Hal is preparing Earl's meal when his home is firebombed. And Earl is screaming horribly as Hal is running to and fro trying to find like a window he can jump out of or something. But the flames are growing too high and he can't get to the front door. It's curtains for him and Earl. And it certainly seems like he dies. And I will say here's another place where now we know that Earl survived. because we see that John when he comes to Rushville in 2026 like that yeah Earl's there but also can I it does seem like Earl dies in this moment because there is no closure about it there you don't see where he is I need.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: To understand what happened to Hal Jordan's other house and his money. Because why is he living brokely in the town when he had that giant ass house that somebody gave him? He could have sold that house.
00:10:28
Speaker 2: He probably sold it and had to pay restitution to the town.
00:10:31
Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: True, true, true.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:10:33
Speaker 1: I mean, again... A little bit of telling and showing wouldn't hurt, guys. Like, just a little bit. Just a little bit. But still, the good thing is these performances do carry it.
00:10:44
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:10:44
Speaker 1: And then we see that Hal is not dead. He's not dead.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: He wakes up in the slaughterhouse, in the high-tech alien slaughterhouse, and Noah is there. The Manhunter has healed him. And he's like, yes, I healed you. You've got new skin now, just like my mother. my grandmother did with Jon Stewart. Now don't tell my mom because she doesn't know that I know what I am. So let's just keep it quiet. We go to the present. We are in the weird factory in the middle of the lake of the fear planet. Sinestro has just been telling Jon Stewart this entire tale and he's chained to a chair. Sinestro is like, Noah's very powerful now. You know, he was growing up, and now he's a full-grown Manhunter man. And John's like, what the fuck are you doing here, Sinestro? Like, why were you here?
00:11:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, what's even going on?
00:11:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's even going on? And Sinestro's like, well, Zoe, who you were fucking, the grandmother of the Manhunter, built this facility and used the portal to visit this planet because she basically felt really bad that she did a huge genocide and killed an entire planet. Now she feels bad about it. Isn't that nice? And I would tell you more, Jon Stewart, but you're like not even a trainee. You're like a nothing. I want to talk to Hal, AI Hal. I know that real Hal is dead, but I want to talk to AI Hal. I want to talk to him right now. Jon Stewart's like, no. And then takes Sinestro out to the water, which remember has all the fear chemicals in it.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: The nightmare water.
00:12:18
Speaker 2: And waterboards him in the fear water.
00:12:21
Speaker 1: He was a marine. Don't forget, he's a marine. He's like, I'm going to waterboard you in this hell water. Like, fuck you.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: Sinestra's like, oh, no, no. Okay, okay. I'll tell you everything. So he's like, okay, here's what happened. Noah broke me out of Oa so that I could forge Noah a lantern.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: And Insane plot twist, by the way.
00:12:45
Speaker 2: And that he would then use the power of the lantern, right, to kill a guardian. That's his plan.
00:12:55
Speaker 1: Basically, because he knew Sinestro had beaten a guardian with the ring, right? And he felt like that was a way to protect himself.
00:13:01
Speaker 2: Just in case the guardians came after him.
00:13:03
Speaker 1: Although, he'll lay that out later. The fact you can forge a lantern and a ring just casually like.
00:13:09
Speaker 2: That, I feel like has to be a larger.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: Sinestro's the best to ever do it. But that has to be a larger plot point in the coming DCEU, because that feels huge.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I hope we will discover more, but it just proves, again, Sinestro the greatest to ever do it, certainly at this point. And... Sinestro then explains that like, listen, this lantern is not like other lanterns.
00:13:29
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:13:29
Speaker 2: And we will talk, Rosie, you will explain to us the green verse, yellow impurity verse, uh, fearless verse fear dichotomy that exists in the comics lore that they kind of just barely touch on here. So Sinestro has built this lantern, um, from the distilled energies of this planet and the genocide that happened here and the great amount of fear that was here of the people as they were dying, their souls. And John's like, but that's bad, right? I thought Green Lantern's fearless and all that stuff. And I was like, no, no, no, no. And Sinestro here lays out the kind of philosophical issue that he had with the Guardians that caused his break with the Guardians, which is, his pursuit of yellow and the yellow impurity, what it really meant. And he had come to discover that no, actually yellow and fear is actually good. If you get the balance, right. Because fear makes you careful fear, like show me a fearless species and I will show you species on the edge of extinction. You don't learn if you're not afraid. And he's like, go ahead, charge it up. See what happens in the rink. Hal appears AI, Hal. And Sinestro's like, oh, good, Hal. There's some great actually acting here. Because the way that Sinestro reacts when Hal appears and he kind of like jerks forward and there's this immense relief on his face is really something. And Sinestro's like, Hal, listen. You're realer than just a hologram because of Jon Stewart.
00:15:09
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: If you team up with me, help me right now against Jon... Take the ring. Get the lantern. I can bring you back to life for real. Like, really bring you back to life. It can really happen. Hal mulls it over. You know, he never really gets close, but he does think about it. And he says, you know what? You talk too much. You're annoying. I'm not going to do that.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:38
Speaker 2: So... We learned that if Jon Stewart charges the ring because AI Hal is coming from the 7% or 5%. By the way, previous it was 5%, now it's 7%. This is showing you again, there's a lot of chopped and screwed stuff that happened.
00:15:51
Speaker 1: Right, I'm saying. Also, Super Producer Joelle, who this is why we love her and our Super Producer team. Episode 3 was originally supposed to be Episode 5. It has now been confirmed. So we are starting to get these confirmations that it went out of order.
00:16:07
Speaker 2: Right?
00:16:07
Speaker 1: So that's really interesting.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: So... So, of course, AI Hal is based inside the ring, a download of real Hal's consciousness, but from 10 years ago. And if Jon charges it off of this new unofficial lantern, it will basically do a full reboot on the ring and erase AI Hal from the ring. Sinestro tells Jon Stewart now, in this wonderful Hannibal Lecter playing all sides, says, Well, don't trust Hal, who's saying don't charge the ring because Hal knows.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: If you charge the ring, he will disappear.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: And so you really, there's this like ominous feeling of like what could happen if John charges the ring off this lantern. John and Hal leave Sinestro chained to the chair on the island. As they row away, Hal suggests that, you know, maybe Sinestro's right. Like I understand like we don't trust this lantern. Comes from a very ominous type of energy. But if you face Noah alone, he will kill you. Like, you do not have the power to deal with a Manhunter as a regular human man. And Hal then asks, what were my last words to you, Jon Stewart, in real life? Like, when you had punched me in the face and then what happened? And Jon goes, you told me not to tell anybody I was in Rushville. Why? Because Noah would assume... that Hal told Jon Stewart about Noah being a man.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: Exactly.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: Hal now insists like, you know, Junior, I'm trying to protect you. I'm trying to protect you, Jon. And Hal's like, yeah, now you're trying to protect me when you're dead. And it's like, he doesn't really, it doesn't mean that much to him. Although I think it does affect him, but on the surface, he reacts to it very negatively. Hal says, listen, you better charge the ring. They go to the portal and Hal's like, what's the plan? And Jon says, well, Noah's got a big football game, championship game, and so that will buy me some time to figure out what to do. I'm not sure what to do, but I'm betting that if I don't charge the ring, I'll be fine because Noah won't kill me based on my gut. You know, the show's been a lot about gut instincts, and this is Jon Stewart's gut instincts.
00:18:28
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: He drops through the portal, and Noah is there and just kicks the shit out of Jon Stewart easily. They then get in. John Stewart's truck and drive off ostensibly towards the football game. And they arrive at a crossroads. This is like literal storytelling right here.
00:18:49
Speaker 1: I know. I was like, guys, when you were cutting up, you didn't have a time to like make this a bit less literal, but it's okay. It's okay. We like it. They're at the crossroads. They're at the crossroads of the road.
00:19:02
Speaker 2: And clearly if Noah, uh, tells John to drive straight and go towards the game, then he's going to let John live.
00:19:10
Speaker 3: Exactly.
00:19:11
Speaker 2: But if he makes him drive somewhere else, he's probably going to kill John, right? But then Noah, who hasn't made up his mind yet, is like, yeah, keep going towards the game. They arrive at the school and they make some small talk about high school bands and about football. And then Noah tells John, you know what? I didn't burn Hal's house, by the way, just so you know. Yep. I, in fact, saved him. life and john stewart is like great that is showing that my gut is right because that shows that that's the opposite of your programming helping the green lantern or former green lantern when he's a threat to you and really what you should do is.
00:19:48
Speaker 1: Kill him um and.
00:19:53
Speaker 2: He then, but then Noah says, complicates it by saying yes, but also when Hal found my portal and figured out what I was doing, then I did kill him. I had to kill him. John Stewart seemingly accepts this, but, but he, There isn't like, he's like, this is great acting again by Pierre, because.
00:20:13
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, man, this had me so emotionally engaged. it's also a conversation about himself and his family and his own expectations. It works so well. This is the reason that I do say, in the end, I buy Noah being the Manhunter. Simply, I understand why they went with it because the echoes between his life and John's life make so much sense. And it does emotionally hit when it works.
00:20:38
Speaker 2: That's a great point. Just to kind of like step aside, for me, this show is a good show that was almost great. And I think it transcended a lot of, clear like sequencing issues and perhaps budgetary issues. And the reason it's, it's even that good, which is very good is because, you know, the three, the talent of the three leads and two is, Every important scene, like if there are five or six important scenes in a season of TV, this being one of them, the conversation in the car, it nailed every single one of those scenes. The other scenes are rocky.
00:21:18
Speaker 1: The same as episode three.
00:21:19
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:21:19
Speaker 1: Right? Where it smashed all the stuff it needed to to establish the baseline of what the show was about. I totally agree with you.
00:21:27
Speaker 2: So, again, great acting by Pierre, who... makes it seem like John accepts this explanation that Noah killed Hal, but you can tell the light doesn't go on in a certain way and that he is still, he doesn't believe it.
00:21:42
Speaker 1: Even though he's saying he believes it. Great echo here in that moment from where he's with Zoe and he says to her, I see you. And she says, I know. And she feels like he means in the moment that he is seeing who she is and what she wants to show him, but he's telling her, I see exactly what you actually are doing and what your plan is and what you need from me. And I like that here, it's that same kind of like, yeah, Noah, sure. But his mind is still going. He's still working out what the real play is.
00:22:12
Speaker 2: So Noah is like, I bet you're wondering if I'm going to kill you. And Jon Stewart's like, yeah, I really am. And it's clear that Noah himself isn't actually sure. Like it's kind of hanging on a knife's edge. But they end up, Like, again, at the game, and that's a good sign, does Jon Stewart believe that Noah can overcome his programming? This is what Noah kind of wants to know. And Jon, as a way to say yes, tells Noah about his own upbringing, the kind of brutal, abusive childhood that he was raised under, and how, after it all, he began to question everything that all the ideals he was instilled with, and that just that questioning, that crack in the door, showed him that he could live his own life. He didn't have to be the person that he was raised to be. He could be anybody he wanted to be. And so he's basically telling Noah, like, you can be a good person. It's your choice. You don't need to be a manhunter.
00:23:12
Speaker 1: Right.
00:23:13
Speaker 2: So Noah then tells Jon Stewart how. Well, that's good to hear because, like, one part of me just wants to be a normal guy, you know, and get a— Mm-hmm. meet a nice girl and get married and have a normal job and go to work and come home and have kids and yada, yada, yada. However, the other part of me thinks, you know, it would be so easy. Ride football to the heights of political power, get into the Senate, maybe the White House, get access to all the best weapons and then run the, basically take over the world. And if anybody tried to stop me, I would have a ring and a lantern, which Sinestro forged for me, and I would kill anything that comes between.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: Me and power, including a guardian.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: And he then says to John, by the way, if you could see the inside of my head, you would never stop screaming. Yeah. And then he gives the ring back.
00:24:09
Speaker 1: I want to say. Yes. I think this is so interesting because I was talking to Joelle about this sequence. I think it's a great sequence. I also think. That with the way we are in 2026, we're again at the subtext texting. because this is also kind of just the statement about being a white kid in a town where everyone's supporting you to go to college, like being a white man, being a white person, it is kind of easy to just rise up the ranks and become evil, right? So I kind of also love that once again, the text is catching up with the show and it's like, yeah, that's really nefarious and evil, but also like there's already people in power doing that kind of shit. Like it feels scarier than ever. I thought this was a great moment again, they smashed this scene just where they needed to smash it.
00:24:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: I will say that.
00:24:59
Speaker 2: I have issues where John lands with regards to Noah, but we will talk about that later. Okay, so Noah gives the ring back. He then asks Jon Stewart for a favor. He's like, kill me. I'm not sure.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: Can you just kill me, please? No, leave my son.
00:25:32
Speaker 2: Can you please kill me? Give me the mercy that you gave my grandmother. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to hold it together and not become like a super villain that takes over the world. And so at some point, just snipe me, don't let me know it's coming, let me finish the game, and then snipe me, bye. And he gets out of the car to go play the game.
00:25:53
Speaker 1: Crazy thing to ask somebody, by the way. Truly. Just insane.
00:25:56
Speaker 2: John Stewart then tries to conjure Hal, but Hal does not appear. John Stewart goes and finds Carrie on the sidelines. They're watching Noah, who is very tiny, running behind his tiny offensive line. And he's apparently five for five with an unknown amount of running yards. They chat about football for a little while, and then she drops a hammer. She's like, you lied to me. You were supposed to wait for me to go to storage unit, and you didn't go.
00:26:22
Speaker 1: And is it because.
00:26:25
Speaker 2: You don't trust me? And Jon Stewart's like, yes, it's because I didn't know if I could trust you. And then he tells her some of his upbringing and the way he was raised and basically says, like, I understand you because you're just like my mom. You're scared. because you know what Noah is. And then he confronts Carrie about Noah and is like, you're, you're scared, scared. People can do anything and, you know, are capable of anything. And then she says, no, not scared, actually terrified. And then she admits it was in fact her that killed Hal, because when Hal confronted her about the truth of who Noah was, and again, this scene living, um, next to the previous scene where the flashback from 2016, where it seems like Hal knew. I think your read is right that he was suspecting she was the Manhunter, not that Noah was. So Hal confronts her about Noah's true nature and terrified says, listen, how many more are there? And she's like, I think, and she's like, just him. And he's like, listen, we got to run. Maybe we run to Mexico. Maybe we run to another planet, but whatever we do, we got to get out of here. It's not safe for us because he could, he, if he realizes that I know, well, he does know who I know, but if he considers at some point that I am no longer of any use or I'm a threat to him or you're a threat to him, he'll just kill us. Like he's a man hunter. And he's trying to convince her to do this when, She just basically loses it, pulls out her nine and shoots him right in the forehead.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: She fucking murders him in cold blood in a fucking high school football field. As, by the way, he's saying I love you. He really does say I love you to her. He says, hey, I love you. And she turns around and shoots him in the head. Completely crazy.
00:28:17
Speaker 2: It's absolutely insane.
00:28:19
Speaker 1: I also want to say.
00:28:20
Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk about this more in a little bit because it's.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: I just... I do want to just say... It's too crazy. We were right. We were right. We did call this, but it's crazy that this woman had the chops to call Jon Stewart and be like, hey, how Stewart's dead, but she killed him. Serial killer behavior. Jon Stewart then says....
00:28:40
Speaker 2: Noah gave me the lantern. Well, Noah gave me the ring and admitted all his plans, including forging this lantern. He doesn't tell Carrie the details of the plans because he thinks she would be too troubled by it, but basically says like he was planning something, but like, it's all good now. And he gave me the ring and I think he's cool. I think he's going to be a good guy, but obviously it's a risk. We're rolling the dice on that one. And then he's like, listen, Carrie, Your son asked me to kill him. But it's actually good because it shows that he's scared of his nature, which means he can change. He can be a good guy.
00:29:17
Speaker 1: He asked for God rails. Right.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: And she's like, well, what if he gives into his worst instincts? And he says, well, then the world is going to need someone who's going to stop him. And obviously that means him. And Noah wins the game and everything is.
00:29:32
Speaker 1: Going to be good.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: I'll just say like, hold on.
00:29:33
Speaker 1: I just need to say this. I just need to say something. I got to say this. Eat.
00:29:40
Speaker 2: It is fucking insane to me that Carrie murders Hal Jordan himself. a fucking superhero, a hero of Earth in cold blood. Yes, she was emotionally whatever. It'd probably be manslaughter, whatever.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: She's a hysterical woman, Jason. She couldn't control herself. She had to just shoot him in the head. And Jon Stewart is just like, It's all good. You're good. Bitch, I got a service.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: You're good.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: It's good.
00:30:11
Speaker 2: It's fine.
00:30:12
Speaker 1: Where's Mogo? Where are the Guardians? Where's fucking Chip?
00:30:15
Speaker 3: Like, who?
00:30:16
Speaker 1: What are they doing? Where's the fucking, like, aren't the Guardians meant to be?
00:30:19
Speaker 3: It's good.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: DC's the watcher?
00:30:21
Speaker 3: Like.
00:30:21
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it.
00:30:22
Speaker 1: You don't care? He's that much of a dickhead that nobody cares that a sheriff just.
00:30:26
Speaker 2: Now the birds aren't watching.
00:30:28
Speaker 1: By the way. Now the birds aren't watching. Where are those birds, huh? You don't want to bring that into it? No, I will say, if you want to start plot hole picking, you can. I'm not plot hole picking. No, no, no, no. I'm not saying you should. No, no, no. I'm not saying you should or you are. I'm saying that... The show is lucky that their performances are so good.
00:30:46
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:30:47
Speaker 1: Because you can start to pick things apart. And this is one of them where I'm like, I don't understand unless there is some kind of celestial grander plan why we are allowing a human to murder a Green Lantern. I guess because the Lanterns wanted to get rid of Hal?
00:31:08
Speaker 2: I think it's because... Well, let's take the O a piece out of it. I think John's calculation, and I will tell you that I think it's crazy, is that without Carrie, Noah will 100% go off the rails and become a supervillain. And so I need her to keep him in a loving home environment with a loving mom in order to keep him from becoming a supervillain. Therefore, I'm not going to prosecute her for murdering Earth's Green Lantern, which is fucking, that's crazy.
00:31:43
Speaker 1: Jonathan, you're making a mistake. I got to tell you. This woman is an enabler. She was loyal to a man for 10 years in jail. And then she shot him in the head because she didn't want to go drink pina coladas on a different planet with her son because her son was going to get a college scholarship. Like this woman, you cannot trust her around.
00:32:06
Speaker 2: It's... More on this later. I think it's a crazy decision. And basically, TLDR, house murderer, gets away with it because John is just like, it's all good. Don't worry about it.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: I do just want to say as well, I do think it's kind of funny that, like, they built the whole show around a murder mystery and then they were like, yeah, crazy woman did it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And by the way, if this was.
00:32:33
Speaker 2: not to be that guy, but if this was a man shooting a woman in the head and they were in a relationship and then at the end of it, the hero's like, don't worry about it. You're good.
00:32:43
Speaker 1: Well, I do also want to say that this is not a good for her type case either. Like Hal was not bad to her.
00:32:50
Speaker 2: This is crazy that this happens like this.
00:32:53
Speaker 1: I was the Hal Jordan hater. I do think this is a canonically correct representation. I think there are moments where he sucks. I think there's moments where he's great. But you raise a great point, Jason. She just shot her partner in the head to protect her evil genocide son. He's not a murderer. This is not an evil gong girl type situation where Ben Affleck sucks and was having an affair with a child. This is like a man who said, hey, I'll escape you to a romantic planet where we can like have sex and your son can just be a normal alien. And she just shot him in the head because she likes her job as a cop.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: Her son has broken a super criminal out of Oa jail.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: To make a nuclear weapon.
00:33:38
Speaker 2: To forge a weapon of mass destruction and to protect him, she kills her partner. And John Kennery's just like, that's fine.
00:33:46
Speaker 1: I like Jon Stewart's like entire plan here is like, oh, I'll just American sniper him. I'll American sniper him if he becomes too crazy. That to me, surely that immediately makes Sheriff Kerry his enemy because she's going to want to kill him so he doesn't kill her son. I don't know. More on that in a bit.
00:34:05
Speaker 2: All of which is to say, this is, again, a very good show. This is a crazy decision, in my opinion, from Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart then goes to the Green Lantern signal and calls Guy.
00:34:17
Speaker 1: Love this. This is another scene that they nailed it.
00:34:21
Speaker 3: So good.
00:34:21
Speaker 1: Delivered him what I needed to for sure.
00:34:23
Speaker 2: Absolutely nailed it. So Guy shows up and Jon Stewart basically like fucking pulls rank on him and is like, listen, Guy. Yes, I dug up fucking Hal. That's the ring.
00:34:37
Speaker 1: Look at that.
00:34:38
Speaker 2: I'm carrying an unofficial lantern. Guy's like, oh, look at this. A dead man's ring and an unofficial lantern. I guess I'm going to have to what? And Jon Stewart's like, what? What are you going to do? I guess you're going to have to take it from me. Guy immediately backs down, knowing that Guy, who is essentially Oa's errand boy, because he is feeling insecure in his position. So he's basically Mr. Buy the book, like I'll do anything Oa says. So he won't do shit.
00:35:05
Speaker 1: Also, not just that. He's scared of the lantern. He doesn't know it. The truth is, the thing I will say I think they did really, really well here that they set up beautifully through Jon Stewart's abusive childhood is that his notion of what fear is or how he approaches fear he has basically become so fearless that he isn't even afraid of taking this lantern, right? And that's going to give him the power, but accepting the things he is scared of is part of that. Guy is nowhere near that. He's never going to admit he's scared. He's never going to really be fearless because he hasn't been through the things that Jon has been through. And I really love that in that moment, there is nothing Guy can do, apart from cry to the Guardians.
00:35:50
Speaker 3: So....
00:35:52
Speaker 2: Jon Stewart basically tells Guy, listen, I solved Hal's murder. Guy's like, oh, really? What happened? He's like, don't worry about it. I took care of it. I found his murderer. I let her go. He doesn't tell him anything, but he's basically like, don't worry about it, which is another crazy thing to say to Guy. And then he says, listen, congratulations, you're the Green Lantern. You're Owe's man now. in sector two, eight, three, one, you keep the sector, but I'm going to take earth off you. I will handle earth. You will handle the sector.
00:36:24
Speaker 1: Everything else. You do the sky. You do space.
00:36:27
Speaker 2: I'm doing earth.
00:36:28
Speaker 1: Guy's like, but he's like, shut up.
00:36:31
Speaker 2: And then guy flies away. I will say that one of the, one of the hints to me that they, by this point had no budget is the fact that guy descends from flight and like you're watching Rock of Ages off Broadway, like a guy, like a guy on a wire.
00:36:49
Speaker 1: He goes like this, comes down. And when he flies away, it's the same. He gets like straight up and then they just shoot him into the sky. I mean, there will be many conversations. We don't need to have another one about the amount of green lanterning in this. I do wish we got to see Jon Stewart suit up, but at the same time, I hope that if we get to see him suit up in Superman, they got the budget for it and we get to see him looking good as hell. You know what I mean? Also, I will talk about this when we talk more about the green-yellow stuff, but this isn't totally out of comic book canon. There is stuff they can lean into with Jon in this, including how his suit looks and stuff. So I'm really excited.
00:37:30
Speaker 2: There's a lot of rivalry there. Between Earth's various lanterns. And this is exactly like how it would play out. Oh, before Guy flies away, he basically says, listen, when Oa finds out that you're here with an unofficial lantern doing stuff like on your own, they're going to send an army after you. And Jon Stewart then says, tell them to look in their hearts, which is like, is that a code? It's like, yes, that's code. And then Guy flies away after Jon tells him to ditch the gold tooth.
00:37:57
Speaker 1: Oh, he tells them to look in their hearts, like thinking about the Manhunter and the Crystal Hearts and letting them know, like, I know you created the Manhunters.
00:38:04
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:38:05
Speaker 1: Okay, I like that. I kind of didn't clock that that was what he meant when he first said it. Yeah, you're right.
00:38:11
Speaker 2: AI Hal then appears and tells John, like, man, you're taking a huge risk because, like, what if Noah breaks bad, then... Basically what happened in Rushville, this is not what he says, but this is my read. What happened in Rushville will happen all over the world, basically. Like it's going to be really bad. And Jon Stewart is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but my gut, trust me. And he asks Hal what Hal would do. And Hal's like, well, you know, my gut says that you're going to be better at me, better than me at this job than I ever could have hoped to be. And you're ready to do it and you should charge the ring. And he's like, and then he says, don't be afraid to be afraid, which is a great, that's.
00:38:49
Speaker 1: The thesis of the show. Yes.
00:38:52
Speaker 2: Very great tagline for the whole show. Jon Stewart is like, yeah, but what about the, what do I do about the oath? And Hal's like, well, we're off the map. You know, you can make up your own oath. You can do whatever you want. So then Jon's about to charge the ring, but then Hal gets scared because this is really it now for Hal. And he says, oh, when you were talking to Carrie, I kind of fritzed out a little bit. What were my final words before she brutally murdered me in cold blood in this football field stands, and then covered up my murder and lied to everybody that she murdered me.
00:39:24
Speaker 1: And now I'm okay with it. Everyone's okay with it.
00:39:26
Speaker 2: And now I'm okay with it. And he says it was, I love you. And he then says to Jon Stewart, I love you too, Junior, which is very.
00:39:36
Speaker 1: He tricked him. He tricked him because he knew his last words and he wanted to get to say that. And I actually have to say, You were right, Jason. This paid off. I like this moment. They made me care about the two of them together. They did another scene that they worked on and they made work.
00:39:52
Speaker 2: We then get a montage where Jon Stewart is like kind of setting everything right. I don't want to talk about it. He puts the stuff back in the vault. He gives Maggie the bag of cash, which is to me ridiculous. This whole subplot that he would allow himself to be extorted by her. Why is she even in the show? Cut Maggie out and a wig. Very confusing to me. Why didn't he just, he has so much money. Just build them one of those fucking bomb shelters under the town and buy, build a strip mall. You don't need to give this girl $ 300, 000. What does she have to do with anything?
00:40:25
Speaker 1: Calm down. But I guess we're just rewarding criminals in this town, so I kind of dig it.
00:40:29
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, like, this is a manifestation of John's guilt about what happened, but, like, again, the entire town suffered, but she's the one that extorted you, so she gets the benefit? This is stupid. I'm sorry.
00:40:41
Speaker 1: Rewarding bad behavior. Yeah, we're rewarding bad behavior.
00:40:43
Speaker 2: This is crazy.
00:40:45
Speaker 1: He then goes home and we get this. He rewards Kelly, too, so, I mean, look, I'm not gonna... I want to say something. I'm not saying I want this to happen. I don't think it's where we're going. I will talk about how the comic proves it's probably not where we're going. But there is a read of this where you could say that once he picks up that yellow lantern and goes rogue, he starts to make some dodgy choices. We will talk about that in a bit when you lay out the rule.
00:41:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will.
00:41:07
Speaker 1: Because I think that's... I think one thing that... I think it's a red herring, but I think it's like meant to... I agree with you.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: Because I think it's... Listen, I think if you go by lore, it's ambiguous at the very least because it's a green lantern ring forged for green energy, but then it's a yellow inflected lantern. So it's not a yellow ring and a yellow lantern. Whatever, we'll get into it later.
00:41:30
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it because there's some interesting places to go with it.
00:41:33
Speaker 2: So, and this to me proves that I think they were I think they didn't know if they were going to get a season two because the way that Jon Stewart arrives home in this montage, slow-mo montage, there's his dad. He's fucking, you know, dapping up.
00:41:53
Speaker 1: His dad's out of the place? Out of the place.
00:41:55
Speaker 2: The family's back together. It's slow-mo again. He's like happy music. He's dapping up his brothers. There's his mom they embrace. It felt very final without any of the, complexity that made their relationship interesting. It just seemed like it's over.
00:42:13
Speaker 1: I know he was giving Aaron a slap on the head at least one time after he spoke to him like that on the phone.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: Come on. And then we go back to John next to the Green Lantern signal. Hal has gone away. He's charging the ring and he's got the new oath. In brightest day, in darkest night, I'll embrace my fear and do what's right. I choose this ring. I choose this fight. in service to this lantern's light. And then he, like a off-Broadway show of School of Rock, goes.
00:42:45
Speaker 1: Straight up into the air. It's the end of Cats. The Jellicle Ball. Going to the Jellicle Ball.
00:42:57
Speaker 2: And flies straight up into the air.
00:42:59
Speaker 1: In front of a giant green lantern.
00:43:02
Speaker 2: That is the finale. I think, again, a very good... season of television a very good show it could have been great it was so close to being great but i think they had to do some stuff in post to even get it to be this level and what a job they did yeah of course we have some gripes that i will we'll talk about that in a bit let's take a break we'll be right back Okay, and we're back. Rosie, I think one of the things, as we talked about in the recap, this show could have used is more of an understanding for the audience, a little bit of a lore dump about green versus yellow. Agreed. What is the relationship between the two colors and energies with regards to Green Lantern lore? And why is what Sinestro is doing so kind of anathema to the Guardians and Oa? Tell us about Green vs.
00:44:05
Speaker 1: Yellow. Yeah, so I think that, you know, people have noticed who are big fans of this stuff. Like we mentioned it in the show, over the time the lanterns is turning, logos turning from green to yellow, right? But they never really sat down and gave us a Sinestro backstory or a yellow lantern core backstory. We don't even know if there is a full yellow lantern core yet, or if a yellow lantern has even truly been forged, if this is our first look at it. But essentially in the green lantern universe, the colors have different energy patterns, right? And yellow is the energy of fear. And the idea is that if you are a Green Lantern, the joke we always has is like, he's scared of anything yellow. So he's like the opposite of Superman. Anything yellow can fuck with him.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: And.
00:44:49
Speaker 1: In the comics, there is this parallax entity that is essentially the embodiment of fear. And depending on where you believe or join the canon, parallax is either trapped inside the central power battery at OR or can be trapped in it, which is why I think there's very interesting things here when we look at where the comics come from. Because also the green is like willpower, right? That's that kind of big power we have. Star Sapphire is the pink. We have love. So what I will say, we did not get a lot of this lore, but Sinestro... Yeah, because we don't know how... We don't know how Sinestro broke out.
00:45:26
Speaker 2: We don't know if Sinestro knows about parallax and we don't know how far he got into his research about yellow.
00:45:32
Speaker 1: Exactly. All we know is that seemingly by... The Manhunter's doing the genocide. Sinestro has been trapped on this fear planet, which is allowing him, I think, to explore and understand the notion of fear. What I will say is that when Noah came and asked him to forge it on that planet, I think that the planet's influence or Parallax's influence or fear's influence basically allowed the lantern to imbue something from there, right? And the idea is because Noah's going to use it, he's going to use fear for negativity. But... what we have here is Sinestro ends up with John getting it. And that is actually something that has happened before in the comics. If you ever read the Green Lantern Earth One series, by the second volume, they're introducing multiple different Green Lanterns, right? And this is such a cool comic. It's the Gabriel Hardman stuff that they did in 2018. I think that It was, Karina Bekcho was the writer. I love Hardman's art so much. And in that story, in the second volume, in issue two, there is actually a yellow lantern in Earth One who breaks Jon Stewart and two other doctors out of jail and gives them the yellow lantern and the ring. And then Jon is the only one who is able to wield it safely. So in the comics, in the Earth One, so separate universe, right? Jon has a yellow lantern ring and what they teased with it was the notion that it would essentially be the ring for people who weren't protected by Green Lanterns. It was like the underdog's ring, right? So I think that they are pulling a little bit from that here, where whoever holds this kind of fear-imbued lantern, it is about their will. So if Noah held it, it could become evil. If Lex Luthor held it, you could use the power of fear terribly. But what this show has been about is about how actually if you embrace your fear, it can give you power. So I think while Jon wields it, I think his will will mean that he is able to wield power in fear in a positive way. That's what I think that we're gonna get. But I think there's a potential for season two to explore the idea of a parallax. And also, Jason, you mentioned something I think is really key. There is a history of Green Lanterns on Earth battling for these powers. And if Guy admits that he is not the lantern for Earth and he's happy to just be the sector lantern, Oa is likely going to try and find a new approved lantern for Earth, which is probably going to be Kyle Rayner. So I think that is what we will see in season two is John is going to be rogue. John's going to be able to utilize yellow as something positive. But at the same time, Sinestro will probably be building the corpse or his version on the planet. Because by forging it, I'm sure that has already created, you know, he knows how to do it on the planet. There's only the planet's only going to become more powerful. Think about him. essentially a Sauron forging the rings, right? So I think that we will see Jon as this rogue in between because the creators did say this morning, He is utterly unique. He's not a yellow lantern. He's not a green lantern. He is something new. So I think we'll see him in that rogue space working with Clark. And then I think we will see Kyle probably come in as the approved lantern of Earth. And then we'll get a bigger idea. Because Jason, I will say, moving away from the comics back to the show, one of the big things you talked about that I think we will get in season two is some kind of Oa conspiracy. Can you talk a little bit about how that didn't pay off here? probably budgetary concerns, but also like there must be a reason we haven't seen them, right?
00:49:09
Speaker 2: There must be. And it seems like now that with ending with John's coded message through guide to oa it seems like the conspiracy is something around just basically covering up which would which tracks with the comics right covering up the fact that they created manhunters exactly and were not able to control them and that they went off and did massive war crimes across the.
00:49:37
Speaker 1: Galaxy Okay, this is kind of crazy. Unexpected, not what I was thinking at all. Don't know if it's going to tie in this much, so sorry if this is a Rosie and Jason tinfoil hat theory. But we know Brainiac's going to be in Man of Tomorrow, right? Obviously a big villain. But think about this. If the Guardians have Manhunters they couldn't control on Earth, what if there are other Manhunters across the universe that are on different planets... that are ready to take over. That could actually be a threat that would bring together Lex and Superman, right? Maybe Brainiac finds out. Maybe there is some connection there. Because I feel like Oa being alerted hints that this is going to expand outside of Earth, whatever Jon wants.
00:50:21
Speaker 2: I also think that the.
00:50:24
Speaker 2: To your point about Parallax, so much of this is the show, the series, this season has been based on slow morph from green to yellow. I do think another possibility is that, you know, Sinestra has always been researching, wanting to understand why there was this yellow impurity in the green rings, why green, why the rings don't work against things that are the color yellow or yellow energy, yellow energy in the spectrum is the weakness of the rings.
00:50:57
Speaker 1: And it can literally be like a daisy, a yellow daisy. Like in the comics, it's been all kind of silly things. And then it's become a joke almost, which is why I think in the 90s and zeros, they tried to make it more terrifying, more obviously about energy and weakness in the rings.
00:51:13
Speaker 2: And I think Sinestro was researching this. This is essentially what got him in trouble with the Guardians. Because he thought, oh, they're hiding... something about the yellow impurity and actually like the rings can be a lot stronger if we figure out how to, how to harness this. Well, in while in reality, it's because the guardians know that parallax is trapped inside the.
00:51:37
Speaker 1: Energy battery, the central battery.
00:51:40
Speaker 2: And that to harness yellow is to basically allow him to escape. And so I think clever Jason, I think that's the other conspiracy that they have is they understand like they are, containing parallax in the central battery and that they will do anything to not let anybody understand that this is the case.
00:52:00
Speaker 1: Also, doesn't that make sense? Because isn't every kind of story, whether it's Superman and the fall of Krypton, or whether it's any kind of supremacy, like mutant supremacy regime, it's all about the arrogance and assumption that you can do it better, that you know some way that's gonna stop. And actually, oftentimes, you just do that by complete suppression. Whereas it's clear that fear is obviously a feeling just like anything else that could be utilized. And John is going to prove that. And it's going to make other people ask, why can't we utilize fear? And I think the parallax conspiracy will come out.
00:52:37
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:52:37
Speaker 1: Yes, Jason, I think you clocked it. I think that's so real. It would be cool if.
00:52:41
Speaker 2: That is the case.
00:52:42
Speaker 1: It would be really cool.
00:52:43
Speaker 2: You know, another thing I wanted to ask you about is that I think this show, part of what made it so effective is it, as a more grounded in terms of the characterizations of the people show made it, it gave the fact that these are characters with godlike powers, a different, a different and very interesting feeling with regards to superhero storytelling. Like, Much has been said about the Marvel Feet of Clay versus the DC, like, you know, monsters and gods and stuff.
00:53:20
Speaker 1: Oh, this is.
00:53:22
Speaker 2: And I do think, like, that question in Marvel, like, if we take Civil War, for instance, is.
00:53:33
Speaker 2: It's interesting in that as rich as Tony Stark is, as powerful as the Hulk is, they're still kind of just... guys compared to Thanos, who everybody in DC is basically a Thanos level guy. All of which is to say, I think that there's, it's, it's crazy to think like what the normal guy on the street, guy gal on the street would think if this Jon Stewart whole thing was revealed to them. So here's what, like, imagine you learn this. Oh, um, There was a intergalactic war criminal living on Earth who had an affair with a future Green Lantern.
00:54:15
Speaker 1: Who's now the Green Lantern of your Earth, specifically.
00:54:17
Speaker 2: Who's now the Green Lantern of your Earth. And that Green Lantern allowed the intergalactic war war criminal's offspring who is also perhaps a war criminal in the making and has openly said, you know, I don't know if I'll destroy the world. Maybe I will.
00:54:36
Speaker 1: Maybe.
00:54:36
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:54:37
Speaker 1: I could do it.
00:54:38
Speaker 2: Every day I struggle with it. And by the way, I was building, like I was, I had a weapon of mass destruction built.
00:54:46
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I'll use it. Buy another war criminal.
00:54:49
Speaker 2: I'll see if I'll use it. And that green lantern basically like let that kid live because his gun instinct told him it'd be fun that's actually like a crazy you're rolling the dice with everybody's lives on earth it's actually insane.
00:55:10
Speaker 1: I will say i think something that james gunniverse needs to explore in superman man of tomorrow which i think it could and i'm excited to see if they do They are very much setting up a world where superheroes are so common that humans are essentially a secondary thought in this world. They're collateral damage. They're ants. Now, that is true to the experience of being a human in the DC universe. I feel myself becoming pro-Lex Luthor all of a sudden. I was going to say, right? It does seem like they're kind of setting up this notion, their very own mutant threat of... wow, there are all these stealth agent aliens living across the planet who could at any time attack, you know? That seems like they're setting up something quite dangerous and quite contrary to what we saw with Superman. So I'll be interested to see how it plays out. I do think it is honestly probably more of a thematic fluke that it feels like that to us because I think this show was chopped and screwed and redone and remade and has come out... Honestly, on top, becoming, like, the biggest show of the season post-Widow's Bay. This is, like, the talkie-about show. This is the show everyone was waiting for the finale. So I think... for whatever production troubles it clearly had, it has really come out as like a winner. Is it going to play into the future of the DCU as much as we want it to? I don't know, because James Gunn did give that weird statement where he was like, Superman's not going to have that many characters that are important from outside of the movie, which worries me, because this is the most interesting thing you have right now. I need to tell you, they lit Aaron Pierre in this episode. They understood that he was the leading man. There is something about, and I want to say, I do want to say, I'm pushing, I'm putting this out there early. I'm pushing back on the idea that we only like Aaron Pierre because he's conventionally good looking, right? I actually think, I think he has... I think he has a Keanu Reeves element to him that people underrate, which is he is so good at acting within action and narratively acting within an action showcase that some people might say he's wooden. Rebel Ridge. They used to say that about Keanu Reeves and now they understand that he is essentially doing Hong Kong style acting where you tell the story through the narrative, kind of like what we were talking about when we were talking about Jackie Chan in our Shang-Chi and Penning Doomsday episode you'll be able to hear soon.
00:57:39
Speaker 2: And.
00:57:40
Speaker 1: Trust me, there is something about this man where in this episode, I was texting Joel and I was just like, they understood by this time they had a star. Even if it's only this episode, the scene in the car, they are lighting him and I'm like, this could be in Superman. This looks as good as a scene in Superman. Make sure you understand that he needs to be on screen. Also, Jason, silly thing to say, but the internet's saying it. I agree. I had the same thought. this perfectly sets up Jon Stewart to want to fuck Hawkgirl because he likes an old soul. And he doesn't care. He doesn't care if she's a killer.
00:58:16
Speaker 3: He doesn't care.
00:58:17
Speaker 1: And he likes to fuck an old lady. That's Superman. We need to see it. Hawkgirl, Jon Stewart. We knew it was coming. They're going to be a match made in heaven.
00:58:25
Speaker 2: I will go one further. I think like, Comic book storytelling on the page and on TV and in movies, to me, it becomes really great when it steers directly into the contradictions. I think that there is a world in which it's actually really great when a Justice League begins to be assembled that Jon Stewart has secrets that Batman would think are, like if Batman found out about this, wait a second.
00:58:59
Speaker 1: Oh, true. Batman does have a file on all of them and he needs the secrets, right?
00:59:03
Speaker 2: If Batman found out about this, he'd be like, that's actually fucking crazy. So you know who murdered Hal and you just let him know.
00:59:10
Speaker 1: It go.
00:59:10
Speaker 2: Also, you're harboring and protecting the child of an intergalactic war criminal on Earth.
00:59:16
Speaker 1: But then what would happen?
00:59:17
Speaker 2: I think Clark could go either way because, like, he is an alien on Earth, so unclear how he would go, but he would feel really weird about the Hal thing. But I think, like, the fact that all of these characters could come to a group with their own different agendas that are at times, like, in conflict and have secrets that, like, they want to hide from each other could be really interesting. great for story.
00:59:43
Speaker 1: I agree and I also think they gave a great out here by making Sheriff Kerry from Gotham because everyone knows Batman has terrible taste in women so if it did ever come out it would probably just turn out that she was his ex yeah and he'd protect John anyway but no Jason I I love that read I think this is exactly the kind of shit Batman would have in his files and also despite all of this you come away from the show wanting to see more John We are joking about his decisions, but it is really, really funny how you come away and you're like, this was great. I love this guy. Good job. Crazy job, but good job.
01:00:18
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to be talking more about Lanterns on the next episode of X-Ray Vision. We have our Lanterns season finale roundtable with the entire crew.
01:00:29
Speaker 3: Woo!
01:00:30
Speaker 2: Also coming up on X-Ray Vision this week, our episode of Impending Doomsday, which is Avengers Endgame, including the bonus scenes from Endgame Encore. That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
01:00:41
Speaker 1: Bye!
01:00:47
Speaker 2: X-Ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
01:00:52
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Joelle Monique and Aaron Kaufman.
01:00:56
Speaker 2: Our supervising producer is Abu Safar.
01:00:58
Speaker 1: Our producers are Carmen Laurent, Ian Johnson, and Baywax.
01:01:02
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Brian Vasquez with alternate theme songs by Aaron Kaufman.
01:01:06
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Sol Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman, and Heidi, our Discord moderator.
