“Bad Optics”

John Stewart- grave robber.

After last week’s major conclusion of the 2016 storyline, we find ourselves back in 2026 to continue that story that dropped in episode one.

Hal Jordan is dead. Shot in the head.

There were a lot of speculation that Hal was not really dead from the online pundits, but that seemed to be definitively put to bed with this episode.

I really have some questions about John’s motives in this episode and the town’s anger and resentment toward Hal. We learned that Hal and Kerry had a relationship after she split with her husband. John had come back to Rushville because his mother had told him that Hal wanted to apologize. That was a surprise to Hal. John hit him, perhaps breaking Hal’s nose in the process.

We learned that Hal was shot point blank in the head, which was an odd situation. Just off the top of my head (poor pun there) I am guessing that Noah is the one who killed Hal. That would make sense why someone could get that close to Hal to kill him.

John Stewart contacted Guy Gardner with the Green Lantern-signal, which is in the middle of the town, provided by Guy. However, a bunch of men showed up, including Billy, Kerry’s ex-husband, to threaten John. John kicked all of their butts, and eventually ended up in jail for assault.

Guy showed up as John was behind bars. John asked Guy to retrieve Hal’s suit and decommissioned ring so they could bury him in it. Gardner was not anxious to help, seeing as that he would have to fly to Oa to get it. He wound up doing it after all because John had told him that everything he had was because John had refused the ring.

Guy dropped the piece of info that Sinestro had escaped from the space prison. He also confirmed the existence of the Phantom Zone in the DCU.

Carol Ferris made a debut in the episode as well. Carol had a previous connection to Hal Jordan, specifically a main love interest in the actual comic books. She apparently had become the Star Sapphire in the comics, which I did not realize since I do not collect the Green Lantern books.

John, Carol and Kerry were the only ones in attendance at the funeral, and they did bury Hal, only for John to come back at night and dig him up to retrieve the ring.

Did not see that coming.

I kept waiting for the ring to fly off Hal’s hand and choose John, especially as John was reading Hal’s handwritten eulogy. This scene reminded me of the episode of The Boys where Hughie read the letter written by Frenchie.

Of course, the ring had 5% power left for some reason and John used it to bring back the Hal-ogram with the intention of using it to help solve the murder.

Two more episodes remaining.