Lanterns Recap: We Were Very Coitus

Lanterns
Lights Out
Season 1 Episode 5
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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It’s fitting that this episode of Lanterns aired the same weekend that Na Hong-jin’s Hope hit U.S. cinemas. The rip-roaring South Korean creature feature unfolds with the same breakneck pace and small-town chaos that Hal and John are forced to deal with, in what might be one of the most adrenaline-fueled, action-packed, downright fun episodes of TV this year — all without sacrificing an inch of character-focus.

Its prologue details Sheriff Kerry’s surprising arrival in Rushville in 2007. On the run from two Gotham goons who catch up with her at the local diner, she’s rescued by none other than Zoe — who snaps one’s neck with ease while threatening the other — revealing that the lawwoman has been aware of the Manhunter’s identity this whole time. To give Kerry a new lease on life, Zoe has her cut off her pinky so the surviving henchman can take it back east as proof of Kerry’s death. “But wait,” you might think. “We didn’t notice Kerry with a missing finger in previous episodes!” That’s exactly right; Zoe promises to work her technological miracle and regrow the severed appendage, offering Kerry protection in exchange for the same, somewhere down the line. 

Thus far, all we’ve learned of the Manhunter has been through implications and the accusations of others, but this episode adds surprising layers of nuance to Zoe’s Nebraskan history, starting with an act of benevolence that just so happens to put Kerry in her pocket. She’s as much a deity as she is a synthetic mafioso. During the rest of the episode, as Antaan’s alien forces close in for revenge and Hal comes one step closer to catching her, Zoe also has several genuine, loving moments with her husband Macon, and even her grandson Noah, on what she believes could be her last day on Earth — which is to say, her last day alive. 

Of course, the burning question from the end of the previous episode concerns what happens to John after Hal jumps out of his car, causing it to hit a pole. With the young trainee trapped in his rental, the veteran Lantern jets off to save the day, as Zoe arrives just in time to pull John from the flaming wreckage — which she doesn’t. Instead, she uses her advanced tech to restore John’s charred skin, offering him a similar deal as Kerry in the process. 

Given a second chance by Hal’s predecessor, Abin Sur, Zoe just wants to keep living her life in Rushville — or so she claims — and one way to do that is to get Hal off her back by having John finally usurp his superhero mantle. John, however, has a plan of his own, having sussed out that the Manhunters were the Guardians’ original, more ruthless peacekeepers before being designated expendable, and that Zoe went on to kill Sur to avoid him changing his mind and telling the Guardians of her whereabouts. Also, the show struggles awkwardly to keep its alien-adjacent racial politics central to its plot — this time, in the form of Zoe explaining her taking on the form of an ethnic outsider because of the perspective it provides her on a new planet, and something about adversity building character. Sure. The writers get points for effort, at least.

In a broader sense, by “moving [John] off the chessboard,” as Hal puts it, he sets the stage for Antaan’s forces to shoot it out with Macon’s men — especially as he tells Antaan that Macon is the Manhunter in disguise — leaving him to take Zoe, an alleged war criminal, to the planet Oa and get back in the Guardians’ good graces. Everyone in the episode has conflicting goals, but powerfully motivated ones, ensuring that the action is propulsive and unpredictable, but always emotionally motivated. 

We also learn more about the Manhunter’s methods through Antaan’s eyes, who, it turns out, was once its target too. He was seduced by it like Macon and John, something Hal hilariously claims as well, as a self-professed “alpha” (who seems to intuit the meaning of “coitus” on the fly). So, when Antaan confronts Macon — whose dedication to Zoe has led him to learn her language and become a sacrificial decoy — the betrayal and angst are palpable. His ruse doesn’t fully work, but Antaan still carves out Macon’s heart, just to be sure he’s human. 

Meanwhile, Hal — with some backup from his own digital copy, whom he finally summons from the ring — tries to take Zoe into custody, though the ring starts to run out of juice. But as the emotionally indebted Kerry warns him (while firing bullets at his shield construct, since Zoe’s satellites are watching), his ruthless target is willing to put anyone in danger to get out unscathed. In this case, it means training her overhead space drones on buildings in the town, causing explosions and eruptions as Hal, Antaan’s explosively suicidal henchmen, and the town’s trigger-happy civilians all go at each other’s throats, engulfing Rushville in flames. Hal even handcuffs Zoe to a chopper, but she ends up cutting off her own arm to get away; a perverse delight.

With close-ups of cowboy boots treading on bullet shells and ringed hands opening doors, director Geeta Vasant Patel, once again, creates brief but meaningful connective tissue in between propulsive moments. In what might be the most adrenaline-fueled action scene in any superhero show, Antaan’s men bring down the water tower storing Zoe’s technological smoke, which brings darkness into any space, preventing a Lantern from using their rings. However, Hal nabs the night vision goggles of one of Antaan’s cronies and goes Call of Duty mode, as the camera takes on his (fittingly, green-tinged) POV for some absorbing mayhem, which ends with Hal lifting Antaan into a green tornado when his body clock begins counting down to self-destruction.

Once he takes the chopper back to his motel to charge the ring (he should really keep that pesky lantern on him), he’s ambushed by a recently recovered John, who gets the better of him just as Zoe’s all-powerful lasers blow the place to smithereens. With Hal trapped under the rubble, John high-tails it away from the rubble as Zoe approaches — which turns out to be a ruse of his own. In the most John move imaginable, he uses Hal as bait to lure in Zoe, and after an intimate scrape with his mentor, snipes the Manhunter from a distance. A clean headshot is accompanied by a single tear from the Lantern-in-training; Zoe’s manipulations have clearly been emotionally effective. 

Much earlier than one might’ve anticipated, the whole Rushville arc seems to be done and dusted. That town is left a bloody mess. Zoe is dead; John even removes her synthetic heart, which has an appropriately frigid appearance. And to top it all off, the Guardian Lianna has even been summoned by John (via his parents) for a debrief. However, after seeing Hal’s underhanded methods (to keep the ring and to achieve his objectives), and seeing what the chase has done to him as well, John decides that everything he’s worked towards, his whole life, is something he may no longer actually want. 

This final scene features a great bit of acting from Aaron Pierre, who conveys so much with just a grunt, and whose stillness makes for an inviting comedown from a pretty whizbang episode. And as it ends on a shot of the ring in the foreground, and John closing a door far behind it, Lanterns leaves off with open-ended plot questions, but with its significant emotional threads tied up in firm-but-thorny knots. That it feels like the end of a season only makes things more intriguing, because where on Earth or Oa could you possibly go from here? Well, only one way to find out.

This Week’s Coolest Constructs

• It’s shields galore from Hal this week, between personal riot shields and 360-degree protective balls, as well as more umbrella-type constructs to protect innocent civilians from laser rainfall.

• Where John would probably use the ring to make complex machinery, Hal simply uses it to produce a shockwave of green light, which is a very Hal thing to do. Maybe he’s the alpha after all.