Lanterns Deep Dive: Decoding the Mystery

In this deeply personal and special episode, we are breaking down the premiere of DC's Lanterns series. As a lifelong Green Lantern fan, this show means everything to me, making this episode unlike anything we've ever released. We start with my personal history with the Emerald Knight, dive into a comprehensive episode breakdown so you're completely in the know, and explore our biggest theories and predictions for where the series is heading next. If you love Green Lantern as much as I do, you'll hear the passion and emotion in every minute. 

Green Lantern is my all-time favorite superhero, making the premiere of the new Lanterns series one of the most emotional and important episodes we've ever recorded.
In this episode:

• My Green Lantern Story: Why this hero matters so much to me and my personal history with the franchise.
• Lanterns Episode Breakdown: A complete deep dive into the premiere to get you fully up to speed.
• Theories & Predictions: What to expect going forward as the mystery and lore unfold.

Thank you for tuning in to such a special conversation. Grab your ring and enjoy the breakdown! 

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Transcript

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In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware my power. Green Lantern's light. What's going on, everybody? It is your host, Armdark Mamba, and we are here to talk about the premier episode of Lanterns on HBO. I'm very excited. Green Lantern is my favorite superhero. So we are going to talk a long time and we are going to deep dive this episode like we haven't deep dived anything before. Okay. Super excited. So if you guys can hear it in my voice, I'm loving it. I love the episode. I love it. We'll we'll get into it on the other side of this break. So before we talk about the episode, I just want to give my initial thoughts on what I thought going into the episode, how I feel about Green Lantern, what the show means to me, all this background stuff before we talk about the episode. I'm going to issue spoiler warning right here. Because after this segment, we are going to deep dive the first episode of Lanterns. So, spoilers ahead. I'll give you guys another spoiler warning before we deep dive it. But just so you know, we are going to spoil the episode. So if you haven't seen it, go watch the episode and then come back and listen to the podcast. But with that being said, I want to talk about my thoughts going into the show before we get into it. So as I've stated before, Green Lantern is my favorite superhero. Particularly Hal Jordan is my favorite Green Lantern of all the Green Lanterns. I just so much enjoy the power system that they have, the rings, how it just is a manifestation of their imagination with the constructs, and basically they're as strong as their willpower allows them to be, which I feel is great. It's hard to power scale a Green Lantern because you can't have an accurate measurement for their willpower. It varies from moment to moment, from situation to situation, depending on what it is, how it's going, and things of that nature. So that's always what drew me to Green Lantern. Now, going into this show, I was a little hesitant to fully embrace it because, as I said before, on some other platforms, I was concerned about the age gap between Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart in this show. I was also concerned because we haven't seen a live-action Green Lantern anything since the Ryan Reynolds travesty of a movie. And if Mark was here, she would tell you, when we left that movie theater, I was distraught. It was terrible. That movie was terrible. It was the CGI was bad, the story was bad. The the acting outside of Ryan Reynolds, I would say, was bad. The villain was bad. Everything about that movie was bad. And we haven't gotten anything since. So I was very excited, but also concerned that this wouldn't live up to what I wanted it to live up to as a lifelong Green Lantern fan. So going into it, I wanted it to be a certain way. I wanted to make sure that they got the backstories right. I wanted to make sure that they didn't change a bunch of stuff that actually made Green Lantern a different character than the one that I wanted, whether it be for Jon Stewart or for Hal Jordan. And going into it, I wanted them to just stick the landing on the first episode. And I wanted that first episode to bring the hype, to bring the people who may not be fans of Green Lantern or may not be fans of superhero genre in general. I wanted that to that first episode to open up that world and to bring it for people who don't necessarily like it. Because I thought the subject matter that this ep that the show has said it was going to take, which is kind of like a murder mystery, who done it kind of thing, with an intergalactic aspect to it, because Green Lanterns are space cops basically. And I thought that that was a really good concept. Um, and then we see the first trailer, it comes out, and the first trailer was very underwhelming. They didn't have a lot of green in the Green Lantern trailer, so I was concerned. A lot of other fans were concerned about that first trailer. It didn't look good. Uh, you know, it just didn't look good. But the second trailer came out, and there was a lot more green, you know, in terms of the constructs, we got a glimpse of the suit in the second trailer, and the second trailer was very much a 180-degree difference from the first trailer. So the second trailer got me really, really hyped for the show, and I thought that if we could keep the momentum from the second trailer into the first episode, that we might have something on our hands. And I think that they actually stuck the landing, to be honest. I think that they uh did some things in the show that people were very excited about, people were very interested in. Me, me personally, I thought that going into the show we would get certain aspects of certain characters, and everything that has happened in episode one exceeded my expectations. Just before we get into the the deep dive, some of my initial thoughts on the first episode, I got emotional two two different times in the episode. We'll talk about that. The the way that this show portrayed these characters that I love was absolutely perfect for me. I have been wanting to see a live-action Green Lantern, like I said, since the Ryan Reynolds one, and it's been so disappointing that we just haven't got it. We we've gotten multiple Batman movies, multiple Superman movies, and we just haven't had anything Green Lantern. So it felt like for me as a fan of this superhero, that there was just that they couldn't do it, that it just didn't have the legs, or it's not something that could translate to live action the way Batman can, the way Superman can. And I was starting to get discouraged, to be honest, because Green Lantern again is my favorite superhero, and that it you like that means something to me. You know, the not just the Green Lantern core, but the Green Lantern lore means something to me. The the emotional spectrum, the differences between all the different rings, and I know that's not something that's in this show, but it it's it's just a part of it for me. You know, the blue lanterns being hope, the red lanterns being rage, the yellow lanterns who are the direct opposite of the Green Lanterns being fear. You've got the orange lanterns who are who are greed, and the indigo lanterns who are compassion, I believe, and and then you've got the the star sapphires who are love, and and it's like the whole the whole Green Lantern lore is just so dense and so wide that I didn't think that we could ever get something that would give me that feeling that this is something that we can see for a long time. Green Lantern to me in the DC universe is like its own universe because you have so many different lanterns that don't even operate on Earth for real. You know, Jon Stewart, depending on what comic book run you're on, he's always in space. He's generally not on Earth. You've got Kyle Rayner, who's another Green Lantern of Earth, not in the show, but he's he's generally in space doing his own thing. Not he's not earthbound. You know, Guy Gardner's more earthbound, in my opinion. And then Hal Jordan is more of like a 50-50 split between Earth and his intergalactic duties. So just the lore in general is so deep that I was just hoping that we could get one good thing to happen for this for this universe, you know, this universe inside the universe. Because, like I said, we've gotten so much Batman, we've gotten so many different iterations of Batman, so many different iterations of Superman. And the one time we got the Green Lantern in a movie format, it was terrible. And it felt like to me as a fan of this superhero that we were getting left behind, that we were getting left out because we didn't have creators who could step up to the plate and actually make a cohesive and interesting Green Lantern story while incorporating the powers of Green Lantern, but not making it look so bad. You know, the CGI looks bad. You know, it's and I understand that maybe at the time of them making the movie, the the technology wasn't what it could have been or what it should have been to make the constructs and everything in that movie look not so hokey or cartoony in a live-action movie. But this show right here, after the episode one, has renewed my hope that we can get more Green Lantern stories, we can get deeper Green Lantern stories, we can explore that lore because it's intergalactic, because it's not so Earth-based, and there's so much that you can do with this superhero, with this, these different character sets, the different cores. You know, you have a whole, you could do a political situation with the guardians because all the guardians have different views of of their particular lanterns, of their of the core, of how they view things and how certain things should happen. You know, you have all the different guardians, you have so many different things. And then you also have the fact that Hal Jordan is the first Green Lantern, and he was never supposed to be. There was never supposed to be an Earth Green Lantern because, in the eyes of the Guardians, Earth is this backwater planet. Humans are, in their opinion, inferior beings because we're emotional and irrational and arrogant and all these different things that the Guardians view as problematic for their lanterns. But how coming in and being the first human to be a Green Lantern and then ultimately becoming the greatest Green Lantern ever kind of paved the way for the other humans to become Green Lanterns. And I thought that that was great. You know, in preparation for this show, I watched all three of the Green Lantern animated movies because I A, I wanted to. I just haven't seen them in a while, and it was something that I just wanted to get back into the world, get back into the lore, all that kind of stuff. So I watched Green Lantern First Flight, which is the Hal Jordan origin story where you get Ab and Sir, you get Sinestro in that movie, you get the Guardian introduction to the Guardians, you know, you get Sinestro's turn to the Yellows in that movie. It's a great animated movie. If you need to be familiar with Green Lantern lore, that's a good one to watch. The second one I watched was Green Lantern Emerald Knights, which is a collection of shorter stories about individual Green Lanterns and about their individual greatness, how they came to be. We got um, I believe it's Kilwag. I believe we got another one. I think the other one is Boudicca, and there's there's one other one that they uh or a couple other ones that they talk about, lesser Green Lanterns. Um, and it just kind of gives you lore of other Green Lanterns, you know, while there's this overarching kind of story going on in the background of these uh these stories being told about these Green Lanterns. And then you finally have the Green Lantern Beware My Power animated movie, which is the Jon Stewart kind of origin story and how he got his ring and how all that stuff is going on that has Hal Jordan and stuff in it as well. So I watched those three movies in preparation for this just because, like I said, I wanted to get back, I wanted to get that feeling back of watching a Green Lantern story, watching a good Green Lantern story, which all the animated movies are really good. Particularly if you want to watch something about these two characters, Jon Stewart and Hal Jordan. You want to watch First Flight, and then you want to watch Beware My Power. Emerald Knights is more so about the ancillary Green Lanterns, the more alien Green Lanterns, not our Earth Green Lanterns. So if you wanted to watch that, you can, but it's not necessary. Neither none of these are necessary, but if you want a little bit more information about these characters, you can watch those those movies as well. That being said, Hal Jordan is my favorite Green Lantern. Um, he's the first Green Lantern that I kind of interacted with. Uh he's he's the one that got me when I was reading comics, you know, Justice League. Those uh that's the first Green Lantern I saw on Justice League was Hal Jordan, and then he became Jon Stewart. My second favorite Green Lantern is is Kyle Raynor. You know, um he's he's not as well known as Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart, but he's my second favorite Green Lantern. His constructs are just amazing. I love his constructs. He's a graphic designer in the comics, so his his constructs are really wacky and very imaginative. And just I just love that character for how he uses his powers. You know, and then my third favorite Green Lantern is gonna be Jon Stewart, uh, because he's he's he's the consummate professional, if that makes sense. He's a military man. He and and that's how he runs his, that's how he does it as a Green Lantern. He runs it kind of like a like he's a military general when he's leading troops and how he solves his problems and his willpower is immense. He was a military uh sniper, and also in some iterations, he was also an architect, which makes his constructs very complex, very detail-oriented, and very uh precise with how he does his constructs, which and it makes them all different. You know, how's constructs are more off the top of the dome? What am I thinking in that moment? You know, it could be a boxing glove, it could be an F-16 plane, it could be a giant mech at any point, you know. That's just how Jordan's construct style. He just does whatever comes to the top of his head. Whereas, like I said, Kyle Rayner's more of a graphic designer. His his constructs kind of follow that as like a comic book graphic designer, so you can kind of see what those constructs would be. And then we talked about, you know, John's version of constructs. And it's just the way that the Green Lanterns use their powers as a as a reflection of their of themselves, and their constructs are a reflection of themselves as well. It's it's just a very subtle way to tell these characters apart who all have a similar similar powers, you know, because each Green Lantern is going to be different in terms of the constructs that they make, but the constructs that they make tell you a lot about that character. You know, even when you start to look at some of the alien Green Lanterns and how their constructs are made, their constructs are more based on their personal experiences on their home planet. So you might get a lot of alien constructs, you know, and that tells you a lot about them as people. Some Green Lanterns choose to use a lot of beast-style constructs, which are more animal-based, or some like to use more traditional weapons-based, like shields and swords and things like that. Some of them like to just do lasers out of their out of their rings instead of doing constructs in general. So even though all these characters have a similar power set, they are very, very unique and very different in how they use those powers. And that's also something that I loved about Green Lanterns in general. So to get back onto the show, I had very high expectations for this show in terms of what I wanted it to be, but I had low expectations and what I thought it was going to be, if that makes sense. So I was very, very, very surprised at how much I loved episode one of this show. Like I said, there was some emotional moments, which we'll get to in the deep dive. And there were some moments of actual surprise that they did certain things. And overall, I'm just very, very happy that this is coming to the screen. I feel like this was made for someone like me. Someone who loves these characters and loves this universe, very specifically the Green Lantern universe. I feel seen. And I've been making social media videos about lanterns for the last couple of days. And I always say in those videos, like this means something to me. Like this, this means something to me. It's it's different than our Game of Thrones or, you know, when we're talking about anime or anything like that, because those are things that I love. I do. I love Game of Thrones. I love watching anime. I love all the other things that we've talked about on this podcast. But there is nothing in this world that is more important to me than Green Lantern. Green Lantern for me is a point of my personality that I feel is very important. It's tied to who I've become as a person. And I know that that's like a lofty statement, and it's kind of weird to say that about a character, but like having a superhero whose power is his will, his will to do whatever it is that's necessary in the moment is so cool to me. Because you're only hindered by yourself. You can only be stopped by yourself. Is the only way that someone can stop you is you wavering in your will to fight or your will to do whatever the task is at hand. And you know, obviously the yellow lanterns there are fear, and you know, fear is a direct opposition to willpower, which is something that you can apply into your everyday life, you know. Like for me, doing this podcast, it's it's a test of will. You know, every week when you sit, when I sit down in front of this mic, it's do I want to do this? You know, is this is this something that I can do? Is this something that's for me? And the thing that keeps me coming back is the will to fight and the will to know that like I may not have it now and I may not ever have it, but it's something that for me, I'm gonna keep going because I I refuse to let the fear of failure stop me from this process. And that's just a small kind of showing of what of what it means to be a Green Lantern fan, in my opinion, is exemplifying that willpower. But like I said, this this show, it means more to me than just a show. And I hope that going forward when we're while we're covering the show, because we will be covering the show every single week, we are gonna splice some other some other things into the show. We're gonna be talking about some anime at the top and and things of that nature. But the bulk of these next shows, while this show is airing, is gonna be lanterns. Because I this this this is this character is my character. It's my character. Green Lantern is for me. So these podcasts are gonna be very personal to me and very special to me to record and to make. And I hope that that emotion comes through while you're listening and that you get enjoyment and you want to go and tap into this world, whether it be the comics or the graphic novels or the movies, the animated movies, or even the show. I hope that you listening to this podcast about lanterns gets you hyped, just listening to how hyped I am about it. I love you guys and I appreciate you guys for listening. On the other side of this break, we're gonna deep dive episode one of lanterns. Spoilers ahead. Now we are getting to the deep dive of lanterns episode one. So again, for the third time, spoilers ahead. And the way we're gonna break this episode down is we're gonna go in chronological order of the episode. We're gonna break it down, and I'm gonna give you my thoughts and analysis on each little part. And at the end, we're gonna go into some theories, things uh we expect going forward, and kind of what we think about going forward in this whole universe. Okay. So I want to start with the initial part of the episode. We start in 1996, and these these years are important because they give a very clear and decisive timeline of what's going on. So we start in 1996. At this point, Hal Jordan has been a lantern for 10 years. Okay, so he started in 86, but no one knew that he was a Green Lantern for his first 10 years until 1996, where he comes out and he does an interview, basically exposing himself in a Tony Stark-esque way. I am Iron Man. He basically says, I am I am the Green Lantern of Earth because he was seen saving the Earth from like a meteor shower or something like that in that time. And that's when the people of Earth became aware of his presence as a Green Lantern being there. So while he's getting interviewed, we jump over to Jon Stewart, who at this point is, I want to say, in his like early to mid-teens, so I would say like 13, 14, 15, maybe, and he's watching with his two other brothers this interview while they're waiting for John's parent or John's dad to get home. And the other two brothers are like, hey man, we're gonna get in trouble, we're gonna get in trouble. And John is just stuck to the TV watching this interview of Hal talking about him being a Green Lantern, how he lost his father, how he's a Air Force veteran, all of these different things with Hal Jordan. All this stuff will be important a little bit later. So as John is stuck to the TV watching this interview, his his dad comes home and he just can't turn off the TV until the very, very last minute. And then his dad comes home, who we find find out is also a Marine in the military, which I don't think that I knew that in the comics, or if that's a change. Um someone can you know probably let me know on that. But his dad very, very calmly asks him, hey, you know, what's his name? And you know, John mutters how or something like that. And his dad says, tells him go outside. You know, and we think, at least me, when a father figure like that tells you to go outside, you're assuming you're in trouble, right? And that, in my experience, you're getting whooped. You're getting whooped because the assumption is he's watching TV be past his bedtime, or he he him and his brothers have done something wrong. You know, so his dad tells him to go outside. They grab an apple, his dad puts the apple on his head, stands him up against the shed, shoots the apple off his head. But before he shoots the apple, he asks John, Are you afraid? John says, No, shoots the apple, which I thought was wild in the moment. I'm not gonna lie. Like putting your son in that type of situation just to test his fear was kind of crazy to me, but I don't really know what the correlation was between why he did that and the interview. I'm assuming it's because John's dad knew about Hal's lack of fear, and that was kind of a requirement to become a Green Lantern. So I think he was testing his fear in that moment, preparing him to be a Green Lantern for whatever reason. Still thought it was wild that his dad decided to take a loaded gun and shoot an apple off of his head. And then afterwards, John was like, Yeah, it's all cool, we're good. And then they go get burgers. But that 1996 sets up that time frame because we we we've established John is, I want to say, in his mid-teens again, and Hal has already been a Green Lantern for 10 years at this point. So John or Hal is a veteran, and and John is looking up to him as a superhero, the superhero that he is, and that's very important for our our next segment. So we take 10-year time skip, and we meet John, and I would assume, because it's not stated, I would assume that he's in his mid-20s. So I would want to say, like, if he was 13, 14, 15 when he first saw the thing, obviously 10 years, he's 23, 24, 25, is what I would assume because he has his military background. Um, they shared in this episode that he he was a military sniper. And so if you assume he was gotten to the military when he was 18, that you know he was in there for seven years max. He's 25. So I would say that that's probably about enough time for him to have that kind of career, maybe. Um, but again, it's never stated on how old he actually is. But we meet John at this age, he's he's boxing, and then we get the introduction to Hal Jordan as his mentor. Hal Jordan comes in, he's very late, he's hungover. And we also find out that they've been training, that John has been training under Hal for two months at this point to replace him. And we find out that it was under orders of the Guardians, and that the Guardians chose John and not the ring that chose John, which is a very important distinction. So we start to get the different personalities of each character here. Hal being uh brash, arrogant, um, unreliable, and we get John, who's the opposite, who is very on time, very militant in his demeanor. He's very uh yes, sir, no, sir to Hal when he's asking questions and things of that nature, showing respect and deference to Hal as a senior officer to him. And another interesting point in this in this time is that John doesn't have a ring, which I thought was really, really weird because at times in the comics, John and Hal exist as Green Lanterns at the same time. Which in the comics, at one point, there was a one lantern per sector rule. Now, in the comics, the Earth Sector 2814 has about six Green Lanterns at this point. So that rule in the comics has been kind of abolished. But in this show, it is a very important rule. There's only one Green Lantern for Earth, which is why John doesn't have a ring. So they end up sharing the ring throughout this episode, which I thought was very interesting and definitely a change because in the comics, the ring is bonded to its owner until the owner passes away, and then the ring seeks out a suitable replacement once that lantern dies. But in this show, it's not like that. The ring is very easily shared between the two characters. So I thought that was a very interesting change. It doesn't necessarily make or break the show, but it is it is interesting. So while they're driving to uh what John says is like a flight test, Hal takes his ring off, puts it on the dashboard, jumps out of the car and says, and says, Hey, there's a taco stand three miles away. Meet me there. The car drives off the cliff. John ends up having to save himself using the ring for the first time. That's the first time he used the ring, according to him in the show. And I thought this part was interesting just for a like racial component. Um, John, after he saves himself, calls his father, who again is in the military, and you know, tells him, Hey, Hal tried to kill me, you know, and his dad's like, he didn't try to kill you, like you're fine. He was just testing you. But his dad says they can lose their control. We can't. And the way that I interpreted that as is not only is he talking about how being a Green Lantern, he's allowed to have more leeway doing certain things than John, who is not a Green Lantern, but I also took that as a racial in a racial component way, where Hal's a white guy and John's a black guy, you know, and it's like that in society. So I thought that that was a a good line for this type of thing. And it wasn't so heavy-handed with the racial component, but it was there, you know. And I don't know if other people read that differently, but because I'm an African-American man, I read that as that because I've been told that, you know, you're allowed to, you're not allowed to lose your cool in certain situations where other people of other races, particularly white, are allowed to get away with a lot of other things that me as a black man is not allowed to get away with. So I thought that that was very interesting. But while John is on his way to this taco stand, he has to walk because, again, he has not been trained in how to use the ring. He can't fly, he can't necessarily make constructs, he can't do really that much with the ring. This hologram comes out of the ring that ends up giving John a message that he has to give to Hal. So that the ring creates a hologram of Hal in front of John that gives him a message to give to the real Hal, if that makes sense. And the message is there's Hail in Nebraska. So John gives this message to Hal after they meet back up at the taco stand. And there's a very interesting moment where Hal is meeting with fans and taking pictures and things of that nature. When he gets asked, how come he doesn't wear the Green Lantern uniform anymore? And Hal, being at this point a 20-year veteran of being a Green Lantern, is basically like, I just don't want to wear it anymore. It's too cumbersome. I don't really need to do it. So I thought that that was an interesting moment, and it kind of gives you a glimpse into how Jordan, how he views his time as a Green Lantern at this point. And he's he sees it more as a burden and more uh difficult than something that's a privilege and something that he has to look forward to. Because he's like I said, he's a 20-year veteran of being a Green Lantern at this point, which is on top of his time being an Air Force veteran and a test pilot. So he's seen some things in his in his life. The other thing I thought was very interesting is John gives the ring back to Hal after Hal receives the message that Hal's hologram gave to John. Follow me. Hal flies off to Nebraska. And because John doesn't have a ring, he has to find his own way to Nebraska, which I thought was a very like subtle way of showing their different where they are and their points of their Green Lantern training, where John doesn't have his own ring, so he has to take a car and a plane to get to this Rush Rushville, Nebraska. And whereas Hal just grabs his ring and flies there. So at this point, we're starting to see the differences in the two characters where Hal is very impulsive and arrogant, unreliable, and John is very like about the book, about the rules, militant and his demeanor, like I said. But we're starting to see those differences in the personalities of these two characters, which again, I thought going into this was going to be more of a problem because of the age gap. Whereas in the comics, Hal and John are closer in age, and that plays a certain dynamic because Hal and John being close in age and also doing the same job is kind of where they kind of have their relationship rubs because the Guardians at this point in the in the comics have lost faith in Hal, and that's why they choose John to be the Green Lantern of Earth, and that's them being so close in age, is what gives that kind of um tension. But it's so that's why I was concerned about the age gap in this one. But the age gap in this actually makes it makes the tension better because Hal has been a Green Lantern for so long and has so much experience. He sees John as this very green rookie who is trying to take his job, essentially. And Hal does not want to do that, he does not want to give up being a Green Lantern at all. And that's where the tension in this relationship comes from. Hal not wanting to give it up, but John knowing that he is Hal's replacement, and Hal knowing that John is his replacement, which I I I love that. I love that for sure. So I was very surprised by that being being the the tension point. Once they make it to Nebraska, we start seeing the murder mystery of this show start to unfold. Right? There's a football field after this football game. There's a mass shooting, uh, there's four people dead, and Hal believes that there are aliens involved. Now John shows up six hours later to the crime scene, and you know, they start going and going over the crime scene and all that stuff. Then the sheriff for this local town comes and is basically like, hey, we don't need your help. This is not your jurisdiction. There's there's no aliens involved. This is a normal mass shooting, and Hal is steadfast in his belief that no, this is that there are aliens involved in this for sure, 100%. And they go about this reading this crime scene in different ways. Whereas Hal has a very strong gut feeling, where John is very analytical about what he sees. He breaks down the the crime scene going over little details and breaking down how everything kind of played out, right? Which also kind of shows there are two different characters character personalities. Hal is very impulsive, feelings-based, where John is very analytical and detail-oriented when how they're handling this this uh this case. Excuse me. So John makes a mistake because he sees this sweater from one of the suspects, and you know, everybody knows that this suspect is here. The sheriff knows, Hal knows. Hal's been like, hey, I've been watching him since I got here. And John is like, well, why aren't we doing anything? And have you told the sheriff? And he's like, No, I haven't told the sheriff because this is that dude's an alien. I don't want to tell him, I don't want to tell her, excuse me, that that's an alien. Like, whatever. So John makes the rookie mistake going to talk to the sheriff. While he's talking to the sheriff, this suspect makes him and starts a run, chase ensues, and the suspect ends up getting caught. But it's just it's just showing the naivete of John in that moment because Hal knew what he was doing, and the sheriff also knew what she was doing, and John thought he was helping when, in fact, he actually almost gave up the game and let the suspect get away. So I thought that that was like also a very good character moment to show how John is very much still young in this game right here, in the Green Lantern game. He's still a trainee. So suspect gets arrested, the sheriff won't let Hal interrogate. So he comes up with a plan to get arrested after starting a bar fight so that he can interrogate the suspect in jail. That plan, spoiler alert, does not work. But we get a lot of interesting things that happen in and around this this bar scene slash plan. And this is what brings me to my first emotional moment. We get Hal explaining how he got his ring. Okay, and this is when he tells the story of how Abin Sir crash landed in this town that they're currently in, around 20 miles, 20 miles away, and the ring sought him out, put him in a bubble, brought him to Aben Sur, and then Aben Sur bestows the ring upon Hal Jordan, tells him good luck, and he's now a Green Lantern. The reason that that was very emotional for me is because A, they didn't change it. They didn't change his origin story. For me, the the introduction of Abin Sir giving his ring to Hal Jordan is such a core part of Hal Jordan's like origin story becoming a Green Lantern. It's so important that that specific character, Abin Sir, gives the ring to Hal Jordan. It's very, very important to me because the standing that Aben Sir had in the Green Lantern core in the comics is he was very well respected. He was very much trusted by the Guardians as one of the senior members of the Green Lanterns. His friend in the Green Lanterns was Sinestro. And that's a very important relationship for Hal Jordan going forward in the comics. So them making Sure, to have the Aben Sir origin story for Hal Jordan. It truly meant something to me. It truly did. Like I said, I got a little emotional because I was, I didn't know if they were going to use Aben Sir's name, which they did. I didn't know if they were going to change the origin story to maybe Sinestro gave him the ring, or maybe the ring just found him and they were just going to completely delete Aben Sir from the story. But I'm glad that they brought Aben Sir to Hal Jordan's origin story because, like I said, it is such an important part to it. Because part of the reason for Hal being accepted as the first human Green Lantern is that Aben Sir's ring chose him. And Aben Sir being and being who he was and having the standing that he did made it so that the Guardians couldn't automatically just deny Hal Jordan being a Green Lantern. So that that that part got me emotional. As soon as that the name Aben Sur was spoken, I I I felt it. I felt, I felt, I don't know what I felt, but I I was emotional about it. So that was the first emotional moment when Hal is explaining how he got the ring to John. And then John, or you know, uh Hal takes the ring off, gives it to John because he knows he's about to get beat up. So, which I thought was really funny, by the way. John is just talking to this uh woman in the bar while Hal is getting beat up in the background. And Hal told him, hey, it might look like I'm getting my ass whipped, but like don't jump in, okay, because I'm I'm I'm planning to get arrested, so like don't worry about it. So while all this is happening with Hal getting beat up by multiple people, John is talking to this woman about how he's training under Hal and how he's a space cop and how the guardians are his bosses and things of that nature. He ends up having sex with this woman. Which, hey, good for you, Jon Stewart, get you know, making moves. It was a good scene. I thought it was a good scene, thought it was really cool that he met someone, especially when Hal Jordan's getting beat up in the background. I thought that was really funny. But there are some complications that come from this meeting, which we'll get into. So Hal ends up getting arrested, um, and you know, taken, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then the next day, John goes to pick him up from the police station and finds out he was not able to interrogate the suspect because the sheriff had sussed out his plan and locked him in a broom closet. So John's here to bail him out. The sheriff is like, well, he has to go through arraignment first. And to everyone's surprise, they were like, Are you serious? Like he's really going to go to court for this and get like charged. But yes, he does. So this is where we get a little bit more of the uh small town dynamics in this courtroom. The judge is reading her, you know, charges to Hal and giving him bail and stuff. This this lawyer comes in, and this lawyer's name is Billy, who happens to be married to the sheriff of the town who arrested Hal in the first place, gets him off, gets him, gets his bail set for uh $100,000, and the lawyer says, Hey, my dad'll have the check to you in the morning. In exchange for the bail, Hal and John has to attend a dinner at the ranch of this this guy. This guy's name is William Macon. So that's that's the deal that they made. In exchange for bailing him out, you gotta come to dinner. Which I thought was super weird, by the way. Some random dude bails me out for 100, 200k, and all I gotta do is go to dinner with him. I was a little sus on it when I was watching it in the show, but you know, the show's gonna show. So on the drive over, they go into this ranch, they spot this militia, a heavily armed militia training for something, right? And that's really weird, but not too out of the ordinary because they are in Nebraska, it's middle America, a lot of these people carry and things like that, but it is a heavily armed militia, and it seems just a little bit out of the ordinary for the situation. So they go to this dinner. Will is having a conversation with Hal about how the aliens are trying to colonize the earth and they have a militia and they're trying to get ready, and there's some sort of some this dude Will has more information than he's supposed to have about this situation. And Hal susses it out immediately. He's like, A, how do you know this? All this stuff, and B, why is your house like so nice and all this stuff? And Will just says, Hey, my employer made me sign an NDA, so I can't talk about it, which is super sus. Also, there's some sort some reason they made John for this uh scene a vegan, so he's just like eating tofu at a barbecue, which I thought was really weird, but it seems like a detail that's important for some reason. But I just thought I'd mention it here. I didn't think it was that important, but it might be important later. Also, we find out that the woman that John slept with the night before is the wife of this dude, Will, who is the dude who bailed out Hal Jordan. And also we find out that this dude, Will, knows that John slept with his wife. So again, that might lead to some complications in the future with their relationship because bro, you slept with my you slept with homie's wife, and I don't think he's gonna be okay with that. But we'll see where that goes. I thought it was just a really, really interesting plot line for for the first episode, and something that I definitely was not expecting in this show, which I'm pleasantly surprised that there was that this that there's this kind of subplot going on with this sort of love triangle, so to speak. Anyway, after they're done with this dinner and everything's all weird, um Will, with his connections to whoever he has connections to gets John and Hal a session with this suspect from earlier, and they have an interrogation situation set up. Now, I'm gonna go through this interrogation because I thought it was very, very interesting how Hal Jordan broke this dude and outed him as an alien. So he's interrogating this alien. We don't know as an alien at this point, and he's asking him a series of questions. He's asking about football, and then he starts asking about Nebraska, the Nebraska Corn Huskers. When was their first national championship? Who was their leading rusher? Who was their first Heisman winner? And this suspect is answering these questions, boom, boom, boom, easy, easy, easy. Then out of nowhere, he asks him, what school did Harry Potter go to? And this gentleman does not know. And then he's his reasoning is, yeah, I I don't read books. And he's like, okay, but you go to the movies though, and he's like, they made like 22 movies about this, and he doesn't know. So he's like, okay, cool. Like maybe maybe you just don't know about Harry Potter. And then he's like asking him about these other questions, and then he asks him about Barack Obama, because it is 2006 at this point or 2020 2016 at this point. So he asks him about Barack Obama and I just realized there was a 20-year time jump from 96 to 2016. So that would make John in his early 30s, not his early 20s. Just realized that. Anyway, so he asked John about Obama, and he's like, Yeah, Obama was a president, or is the president, whatever. And he the way he breaks him is he asks him, you don't have any opinions about Barack Obama as a Barack Hussein Obama as a Midwestern New Brass Nebraskan. And the dude just starts rattling off facts about Barack Obama. He's a 44th president. There's some controversy about his birth certificate, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, dude, you're an alien. Like, you're an alien. Like, we know. I know. And so this is this brings me to the second emotional part to me of this episode, where this alien starts laying out his hypothetical, his hypothetical plan as an alien about what he would do in the event that he's caught. You know, and in this little monologue, he mockingly recites the Green Lantern oath. And how Jordan at this point is telling him as he's reciting the oath in a mocking tone, don't do that. Stop doing that. And he's getting increasingly, increasingly pissed. Hal Jordan is. To the point where the dude finishes the oath, how Jordan yokes him up, throws him up against the wall, and then we get the climax. Now, the emotional part for me was a hearing the oath in an episode was very emotional because again, Green Lantern means something to me. That oath means something to me. And to have someone on screen say the oath in a very mocking tone, I was just as pissed hearing it as Hal Jordan was in the scene. Because that's just not something you do. You just don't, you don't mock the oath. You just don't do it. So I I was simultaneously very happy that I was hearing the oath in the show while also being very pissed off at the tone in which this character was saying the oath, very mockingly, very condescending, very like you say this stupid oath, you know? And so Hal gets very upset at this and puts him up against the wall where the alien starts to reveal, hey, I have a bomb that's directly woven into my skeleton that I can detonate out of thought. And basically the game of chicken is being played between Hal Jordan and this alien saying, like, hey, the do you think you have enough power in your ring to contain the blast that I'm gonna have because I don't want my plans to be revealed yet. So he's gonna, he's on a, you know, Hal Jordan's gonna reveal his alien plot and what's going on and stuff. So to prevent that, he basically blows himself up. And as this is going on, you know, Hal then throws him against on the floor and shields, uh creates a bubble around him to shield the blast. The blast is massive. The shock wave itself, even though the blast itself is contained, the shock wave, you know, runs through the whole town and everybody's kind of aware that something has happened. Right? Hal gets up, says, boom, told you he was alien. And then that's kind of where we end our 2016 timeframe, right? So then I'm thinking that I'm thinking at this point, the episode's over, right? We we're in the town, we know that there's an alien threat. Everybody knows, or the sheriff, John, and Hal all know that there's an alien threat in the town. There's some plot going on. I'm thinking the episode is over at this point. And if the episode ended at this point, it's still a great episode. A great episode one. I'm very happy with everything that has happened to this point in the episode. So I just want to talk about this before we before we do our last time skip. The portrayal, character portrayal of Hal Jordan is awesome. I think that him being portrayed as this grizzled veteran who's been a Green Lantern for 30 years at this point. Excuse me. I said 20 earlier, it's been 30 years at this point. He started in he started in 86, and then we got 96, which is where the show starts, and then we get a 20-year time skip to 2016. So he's been he's been Green Lantern for 40 years at this point, I think. 40 years. And that would make John in his mid-30s, not his mid-20s, from 96 to 2016, 20-year time skip. Um, I thought I said 2006, not 2016. So that makes more sense at as to why he has his stellar military career as a sniper. Instead of being in for seven years, he was probably in there for more like 20. Uh or yeah, more like 15 to 20 years. If he was in when he's 18 and he's in like his mid-30s, he's probably in for like 15 to 15-ish years in the military. But like I said, there's no distinct age or specific timeline. This is just me inserting what I think is happening. So I think that if the episode ended at this point after the explosion, it's still a great episode. We've got great character development from Hal in terms of setting, setting the tone for Hal as a character at this point, who is a very like, again, grizzled veteran, who's been a Green Lantern for a long time, on top of being an Air Force veteran and a test pilot. So he has seen a bunch of things in his life. And then it also sets up John's character, who is very militant, who has been in the military for, you know, f 10 to 15 years at this point, and lives his life in that way. Very detail-oriented, very regimented, very yes, sir, nurse, no, sir. And that's that's where we leave these characters. So if the episode ended there, I would still come on here and tell you it was a great episode, but it didn't end there. Okay. We get another 10-year time skip. So now we're in the year 2026. John returns to the scene of the crime in Nebraska alone this time. He meets with the same sheriff that we've been talking about this whole episode. The sheriff leads him onto the same football field that they initially got there for in the beginning of the episode when they're investigating the murder. But this time, she takes him up the stairs, the same bleachers that they were at in the beginning of the episode, looking over the football field. But this time, we see that Hal Jordan is sitting in the bleachers alone and is dead. I'm gonna say that again. Hal Jordan at the end of episode one is dead. Fantastic, fantastic episode. And then to add to injury, John takes a look at Hal's hand, and we see that neither John nor Hal has a Green Lantern ring on their finger, which leads to another mystery. Who has the Green Lantern ring at this point? And that's where we end the episode. And something that was actually actually shocking to me. I did not think that we would get at the end of episode one the death of Hal Jordan. And so we leave the episode with uh two timelines running at the same time. So we have the 2026 timeline, which is Hal Jordan is dead. Jon Stewart doesn't have his Green Lantern ring either. And so there's the mystery of how Hal Jordan died and where's his ring. And then we have the 2016 timeline of this alien investigation in this town in Nebraska. All this is happening in this town in Nebraska, which is kind of crazy as well. Which is also the same town that Aben Sir crash landed in when Hal Jordan got his ring. So this town is very significant for whatever reason. But we're also running the 2026 timeline or 2016 timeline where John is still Hal's trainee. Hal still has his ring and they're investigating this alien threat. So this episode one was absolutely fantastic, amazing, and I am just literally over the moon with how excited I am for this show going forward because now we have the mystery of how Hal Jordan died, and we also have the mystery of this alien threat 10 years prior. It is great, fantastic, absolutely amazing. I can only say so many superlatives about how I feel about this show. That's gonna be the end of our deep dive. I mean, I hope you guys enjoyed the deep dive. I basically just went over the whole episode. But the things that I really want you guys to take away from this is that Hal Jordan is a very distinct character with his own set of morals and how he likes to run things and do things. Hal Jordan is kind of the direct opposite of Hal Jordan, or Jon Stewart is the kind of the direct opposite of Hal Jordan in this, and that is what brings so much tension, as well as the mentor, mentee, trainer, slash replacement, that whole dynamic as well. And then to end it with Hal Jordan dying and neither one of them having the ring is its own mystery that I'm so excited to be on this journey this season with. So that's gonna be the end of the deep dive on that. I'm gonna take a break and then we'll come back and go over some theories, what we think about is gonna happen in going forward in this in a show, and some things that I'm personally expecting going forward. So I'll see you guys on the other side of this break. All right, we are now at the end of the podcast where I want to take this time to do some theories going forward, what I think is going on with the two timeline situations, and hopefully we can put together some stuff to kind of make sense of what's going on. So, first thing, first things first, we have to address the elephant in the room. In this show, Lanterns, it is stated there can only be one Green Lantern on Earth. At the time in this show, the way the timeline is in this show, we get to the 2026 mystery of Hal Jordan is dead, how he died, and where's his ring. Right? My theory is at some point Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart both were found to be unworthy by the Guardians. And so Hal's ring went to Guy Gardner, who is the Green Lantern in the Superman movie. Now, if you go on the DC Universe kind of page and see like when, you know, the timeline kind of situation, right? Guy Gardner has been the Earth Green Lantern since sometime in 2025, which would put him having a green being the Green Lantern of Earth approximately one year before Hal Jordan dies. So my thinking is that again Hal was training John, right? Something happened in between those 10 years of 2016 and 2026, or 2016, 2025, let's say, that made Hal unworthy and also made John unworthy of the ring, which forced the Guardians to find another replacement, and that replacement being Guy Gardner. Now, I don't know how Guy Gardner is going to factor into this show, Lanterns, but we have seen from trailers and other promotional material and the preview for the rest of the season at the end of episode one. Guy Gardner is in this show. Now, it just depends on when he shows up because he could show up around the 2025 time, and that would indicate that he has the ring while Hal Jordan is still alive. So that would kind of lead more to my theory that both of them were deemed unworthy, and then the ring went to Guy Gardner. One thing that kind of butts up against this theory is that the ring that Guy Gardner has is very different in its design from the ring that we see in episode one that Hal has. Very different. So it could be either Guy Gardner got a different ring, and the ring that Hal and John were sharing slash Hal's ring is gone and someone took it. Or Guy Gardner has Hal's ring, and because the way Green Lanterns work, you can kind of change and manipulate the way your ring actually how you want it to look, basically. But at this point, that's not stated as something that they can do in this. So I would say that that's a little bit more of a long shot until we get confirmation that the Green Lanterns can change the shape and style of their ring. But at this point, right now, Guy Gardner's ring is not the same ring that Hal has in this in this episode. Next thing I want to talk about is the 2016 mystery timeline. And that timeline has something to do, in my opinion, with why Abbin Sir crash landed in that particular area. So either Abbon Sir was looking for some someone or something in that area and was shot down. And while he was on the verge of dying, that's how Hal got his ring. But he wasn't able to relay the information that he found to Hal before he died, which is why Hal put some sort of watch, watching mechanism on this particular area in Nebraska so that it would alert him for alien activity. The other thing could be that Avincer accidentally crash landed in Nebraska, and that alerted aliens in the area that Earth was in play. And so they came to Earth for a specific reason and something happened. And now in this 2016 time, or in the 2016 year, they're now trying to complete that their plan that they started when Abbinsur crashed, crash landed. Those are my two running theories for that. The and then the last thing I want to talk about is Hal Jordan's death. So we see Hal Jordan sitting in the bleachers of this football field, propped up, like not propped up, but he's he's sitting sitting straight up, so he's not leaning up against anything or anything like that. But he is dead. I know we don't know how he died, but there is a blood trail from his from his head. We don't see necessarily where the blood is coming from, but there is a blood trail on his head, on his face, and he is sitting upright in these bleachers covered in snow. So presumably he's been sitting in these bleachers for long enough to be covered in snow without anyone knowing that he's there. And when they discover the body, it is at night. So I would I would think that he met somebody at this football field who has something to do with the 2016 mystery, and that this person either took his ring, killed him, and took his ring, or he didn't have the ring at all and met this person, and then they killed him. Those are my two running theories for how and why Hal is dead. Now, I don't necessarily know, other than the sheriff having this relationship with John in the 2016 year, why she would call John to the scene in 2026. But I think that also has something to do with the statement she made earlier in that in the episode saying that Hal isn't necessarily fearless, but that he's lonely because he doesn't have any family or friends or anyone that he loves or cares about, and that doesn't make him fearless, that makes him lonely. So I think that when she when the groundkeeper found his body and then let let the sheriff know that she that they found his body, that the only person she knew that Hal had a relationship with was John, which is why she called John, as opposed to something else. Because when we see them together and they're coming upon the body, there's no other law enforcement officials, there's no crime scene kind of situation. It's just those two. And I think that she let John know out of respect before you know making it a crime scene in that whole kind of situation. Other, just a like minor detail. What are we doing? Like crime scene contamination, John. You're just gonna touch my dude's hand just to check. Like you ain't even got gloves on. What are we doing? Just a minor little detail. That's some show stuff. But those are gonna be kind of my running theories for what's going on for the two different timelines, the Hal Jordan being dead and the 2016 mystery. And I want to say I'm loving that there's two different murder mysteries going on at the same time. I love that. I think it's I think it's really good for people who are uh very interested in these types of shows. It's not a show that you can watch while you're on your phone. You have to be paying attention. And I I think that those shows are great for the time period that we're in right now because I I want to watch something that keeps me fully engaged and not something where I can go and look on my phone for five minutes and not miss a thing. So that's just an aside. But I love this show. We're gonna be talking about it going forward, and we're gonna keep updating these theories and everything like that as we get more and more information. Hopefully, I get proven right. The the one that I'm I'm thinking is the most true is the is that Hal and John got deemed unworthy for some reason and they gave the ring to Guy Gardner. That's gonna be my number one theory for going on going forward. I think that's actually the case. And so that's the one I'm hoping comes true. Everything else, I'm kind of just shooting shots in the dark, you know. But um, yeah, that's gonna be the end of our episode. Uh I appreciate everyone for being here, for listening. Like I said, this this show, this, this character, these characters, the Green Lantern lore, all of that in general means so much to me that I'm so happy that we're gonna be going, going forward, watching this and experiencing this show together. And if you haven't seen episode one, you listened to this episode, and you've already gotten here, go watch the episode. Go watch the episode. Okay. I appreciate everyone for listening, and I will see you guys next week. Armed out of the