‘Lanterns’ Episode 4 review: “The Weenie”

Lanterns Episode 4, “The Weenie” gives Hal and John a long list of Manhunter suspects, while Sinestro makes their truce even messier.

Last week’s “OutKast” temporarily abandoned the ticking clock in Rushville to explain exactly how John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) became the kind of person who could spend nine months waiting for a target, accept every order as a test of his worth, and still insist he holds no grudge against Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). Lanterns Episode 4, “The Weenie,” immediately puts that character work to use. The Manhunter deadline now sits barely more than a day away. John has a theory about where the fugitive might be hiding. And both Green Lanterns have received private instructions encouraging them to distrust the man standing beside them.

That last part is far more important than whatever lurks inside Will Macon’s heavily guarded ranch. Sinestro tells Hal that John represents his replacement and teaches him exactly how to manipulate his ambitious trainee. Lianna tells John that Hal has already judged him weak and unimaginative before ordering him to take the Green Lantern ring for himself. Each man consequently spends the hour getting better at reading clues while acquiring plenty of reasons to second-guess his partner.

“The Weenie” gets plenty of mileage out of that friction, even as its actual mystery starts to resemble the architectural concept that gives Lanterns Episode 4 its name. Every destination mostly exists to point toward another one. A secret bunker, nude portrait session, killer satellite, and high-tech slaughterhouse keep Hal and John moving. But the onslaught of suspects and explanations occasionally makes the case feel more complicated than compelling. Fortunately, the two guys arguing their way through it remain much easier to follow than ever.

Everyone wants to find the weenie.

John reaches the episode’s first major breakthrough after noticing that every guard tower on Macon’s property shares a sightline toward one apparently empty section of the ranch. He compares the layout to Walt Disney’s concept of the “weenie,” an architectural focal point designed to pull visitors toward a particular destination. Hal naturally responds by spending the rest of the episode making jokes about Macon’s weenie because years of Green Lantern service have apparently done nothing to mature him past middle school.

The goofy terminology also gives Lanterns Episode 4 a useful organizing principle. Nearly everyone believes they’ve identified the thing that explains everything else. John thinks Macon’s hidden structure contains the Manhunter. Hal assumes Macon’s mysterious benefactor must be their fugitive. Hector Hammond later presents himself as the obvious solution to nearly every question the investigation has raised so far.

Each supposed answer only redirects them somewhere else. The hidden building contains anti-Lantern weapons instead of an alien. Hector turns out to be an engineering student named Hector Gutierrez working for somebody more powerful. Macon looks increasingly suspicious before Hector identifies him as the Manhunter. Only for Hal and John to reach a different conclusion minutes later.

That structure fits the title. Although Lanterns Episode 4 pushes the shell game awfully hard. At some point, Lanterns needs one of these discoveries to stick rather than immediately producing another name for Hal and John to write on the conspiracy board.

Sinestro knows exactly where to poke.

The episode opens by returning to Hal’s secret meeting with Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), who immediately proves far more interested in John Stewart than in answering questions about Manhunters. Hal calls John a contingency plan and backup until Sinestro pushes him toward the word he actually fears: replacement.

Sinestro hardly needs to invent the insecurity. Hal already knows what John represents. And his contemptuous cracks about “Johnny Try-Hard” sound increasingly defensive once Sinestro asks whether he respects the younger man. Hal happily explains that he doesn’t like John and refuses to kill him. He’s not “evil,” after all. Yet respect proves harder to dismiss because John’s already earned some of it.

An incompetent replacement poses little threat. A disciplined, fearless, absurdly talented one gives Hal a glimpse of a future in which the universe moves on without him. Sinestro’s advice is to embrace John’s worthiness, encourage his confidence, and wait for his arrogance to expose him. Similar to how Sinestro once manipulated his own trainee.

Lianna finds John’s weak spot too.

John gets his own private manipulation session when Lianna (Laura Linney) summons him away from Hal and reveals that the Guardians know about Sinestro. She responds by accelerating their succession plan and telling John to claim the Green Lantern ring the next time Hal hands it over during training.

John hesitates because that means personally taking the job from his mentor. Lianna answers by invoking his parents and accusing him of inheriting his father’s weakness. She even claims Hal repeatedly described him as uncreative and too weak for the ring’s power.

John finally explodes. Hal received the ring without spending his life earning it, while John trained since childhood for exactly this opportunity. “The ring’s always been mine,” he concludes. “That asshole’s just keeping it warm.”

John Stewart, apparently, has an imagination.

The funniest part comes immediately afterward. Lianna just told John that Hal considers him uncreative, so John confronts Hal with a hand-drawn plan for tunneling beneath Macon’s ranch and announces, with considerable irritation, “Yeah, I’m creative.”

John also discovers the architectural pattern around Macon’s compound. Designs the underground approach. Manifests an elaborate tunneling machine with the ring. Improvises around a pressure sensor. And somewhere between all this, he casually reveals to Hal that he attended art school after serving as a Marine sniper.

Hal responds with perhaps the most appropriate question anyone has asked John all season. “Who the fuck are you?”

“OutKast” gave us part of the answer. John’s parents cultivated his discipline, courage, marksmanship, and endurance because they believed those qualities would make him irresistible to the Guardians. Art complicates the person they tried to manufacture.

The Guardians accuse John of lacking creativity while he repeatedly succeeds because he sees connections their rigid evaluation of him apparently missed. For all the alien mythology piling up around these characters, Lanterns remains sharpest when its superhero succession story becomes a fight over who gets to define what makes someone worthy.

The ring changes hands.

Hal eventually hands John the ring and tells him to create the tunneling machine himself. The gesture looks routine to Hal and potentially life-altering to John because Lianna has already explained that he only needs to recite the oath while wearing it to become Green Lantern.

He gets his chance. Then he lets it pass.

Of course, John absolutely wants Hal’s position and believes he could eventually perform it better. But ambition still has to cross his sense of integrity before it can become action. John takes the ring, completes Hal’s lesson, and gives it back.

This moment becomes essential later when Hal hears the recording of John calling him old, tired, and unworthy. John’s ugliest thoughts came from a real place. But his actions reveal something more complicated than simple betrayal. The Guardians want to turn succession into an act of conquest while John still wants to earn Hal’s respect. Funny enough, Hal keeps giving it to him.

Hal Jordan accidentally becomes a good teacher.

Throughout the season, Hal has been resisting practically every responsibility associated with mentorship. Yet once he stops obsessing over the idea of having a trainee, he starts doing the job surprisingly well.

He lets John manifest the tunneling machine rather than doing it himself. He questions John’s conclusions without immediately dismissing them. Asks him to elaborate when he spots something unusual. And he openly praises him when John realizes Hammond’s attack functions as an invitation.

Their underground conversation also allows the two men to behave like people rather than reluctant coworkers for a few minutes. John asks about Hal’s parents. Hal admits his father’s supposed fearlessness involved plenty of performance. And they both gradually reveal pieces of themselves they usually keep hidden behind sarcasm or professionalism.

The change feels especially important after “OutKast” showed how thoroughly John learned to treat authority figures as evaluators. Hal remains abrasive, reckless, and occasionally impossible. But he increasingly responds to John as a person whose ideas deserve engagement.

Please keep your dick inside the conspiracy.

Their tunnel eventually delivers them into Macon’s bunker, where an alarm and some weapons engineered specifically to disable Green Lanterns quickly ruin the plan. Macon responds to their intrusion by forcing John to draw a nude portrait while discussing the alien benefactor who cured his cancer, revitalized crops, improved children’s health, and apparently transformed Rushville into a supernatural wellness retreat.

Garret Dillahunt turns the whole thing into an unnerving display of casual authority. Macon sits naked in front of two superheroes because he apparently sees no reason to grant them the dignity of intimidation. The absurdity helps, too. Lanterns has generally found its best tone somewhere between hard-boiled procedural and two guys realizing that space is much weirder than either wants to admit.

Macon’s devotion to the benefactor also complicates the Manhunter mystery in ways the season needs. Rushville’s residents appear to protect this fugitive because its arrival materially improved their lives. Whatever atrocities Antaan and his companions attribute to the Manhunter can therefore coexist with a community that sincerely believes the same being saved them.

That creates a more interesting question than why ordinary people would protect a monster. What happens when the monster gives them something worth protecting?

Kerry Kane solves the boring parts.

Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) continues becoming more useful with every episode. Largely because she approaches cosmic insanity like another jurisdictional headache she’s somehow inherited. She rescues Hal and John from Macon, tears into them for wasting their opportunity. And then continues investigating through the distinctly less glamorous superpower of paperwork.

It’s also Kerry who finds decades-old nondisclosure agreements connecting Macon to three companies and traces the satellite that apparently kills Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) to Atlas, Inc. Supposedly owned by a mysterious Hector Hammond (whom many of you may recall from the 2011 movie) with no history before 1986.

The problem comes from how much information the episode needs everybody to exchange once Kerry does all the police work. Sinestro explains Manhunter biology. John explains Disney architecture. Hal and John explain aliens to Kerry. Macon explains his benefactor. Kerry explains the NDAs. And Hector eventually explains his own false identity.

“The Weenie” moves briskly enough to keep all that exposition from completely bogging it down. But the season keeps leaning heavily on characters telling one another which piece of the mystery matters next instead of just showing us more often.

Hector Hammond has entered the chat. Sort of.

Hector’s slaughterhouse gives “The Weenie” its most overtly comic-book setting yet. Complete with laser-cut cows, ominous music, and employees who react to two strangers wandering through a secret facility with barely more concern than supermarket cashiers approaching the end of a shift. John watches the gruesome production line and dryly concludes, “That’s why I’m vegan.”

Hector then turns the absurdity vicious by threatening John’s parents with an orbital weapon. He’s also recorded John’s conversation with Lianna and plays the younger Lantern’s rant directly in front of Hal, forcing both men’s private resentments into the same room.

Hal responds by interrogating Hector about Abin Sur and notices that the supposed Manhunter can’t remember one of the most recognizable details about the alien who supposedly brought him to Earth. He then reveals Sinestro’s useful bit of physiology. Manhunters can replicate carbon-based organisms almost perfectly. Except their hearts crystallize after death.

His proposed test involves ripping Hector’s heart out. And Hal’s bluff works because nobody, including John, knows whether he would actually follow through. Chandler plays the scene right on the line between seasoned confidence and lunatic recklessness as Hal threatens to let John’s parents die, counts down, and finally scares Hector into admitting the truth.

John asks what might have happened if Hal guessed wrong. Hal answers exactly as Hal Jordan should. That he never guesses wrong.

Except this mystery might have one fake-out too many.

Hector points them back toward Macon, which should feel like a major breakthrough after four episodes of searching. Instead, Hal and John almost immediately find another possibility.

The rapid pileup makes the mystery both entertaining and slightly exhausting. Macon’s benefactor might be the Manhunter. The bunker might contain the Manhunter. Hector might be the Manhunter. Macon might actually be the Manhunter. Then Zoe becomes the apparent answer.

At least one of these red herrings could’ve disappeared without sacrificing much. Mystery-box storytelling loses some of its power when every answer has such a blatant expiration date. And Lanterns Episode 4 occasionally seems more interested in preserving surprise than letting a discovery be exactly that.

And this all makes me especially hesitant to accept the episode’s final deduction at face value. In fact, I have an entirely theory about what and who we’re really dealing with in Rushville.

Are we sure Zoe is a Manhunter?

Hal eventually realizes something strange about John’s reaction to Zoe’s apparent death. John panicked when Hector threatened his parents but barely seemed to grieve after watching Zoe’s truck explode. Hal initially assumes his trainee shut down emotionally before thinking of a better explanation. John never believed she died.

From there, the reasoning seems obvious. If Zoe survived a direct orbital strike, perhaps she survived because she’s the Manhunter they’ve been hunting. Maybe.

But not so fast. Lanterns Episode 4 has been teaching us to distrust the obvious thing sitting at the center of the frame. So I’m keeping another possibility alive. That Zoe might in fact be Hawkgirl.

Her survival would make just as much sense as evidence that she possesses extraterrestrial abilities rather than proof that she’s a shape-shifting Manhunter. And the secrecy surrounding her identity leaves plenty of room for the series to expand beyond the mystery Hal and John currently understand. More importantly, introducing a hidden Thanagarian would give all this talk of interplanetary history somewhere much bigger to go.

Thanagar and the Green Lantern Corps have enough complicated cosmic history that bringing Hawkgirl into this particular story could connect Rushville to a conflict Hal and John have only begun to grapple with. If Zoe has been hiding a Thanagarian identity, her relationship with Macon and whatever really happened after the benefactor arrived might look very different once the show supplies the missing context.

For now, this remains a theory without too much evidence outside of the meta-lore surrounding it. And the episode certainly wants Hal, John, and the audience considering Zoe as the Manhunter. But after an hour devoted to decoys, focal points, and misleading assumptions, immediately believing the newest answer feels like exactly the mistake “The Weenie” keeps warning against.

The student surpasses the teacher.

Hal and John’s final conversation initially feels like the emotional payoff the season has been building toward. Hal correctly realizes that John suspected Zoe, congratulates him, and even declares that “the student surpasses the teacher.” John apologizes for hiding his suspicions, while Hal appears proud that his irritating backup has started thinking like him.

Then Hal crashes the car.

The gag simultaneously punctures their sentimental breakthrough and confirms Sinestro’s influence. Earlier, Sinestro advised Hal to make John believe he’d embraced his worthiness. Hal appeared to be moving toward acceptance of John, yet the suspicion planted during their conversation survives.

This is what ultimately keeps the ending of Lanterns Episode 4  from playing like a simple gotcha. Hal really does appear to forgive John for what he said. He really does respect his investigative breakthrough. He really does recognize that John may eventually become a better Lantern than him. But those truths give him even more reason to fear what comes next.

Sinestro never needed to convince Hal that John was incompetent. He only needed Hal to recognize how capable John had become and wonder what that capability might eventually cost him.

The bottom line.

Lanterns Episode 4 works best whenever the Manhunter investigation exposes something uncomfortable about the two men conducting it. John proves the Guardians wrong about his creativity, refuses to steal Hal’s ring when given the chance, and begins incorporating his mentor’s intuition into his own more disciplined approach. Hal finally starts treating John like a worthy successor at precisely the moment Sinestro gives him reasons to fear one.

The mystery surrounding them proves shakier. “The Weenie” stuffs an enormous amount of mythology, exposition, suspects, reversals, and comic-book weirdness into a single hour. And the constant redirects occasionally make the case feel like a series of writers’ room trapdoors rather than deductions building toward a satisfying answer.

Still, Hal and John remain enormously watchable together. Their growing respect makes every secret between them more consequential. And Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre continue finding an undeniable spark between these two men who increasingly “get” each other despite having every institutional force around them encouraging the opposite.

Lanterns airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

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Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery.