‘Lanterns’ Episode 5 Deep Dive

Hello. Welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson, and she is someone who has experienced the pleasures of the galaxy. It's Mallory Rubin. You know, it's less about preference and more about opportunity. Set them up, knock them down. It's Lanterns, episode five. Mallory and I are here to talk about the latest episode of the HBO series, Lanterns. We're really excited to dive deep into that right after this. All right, quick programming reminders. Yes. It's almost your birthday. Sheesh. I'm old. You're beautiful and luminous. I'm washed. Your creamy coolness will always delight me. It's almost your birthday, and we're doing a very special episode for your birthday later this week, which is Mallory Rubin Pivot to Horror Special. That's right. We're seeing Resident Evil. Yes. We're going to talk about that. Yeah. You're going to watch it from my lap, as we mentioned on the Buffy pod last week. Yeah. And then we're also going to talk about some of the other horror movies that you've been watching lately. And then what I was going to ask the bad babies to do, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com, is send some other suggestions of other horror movies that you should maybe check out. You have watched Nosferatu. Yes, and Weapons. And Weapons. You're going to watch Obsession. I am. Maybe Back Rooms. If time permitting, yeah. But what are some other recent horror classics that you think Mallory would enjoy that hopefully does not have any animal mutilation in it? I would prefer to avoid that, though. I know that's waiting for me in one of the films we just mentioned. Yes. The V-V-V-Vitch you're thinking of watching? That was, I would say, there were a lot of recommendations to check that out in the Instagram comments. For the little, the Weapons IG reel that I posted. You know, I've just dipped a toe into the bloody waters and. Let's take the plunge. I'm eager to keep waiting further. Let's just dive in like Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy in a cool, cool pond, but make it horror movies. So that's what we're doing later this week. I'm excited. I am. And then more Lantern coverage. Yeah. And something else that I haven't figured out yet while you're gone on vacation. That's right. Will you just do a direct-to-camera reflection on how much you miss me while I'm gone? It's the Avengers Endgame, like, re-release, right? That's right. So maybe I'll just spend the podcast recounting the plot of Avengers Endgame. Does that sound like a good use of my time? Just solo into the camera? Pretty popular podcast. And I feel like the runtime will be about correct for one of our podcasts. Yeah. You know, it sounds great. I look forward to consuming it from afar. I'll miss you while I'm gone. When I get back, we get to, I mean, we're just mere days away at that point from Vision Quest. We get to revisit WandaVision. What a thrill. What a time. It's your birthday, then you're on vacation, and then it's our anniversary, and then it's my birthday. Half a decade together. That's wild. We have yet to make a dinner plan. We need to do that. Sure. We need to settle on a date night, you know? Should we invite the team? Yes. They're here and they're listening to us. So yes, I think we should invite them. You guys available? Love it. No. Lanterns, episode five is what's coming up. Why don't you follow the pod wherever you follow podcasts? Why don't you follow us on social at House of R Pod? Do it. As I mentioned, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. Spoiler warning, Lanterns, episode five, comic book context, here and there, perhaps. Not much today, honestly. And any sort of like deeper comic lore or especially like this episode's really primed for Theory Corner. Sure. So we're going to put Theory Corner in the sort of bottom section of the pod, which is sort of where the comic book lore, I mean, not to say we won't touch upon it here and there, obviously, but I'm saving my like biggest pitch unless I get impatient and just sort of like, you know, pour it all out earlier. Yeah. Until later. There's no spoilers there. It's just rampant speculation. Yeah, yeah. But I feel like we got a lot of clues. In this episode. Yeah. I don't think I'll be able to wait till the end of the pod to talk about that one. No, not that you have to, but like, no, no, we'll talk about it. I'm just saying like, will I wait to lay out my full case? Maybe. We'll see. Intriguing. Intriguing. Let's go now. Yeah. To the opening snapshot. All right. Starting with our overall impressions of episode five. Many people on the internet are saying the episode title is Lights Out. We're recording this in advance. It's not been officially listed anywhere, so that might not be the name of the episode at all, but that is what I am seeing. What we do know from the credits on our screener is that this was directed, again, by Gita Patel and written by Justin Britt Gibson. Justin's a great writer, but something that I didn't realize until I was doing research for this episode is that he is the brother of actor Daryl Britt Gibson, who played Bishop on Euphoria, among other things. I love Daryl Britt Gibson, and so that's just something that I didn't realize until I was doing research for this episode. It's really fun. And then they are the sons of Donna Britt, who is an incredible writer. So this is a very talented family, which I didn't know. But Justin Britt Gibson wrote this episode. Mallory Rubin. I would just say in any other show, we would call this the battle episode. Would you not agree? Oh, yeah. How does this episode work for you? Does it feel like a battle episode? And if it's so, how does it compare to some of the other ones that we often talk about? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a version of this season where this is the finale. For sure. I was surprised, in a good way, by how much happened in this episode and how consequential not only the action was, but the character beats. You know, we've been talking since the pilot, called pilot, about the glimpses we got in the end sequence that jumped to 2026 of the decimated Macon Ranch and, like, wondering when we were going to see that. Did it happen somewhere between the 2016? Do you think Ailey Ben is okay? Ailey Ben on my mind throughout. In smithereens. In smithereens, I believe. I mean, so many moments to think back on Waylon because of all of the, I've activated my skeletal bomb and am prepared to detonate. And so then, of course, anytime you think of Waylon, you think of Bailey, the alien, Balian. And then you think of Ailey Ben and all of our really good jokes about potential alien names. Ailey Ben and the Macon Ranch. I'm so sorry. You were talking about the decimated Macon Ranch. I just so, like, wondering when that was going to happen. Was it going to happen in the 2016, not only in the show, but in the canonical timeline, right? I would not have predicted episode five. So that was, that was fun and cool. I thought that the action itself, you know, the dark cloud, the darkness, like, vision cam and stuff like that. Video game, POV, first person shooter sort of stuff. Yeah, that was fine, but, I mean, less riveting than the absolutely absorbing one-on-one knock down, drag out, beat down fight between Hal and John, which was the real action. And I think in a way that applies to the show, I think it was a little bit more of a, you know, a little bit more of a, you know, a little bit more of a show overall, where these individual dynamics are the thing that have been so delicious. So coming out of what seems like largely resolution, I mean, make spoilers, we said, like, William Macon is dead. His human heart was cut out of his chest. Zoe Macon, dead. Zoe is dead. Crystal heart cut out of the chest, bullet through the brain. Does that mean we're done with the, Anton, dead. Exploded, went down sad. I don't know. Great scenes, but then at the very end. Yeah, like, exploded in a little cyclone. That seems like a really fun way to go. Fun? Do you think he kind of went, wee, right before he died? Probably. That was probably, we just didn't hear it over the beeping. He had that kind of wee energy, don't you think? Yeah, we just couldn't hear it over the beeping of the skeletal, the skeletal bomb. And the dark, and the sound of the dark. Exactly, the whooshing of Smoke Monster. You know, I, overall, I thought, like, the back half of this episode, the sequence between John and Hal, also the John-Hal car scene at the beginning, all of the John-Hal stuff was really, really good. I thought the final John stretch of this episode, the decision that he makes to reject the ring, the scene with John and Liana, I thought that was just riveting. It was wonderful. I thought that, on the Manhunter front, some of those scenes I thought were really great. Some of them did not work as well for me, and also I have some sort of, like, in-story logic questions about the things the characters are doing as a result of those scenes that I'm, like, eager to talk through today. Yeah. So, overall, I liked the episode. I thought it was really action-packed and fun, and, like, took the characters to, at this point in the season, and, honestly, kind of overall, a surprising place. So, I'm really excited to see where this goes from here. I think we both, as we were alluding to in the intro, have a, ooh, there's maybe another Manhunter, like, candidate inside of this episode, right? At least one. Yeah. And so, I don't know that we're finished with the Manhunter of it all. I don't necessarily know that. But the way that this episode went did at least open up the possibility. The possibility of, are we moving out of Manhunter into a larger Guardian Sinestro, like, finish the season, potentially? I don't know. But I also think, like, if we think back to that True Detective comp that we started with, let's go back to season one. In season one of True Detective, and in season two, and in season three, but, like, in season one especially, right, you've got the two timelines. Yeah. And you're really solving the same case. Across time. In both timelines. And everything you thought you resolved in the previous timeline. Or left open-ended or whatever gets for real resolved in the present day. And so, if they're like, got it, got them. found the Manhunter in 2016 I really feel like 2026 is like oops we left a Manhunter on the ground and we gotta figure out where that person is should we just say right now like we're on Noah Watch I mean we've been on Noah Watch we have been the whole time I think it's impossible frankly to the point where there were so many indicators in this episode that it I don't think they're trying to like to the like wait is that not the case I don't think they're trying to hide it yeah how that manifests I think will be interesting but like yeah we'll go through the clues I think Zoe Zoe giving him like a what did I teach you like for sure and like Billy being kept back to basically watch Noah and also a lot of Carrie stuff too I think I think Billy is also a Manhunter but a less but a less successful one tough for Billy yeah cause here's okay fine you're right I am impatient it's hard not to talk about if I think the there's a lot of like bum bum bum but I do think when we're regrowing John's skin and she's like the machine took a little tissue sample of you right yeah which the machine also probably did when it cured Macon Senior's cancer yeah and which the machine also did when it regrew Carrie's pinky that's right so my thought is when the machine machine takes a tissue sample yeah it grows a Manhunter out of that tissue sample so that Billy is the offspring of Macon Senior and that Noah is this is my this is my theory as well it does also make me and they would it would grow a John but an alien blew up their machine well it still makes me nervous oh yeah I am deeply nervous that the machine has his DNA sample yeah tissue and DNA which is worrying obviously and how you know the weenie blew up they were I mean obviously a lot of the town blew up how much of the the storage at the hospital is made to withstand how many how many people besides Billy and Noah like Billy and Noah for sure I think I would say that this episode and we will every time we get in a scene we'll hit the evidence I would say coming out of this episode I would put the Noah likelihood at like 100% 99% I would put Noah at like 98% and I would put Billy at like 79 85 something like that 75 just like a less like a jankier one less successful is incredible this is so cool and that's why I feel like I feel like Zoe's like oh I'm going to take more I'm going to be more proactive with Noah because we didn't do a great job with Billy but I'm going to do a better job wouldn't that fit the overall story of Stardom Young you know what about you what did you think of the episode overall I loved this episode and one of the reasons I loved it is because you know historically I bump on quote unquote battle episodes when I I don't I think the action is just there for action's sake you made the point about like all of this is a lot of this is anchored in character stuff and I think that's not just true that's not definitely not just true for Hal and John but you know something that they said in the official podcast last week because they were talking about thinking about the story of Hal and John as a love story and I remember years ago talking to Damon Lindelof about Hacks and he was like well Hacks is a love story which he said I think in season one even before it was like so clear that that's what Hacks was about you know what I mean but he's like but all stories are love stories and so that's like that's just a way that Damon who's certainly not the only like brain in this room but like that's the way that Damon likes to approach these stories so even like you know if it's Kevin and Nora and Leftovers it's a more overt love story but regardless this is something that like he is deeply interested which is just sort of like in falling in love with someone else you discover yourself and all these other things and so that's not just Hal and John and the idea of them sort of falling in love with each other not romantically but just sort of like meeting each other knowing each other respecting each other falling out with each other but also the way that like heartbreak and romance infuses all these other action beats the way that like Macon Senior is willing to like lay his heart on the line for Zoe because he loves her the way that Anton's vengeance mission is not just you wiped out all my people but like this is a jilted ex-lover this is a breakup vengeance you know and then John crying as he takes the kill shot on Zoe so this is just sort of like romance and devastation across the board not to mention your beloved Carrie and Hal and so it's just like it's that juice inside of the action beats you know the the video game stretch was just like not for me but like it's not for me but like everything else was like so for me that I just really loved this episode I thought those scenes the Zoe Macon phone call the goodbye um the the , Anton and Macon yeah I thought they were so good that it actually made me a little mad that we hadn't gotten more moments between those characters previously to really appreciate the relationship I just thought this I just thought it was like incredible so I'm really eager to talk about the scenes I loved them as well I thought the John Zoe stuff was fantastic really the only yeah what are you bumping on the Carrie opening scene did not really work for me I have some questions about it it probably was the bangs they were distracted and then I just have some like cohesion in the logic of what Zoe is doing and when but I'm very open to the fact that it's a little unclear potentially still because there is an ongoing mystery that it actually hasn't all been resolved and so that's potentially actually very exciting and satisfying it's possible that all of my questions which are very few to be clear it's like two are addressed over the course of the podcast overall I thought that the episode was wonderful like it's funny you know we finished watching and I just like turned out and we're both like at the same time another banger it's just every episode this season has been really really good and I think again the variance episode to episode while crafting a very propulsive and cohesive story where we feel like we have made a major progress individually for characters and inside of their relationships with each other each episode has done something distinct that's like very difficult yeah to achieve absolutely so the I just am very impressed with it overall I have like a lot of sadness in my heart in a way that I love right I love that I'm so invested in like the Hal-John relationship already and so watching what transpires between them in this episode I found completely wrenching and I think also the what we talked about from the start which is just the shadow of Hal's death and of the many mysteries that we have left to answer one is do these guys reconcile right does John call Hal up and be like guess what I told him I didn't want it right you don't have the ring but I don't have the ring either and don't doesn't Laura Linney suck you know what I mean like can we bond over that does that happen before Hal dies do they even get to talk again at all I really hope so we don't know I mean that would be absolutely yeah that would be like devastating but we don't know but we don't you know and so that that potential of like this never gets resolved and that the John we meet in 2026 is a John who's carrying around the regret of an unresolved conflict or something with him is potentially very juicy yes um okay mailbag really quick rapid fire mailbag before we get into the deep dive our listener Rosie I just thought this just cracked me up Rosie wrote in to say was Sinestro always called that because like his name is just Sinister right no one knew he was bad I guess it's the same as walking around being named Doom question mark Doom is certainly yeah or like I don't know it has real brotherhood of evil mutants as well like you know Maleficent you know what I mean like it's just the vibe I feel like as an experiment maybe people have done this nevermind this is gonna go poorly let's move on okay Matt is saying Matt wrote in asking for clarification on the hologram works okay and I wanted to see the little like the the chip yeah that was a like he whittled it what it really reminded me of was like fire making on Survivor oh sure you know the way you like strike the flint to send a little spark yeah do you think that Hal Jordan is a big Survivor guy um no give me a scene between Hal and Jeff Probst right now 0% Hal watches Survivor but I think he whittles like my grandpa used to whittle and so it reminded me of whittling but yeah it's also very like fire making sparky but like my question is didn't it seem like a little chip of the ring came off with that maybe just like an effervescent spark but like but I was just like are you chipping away at your ring buddy like how many times can you activate sentry protocol well well listen put it where exactly on the blind ranking you know the whole blind ranking trend is a thing that I don't totally understand by the way on the internet but it's everywhere maybe we'll do one for social and see how it goes it's like two years old or maybe like four yeah but just get to your Instagram uh no but it feels very very prominent somehow right now in a way that made me feel it was newer than it apparently is um I look we knew that the charge the ring's ability to hold a charge this was like the the checkoffs oh god the ring's out of charge I've got some notes for our guy Hal Jordan on his um readiness and tactics and planning as we always do you know Hal's a flawed character it's part of the appeal part of it makes him interesting the ring we made the iPhone comp already we made the charger comp already we talked about this earlier in the season the ring in the heat of battle being like 5% bud we're out of juice bud and Hal having to say no shit the ring is officially at it's not just the iPhone comp It's like the iPhone that's a couple years old and the new iOS update has rendered it incapable of properly functioning because it can't run liquid glass. You could probably tell from this how old my phone is. The very specific sentence and comment. So it's like, this is the best that we can do? Really? With the power of the ring? We need to, what if you're actually out in fucking space? Now, is this just about Hal not having a shit together? I mean, where are you supposed to hold, is the lander supposed to be on your belt at all times? Like you're an old-timey prospector? Fucking pocket dimensions. Okay, yeah. So get like a pocket in your suit that's actually a pocket dimension and keep the lantern there. The lantern should be on your, if you can hide it somewhere and it's not clanking around on your hip, you should have your lantern on your person at all times. I mean, I agree. So shoddy work from Hal as usual, but like, this is just the real limit. Whomst among us has not been caught out without our charger? It is relatable content. It really is. Did Arjuna get a text from you during Comic-Con that said, can you bring a charger to the bar? And did he bring a charger? To the bar? Yes. And then you left it there. And then I left it there. Yeah, I remember that. So, you know, don't give me a lantern, that's for fucking sure. Arjuna's like completely that's fine face when I said that. Anyway, so here's my, here's our understanding. It's a backup of Hal's consciousness. So sort of like a Hal-flavored AI. So it's not like, the question was like, how can it know certain things? It's not just a Hal. It's an AI with like a Hal skin on it, with like a Hal flavor. Would you not say? So this sounds delicious and very appealing. Yeah. And, you know, the, the like uploaded to the cloud consciousness part of it is, is where the awareness of Hal's specific experiences come from. But yeah, the idea of being connected to some larger like web, right? Yeah. I think the fact that like when Hal, when the Halogram interacts with John in the first episode, he. He has to learn through the course of that conversation, what year it is, indicates that he's not. He's not been used. And he's thus not updating. And is, no, I mean, like clearly not updating. The hair is a different color, but like. But I mean, like, he's not updating beyond the Hal, direct Hal upload either. Like he's not like current on all circumstances in the world outside of Hal's direct experience. Right. It seems like he's like air-gapped. That's not what air-gapping is. Air-gap means you were never connected. And I know that. But it seems. It seems like he's like basically like offline until he's activated, right? Or uploaded. I guess. Because he doesn't know anything. But why was. He was on the alert for the aliens hail in Rushville. Right. That's right. So like that was sort of the source of this question was like, how could the Halogram know about the aliens in Rushville? And I guess my answer was like, he left an AI monitoring it. And that AI just happens to like look and talk and think like Kyle Chandler's Hal Jordan. Yeah. But then he's not. He's aware of like things in Rushville, but he's not like it's. Maybe just woke him up when like something weird happened in Rushville. I don't know. I feel like that like has to be the case because otherwise it doesn't totally track that in that conversation with John. He's like, where are we in time? The reality though is this is just a chance for me to take a victory. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do it. On a reference, which I said I thought the Halogram was inspired by Quantum Leap. And we had the chance to ask Damon Lindelof this. Off pod. And he said, indeed, it was inspired by Quantum Leap and also Ghost, which is interesting. But Quantum Leap. And then he like had the young writers in the room watch Quantum Leap. And they were like, hey, this show isn't very good. And he was like, damn, that hurts. So Quantum Leap. A lot of Ghost references lately. Blawdron brought up Ghost when we were talking to him about Chad Powers on Prestige. It's referenced in Practical Magic 2. Is it? How was that? You know, Lee Pace sure is hot. He is. It's just unbelievable. The wigs are great. And the production design is wonderful. You've yet to say anything about the movie. Well, those are all parts of the movie. About the quality of the film? The story? OK. More Joey King forward than I was anticipating. Interesting. Did it work for you in terms of just nostalgia? Well, I like Practical Magic. I know. But it's not like my favorite movie ever. Did you pick Practical Magic 2 for your hype draft? I sure did. But I was just being myself. That was after I picked the Vampire Lestat. And I was like, oh, it's time to just lean into vampires and witches. I was just spitting out at that point. Yes, it's in my hype draft. I love it. It's going to make some money. OK. My screen was full. People seem to be having a good time. I don't think it's a great movie. But I think it's wildly unnecessary. Lee Pace is extremely hot. I enjoyed watching it. When the old score kicks in, you're just sort of like, ah, focus, focus. Practical Magic. It's that time. A lot of Practical Magic reels in my Instagram last night. And I wondered why. And then, of course, very quickly, I realized Lee Pace. Even though he wasn't really in any of those videos. Connected via the algorithm. Anyway, the point is, I was right about Quantum Leap being a nice bill for Hologram. And it feels really good. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Love my dusty old references being important. OK. I was there. Adam wrote in with some well, actually, about the weenie, which I thought was really interesting. Oh, OK. Adam says, I currently work for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts on the team that runs daily operations at Disneyland. But earlier in my career, I was responsible for teaching new hires. We covered the idea of the weenie, a famous Walt Disney concert. A concept that was a bit misrepresented in this episode. Walt got the idea from his dog, whom he could lead anywhere with a weenie. Wanted to come inside, just put a weenie there, need him in the car, show him a weenie, et cetera, et cetera. The weenie isn't a central location that everything is built around. That is a separate concept of Disney theme park construction called the hub. Almost all Disney parks have one. It's a central location where all the other lands bridge off of. At Disneyland, that's where it, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, a weenie is actually an attraction or a piece of infrastructure that is highly kinetic and draws your attention away from the central hub and into a new area. Basically, it is a visual magnet. At Disneyland, examples include the Astro Orbiter in Tomorrowland, the whirling lights of the carousel as seen through the castle, the golden spires of the Mark Twain riverboat as it docks in Frontierland. So, I think they were kind of using it both ways in the episode. Like, this idea of, because they were calling, like, the thing that was being hidden the weenie. Yes. And compared it to, like, Cinderella's castle, I think, right? Or Sleeping Beauty's castle. Sleeping Beauty's castle. Where, in fact, the weenie is, like, the helicopter. It was, like, what's supposed to draw your eye to a certain thing. And it was interesting on the official podcast, because the writer of that episode did use it sort of correctly on the podcast, but it's sort of anyway. Here's the thing. Led to an incredibly rich series of weenie jokes in the rest of the episode. And that's what really matters. All of which I appreciated and enjoyed. I just thought that was interesting Disney lore, and I wanted to share it. The hub versus the weenie, two different concepts inside. I'm not, like, a huge amusement park head. You're not a Disney adult? I know. Well, not, that's a different thing. I mean, like, the people who are obsessed with, like, parks. Yeah. And watch, like, YouTube videos about all the various parks. Yeah. I'm not, like, one of those people, but I do think the fact that there is, like, a science behind the layout of all these things is very interesting to me. I mean, it makes sense. Psychologically interesting to me. Okay. Many listeners in the comments and our emails let us know that we got the movie reference incorrect, they believe, in last week's episode. Yeah. Yeah. We had wondered if they were referencing Raiders of the Lost Ark. Right. I suggested perhaps Monuments Men or Lethal Weapon 2, but a lot of our listeners believe that the reference was set it off, which they literally say. They do. If you move, it'll set it off. Yeah. Good movie. Great movie. Not familiar with this film. It's a great movie. Haven't seen it. Didn't occur to me. I thought, because I thought for sure they were, like, I thought for sure they were referencing, like, the device. Yeah. But they were referencing the phrase that they just said. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great movie. And then our listener, a couple of our listeners wrote in about a number of other female lanterns. I think thinking, perhaps I misspoke and said that Jessica Cruz is the only female lantern. I guess I was just talking about her as one female lantern. There have been several others, and our listeners wanted to make sure that that, that we knew that that was the case. Women can be lanterns, too. Love it. Love it. Of the green variety. Anything else you want to mention before we get into the deep dive? I don't think so. I'm sort of in real time trying to figure out my power ranking of favorite episodes so far, because they've all been so good. But maybe we do that at the end of the season. Or maybe we never do it. They've really just all been good. I'm not as, like. Good season of TV so far. I'm not as high as you are on, like, every single one, but I do think this was fantastic. I think the pilot was really good. And I think, I think having that, where it's just sort of like you've, if you start really strong, you've got some strong middle, and as long as they finish strong, then, like. I know. It's exciting. That's a solid. Like, it doesn't feel good. I don't feel like it's diving off any kind of cliff, which is sort of our fear. No, the opposite, if anything. It really feels like we've got serious momentum heading into the final three of the season and, you know, whatever awaits for the Lanternsverse beyond that. So, it's just, it's exciting. It's been an exciting season to watch and talk about, and I'm hyped to see where it goes from here. Let's go now to the deep dive. All right. Carrie joins the flashback bangs hall of the show. The flashback of fame. Look, you're on my mind often. Rarely. Yeah. Has there been such a powerful, undeniable incursion into the inner sanctum of my mind than when I saw these bangs? Mm-hmm. I, you were thinking of me, and you were thinking of Dr. Jack Shepard. Yes, exactly. I mean, this is going to be, I assume, a historic wig watch TM with Joanna Robinson TM. I don't think there's much. I think we can all. what's happening with this wig. not much scholarship required here but here's I mean here is the here's the gold star I will give them yeah they made fun of it in advance you know for Hal to say last week I see why you dished the bangs is they're making fun of their flashback wig in advance and for that I give them all the credit in the world right it was so when she showed up I was like that's just funny honestly also just incredible to get the like close up shot in the rear view mirror in the car first so that there's just it's like it's just bang so high and it's just bangs and then we get to appreciate the whole you know the leather jacket the boots the whole hairdo in full also just the 2007 you know the chyron popping up the timeline like we're out of the sixes so that's also kind of discombobulating in a fun way yeah maybe the big things that happen in Carrie's life happened on the sevens instead of the six could be anyway the bangs are here cat eyes sharp enough to kill a man also the eyeliner's here making her way to Rushville car breaks down she pushes it she's a badass right she's got the leather she pushes her car to the cafe we get to go past the Rushville sign 1001 the population of Rushville a very effective way ahead of what is to come to just like remind you say like oh small town but then you're like a thousand people were there as this place was just blown to bits right so that was oh good stuff like that two goons from Gotham intimidate her at the counter task crossover when Sunday night HBO biker gang possibilities penguin just asking questions penguin meets task meets lantern I am in okay I'm in they all have to talk a bit more like our guy Colin Farrell though okay I thought you were gonna say like Carrie and I was gonna say that I'm back out but if it's like Oz yeah back in so Carrie insists them that she's not a thief and they claim it's in the genes right like that like father like daughter essentially it's in the genes interesting feels like first of many just sort of huh yeah you know that's obviously they're not talking about manhunter cloning machines but you know there's this idea and what's really important here is that Carrie lets us know I mean she's being pursued for the sins of her father sort of according to her but also her dad sucked even before he did all of this she was like guess what he was never much of a father to me anyway yeah so when Carrie is talking about her son Noah talking about her role as a mother like this is a big I have something a bit to prove sure here right my dad sucked I know what it's like to have a parent who's not looking out for you all the time that is not the person I want to be right yeah I liked that part of it giving us a little bit of a glimpse into Carrie's just overall history and personal history and what the Gotham flight was sparked by and why and also just honestly like learning how recent that was to the primary timeline of the show which even though we've moved forward into 2026 at the beginning of episode one like the show was largely and we've moved into the past the show was largely set in 2016 so this is like within a decade of that which was is Noah nine like did they cut off the pinky and clone the kid like well if so in the 2026 ending of episode one Carrie tells John when he asked how Noah's doing he's all state so that makes me in high school he's in high school still so he's like could be 17 or 18 and that's yeah so like that's 10 years after the 2016 timeline then so it could be eight seven or eight yeah okay does that kid look seven or eight I can never tell I don't know I guess so yeah I'm just saying it wasn't long before this kid arrived right after she arrived to Rushville yes that's the point I one of the things I didn't like love about this opening scene which just kind of couldn't measure up to the rest of the episode for me I don't know I don't necessarily think other people are going to feel this way about it but I found the like on the one one hand the connected DC universe thing is something I like this is something we like in comic book storytelling it's all kind of like always fun to like think about Gotham right we had talked at the very beginning of the season okay Carrie Kane what family might Carrie be from the Kane family and Gotham that's interesting to think about the connection to Martha Wayne etc we'd like talked about some of this earlier in the season I thought that something about the like repeated uh moments of invoking her father and the thing that he had done and these ties to the crime families and like but without actually telling us anything about who these people were to be like sort of clunky and weird like it felt like a way to wink to a larger DC universe and give us some of that fun connective tissue without and maybe that clarity will come but it doesn't really feel like it's relevant to the story oh I would far prefer this to like her being a secret maroney or something you know like I don't want any of that and so I but then I'm like why do we need this like because we need to know we need to know why she's on the run that she has she comes from a criminal background I think is important and then I think her issue her daddy issues are important they're just trying to give us a bunch of like it was really quick background I'm not saying it's the smoothest thing it's ever been it was a little too it just like tipped a degree or two into like multiple mentions of the dad I felt like I kind of couldn't help then as a consumer of these stories be like okay we've talked about the Kane family possibility are they who are the biker gang is this like you know is it a street demons group are the bikers that are working for the Maroney's like I don't know they triggered your BBY brain and it just didn't do that to me and I would push back a little bit because like it's literally like three lines before Zoe shows up to like crack a neck like it's so quick the end which I have another question about the Zoe biker dude the goon bargain that they make at the end of that but like the fact that that guy goes back into that universe leaves open the possibility that those characters could come into play in this story which like doesn't feel like it I don't think they should it doesn't feel like that belongs in this story so then I don't know it just felt like a little less expertly rooted in the place and identity and voice and tone of the show than like maybe every single other scene we've got gotten to this point at least for me we would prefer that she not be from Gotham at all not necessarily because again I feel like this felt like a little bit twixt in between and what it was trying to do maybe I don't know I will say I'm just really glad it's not like a much more overt like I think me too I sort of like I got anxious that it was leading to that possibility which I don't think necessarily belongs here I agree with you about what it primes us for about thinking of Carrie as a parent given how Carrie thinks about her parents I think that was well done I also liked something like in this very opening stretch here you know your father was a snitch that makes you a snitch by association like language like that is very purposeful and smart right by association while we come out of this episode with the clarity you know we will get to the scene between Carrie and Hal out in the street right like we see right here in the cafe sequence that Carrie is brought into Zoe's cult immediately so Carrie knows everything right as we were on Carrie Watch a lot of these characters died like we have already talked about right Will Macon gone Zoe gone Carrie is in this interesting place in this episode where there was a connection to this thing but also like telling Hal more than she necessarily needed to tell Hal helping John at the end right there's a tether to them still certainly and again we have the glimpse of Carrie and John in the future from the first episode of the season so then that by association language it's like well wait given everything that John and Hal learn in this episode and everything that happens in this episode where does that leave them with Carrie like one of the things we've talked about already that I was struck by was like the affection that seemed to be on display between Carrie and John in that conversation like the tenderness yeah in 2026 like how's Noah I think that's because she saved his life at the end of the day yeah yeah but then how do they yeah like you would maybe know the answer to that if you had been in touch so I guess it actually implies like we talked about before that they're not in touch but that they left on whenever they last engaged in a good enough place to like greet each other warmly I'm curious about that I think the by association and it's in the genes has something to do with like more interesting in our assessment of Zoe if she's not just blatantly manipulating everyone that she kind of like feels the things that she feels and also like was grateful to Abin Sir for giving her another chance but then also the primary programming is mine own survival over all else so like is it convenient for Macon Senior to be under her spell yes do I also think she has some and feels like sad that he is surely about to die yes but him dying her affection whatever affection she has for him or whatever affection she has for John etc etc is not as important to her programming as her own survival that is the ultimate pinnacle of her purpose and so this idea of like what is your nature and so for carrie to show up and be like the law and order of the town but she comes from this criminal background and when we meet her like it's a like the cult thing which we've been talking about because that's what happens in the comics this like manhunter cult but like i think what's so interesting there's a reference in this episode when uh and we'll we will get to all of this but when john says uh when hal says to john in the car you were never going to replace me junior that's an untouchables reference right here end of the lesson right and so thinking about why are they thinking about the untouchables there's two reasons to think about it one is that the untouchables like training day is like a yeah uh by the book cop uh is taken under the wings of uh you know kevin costner meets sean connery sean connery's like this is the chicago way this is how we do it here like you know that i'm gonna teach you how to navigate these streets but what's also true about the untouchables so like a very like training day sort of you know like the untouchables like the untouchables like the untouchables like the have your eyes open to the wider world sort of thing yeah but the other thing the untouchables is about is about a mob boss who rules an entire city right and so zoe macon is a cult leader on one hand but she's all she's al capone right yeah she like has the whole town under her thumb because they all owe her right and so she's got the law and she's got this that and the other thing and she's effectively the mayor of chicago which is what they say about al capone and the untouchables and so i just like i like this idea of carrie as this i mean it's not just like sort of like a venal sort of a person but like because she feels like she owes which is what this whole you know flashback sequence is showing yes showing us yeah she feels like she has no other choice and of course as we were watching buffy or any other story we know that there's always a choice not always a good one but there's always a choice you know yeah i think like you you know what you were saying about zoe a few minutes ago about um feeling the pull to believe that there's something authentic there same thing with carrie repeatedly including in this episode when she's like i'm trying to keep this town safe like i believe that and think it's true the question of whether the bargain that these characters make is the right one to make or worth it is a really interesting thing you know i also i believe her especially like if like protecting noah is something that is sort of like encoded into her uh whether naturally via maternal instinct or like the brainwashing of like protect this thing that's so important i don't know but i also think it's interesting we've been tracking this with macon senior the way in which they sort of like repeat certain language and so the way in which the word peace is repeated multiple times in this episode where she was like carrie's talking about preserving the peace or peaceful here before you came here all this sort of stuff like that and zoe says the same thing right like howl has to die and if i let's die peaceful rain once again here you know and so it's just sort of like the words out of zoe's words coming out of her mouth and she's like all these other characters mouths yeah it's just the way in which she has brainwashed and programmed all of them i believe carrie also yeah that there is something about her yeah that fundamentally like does want peace and calm and quiet and community um but also has been brainwashed a bit to say certain things make it too you know dating back to like the beginning of what we heard him say about yeah that's what that's the first time we had that conversation about his philosophy yeah all of it and they've done a really good job of getting it right and so i think it's really interesting to hear what you guys have to say about that i think it's really interesting to hear what you guys have to say about that i think it's really interesting to hear what you guys have to say about that i think it's really interesting to hear what you guys have to say about that i think it's really interesting to hear what you guys have to say about that and i think it's really interesting to hear what you guys have to say about that and i think it's really interesting to hear how this would have taken root so deeply in the way that this group of people functions with each other like it's it's because we actually don't know very many of them but we have a clear sense of that reality that they share together like we just know the makings you know we've seen like the football coach be called upon and put on the spot at the town hall meeting etc when uh yeah when there's a dead goon and the question is what do we do here? And Zoe says, call Bitsy, tell her we need a table for one. I mean, first of all. Who is Bitsy? Who is Bitsy? I would like to know. I would like to meet Bitsy. But also. Kin to Bailey and kin to Ailey Benn? What do you think? We need a table for one is. That's some real mafia language. Oh, no question. And even just the fact that Zoe was comfortable doing that, snapping the neck, the clavicle push with the cafe. And no one blinks. No, it's like this has. This is the way that this. This goes, right? And so, like, the idea that everybody, you know. Everybody knows. Last week I asked you, like, is it possible that there is one degree of removal and protection still where everybody. Since the town hall meeting in episode two, we're like, okay, the entire town is in cahoots. That felt clear, right? The hush that fell over the room, the fact that they were talking about something that they could not reveal to Hal, the fact that everybody, everybody wanted them gone. Were you talking about me? It's just an incredibly compelling moment still. The question that I see still had as recently as last episode was, like, is that the same thing? Does that have to mean that they know that they have made this bargain? They know that they are benefiting in this way? The crops grow. Nobody's at the hospital. The children are thriving. All the things we heard. Do they know who exactly is actually responsible for that? Not who in theory, but literally that it's Zoe. And so it was fascinating to see not just that the answer was yes for Will Macon, for Carrie, but the extent to which that was true, which brings me to the point which brings me to the thing I'm struggling with, actually. Yeah, what you're bumping on. Which is, like, I don't quite know how to reconcile a couple different things that feel undeniable for Zoe. Tell me. We see, I have, like, a much smaller Carrie version of this, actually, which is not as important, but, like, I guess very quickly because the pinky, the cutting of the pinky, that we're sending it back. We're going to, you know, we're going to craft a fiction, right? We're going to agree the goon will come back. He will go back. He will show the pinky as proof that he killed and buried Carrie. She's dead. But, like, we know from a previous episode that Hal was able to just, like, look her up. This character is dumb enough to, she's on the lam pretending to be dead. They sent the pinky back to convince the people trying to kill her that she's dead, but she doesn't change her name. And she's calling back to Gotham. Like, that, That's a good question. That stuff in this, that's just, like, one degree off in this episode from, like, I think the level I'm expecting from the show at this point. I think there have been these kind of wheels rattling on the show from the beginning. Yeah, this is, I don't think this is, like, This is the first time that it was, like, I was, like, I find myself distracted by the questions I'm asking myself, like, as I'm watching. That hadn't happened for me previously. Okay. I feel like you'll have the good answer for me maybe on the Zoe front. The Carrie one, I think, just kind of, like, doesn't make sense. I'll have to move a little bit in and out of scenes here, but, okay. So, you mentioned already the Avon story. There's the conversation between Zoe and John. I also thought that scene was wonderful. It's, like, wonderful. I'm, you know, flashbacks always leave open possibilities, but, like, I don't want to actually be, I don't want Zoe to be, like, gone. Oh, I know. This has been a wonderful performance from Porna. It's been fantastic. Okay. So, the idea that the, that primary directive, protect myself at all costs, preserve myself at all costs, and there are other, we can get maybe to the theorizing when we get to the theorizing, when we get to that scene, there are potentially other possibilities. I agree with you. It's, like, compelling for that to actually be true, right? If it is, though, how are you reconciling the number of people Zoe is allowing to know that she is the Manhunter with the absolute need for the Guardians to think she's dead and nobody know that she is alive? And you could, I got myself to the point of being able to say the people who are, like, in her thrall who have made this bargain that there's enough of a calculus and confidence that they don't want to die. That, like, Carrie knows and Macon Senior knows but not everyone in the town knows that there's, like, a crystal heart inside of that body. Yeah, but, like, even just, like, this sequence with Carrie, it's like, okay, there's a confidence on display there that, like, I can reveal something about my nature. The fact that the guy tending the counter at the cafe sees that she can just snap this dude's neck with her bare hands. Like, they know she's superpowered. I feel like they know she's superpowered. Also, they're benefiting from endless health and wellness. Like, they know there's a superpower being there, right? So, she sends this biker guy back to Gotham and is just, like, don't basically say anything about any of this and that's, like. Or I will kill your family. And that's good enough? I don't think. It's a great question but I think. But I think that's. I think that's a reasonable question. I think the only answer I could come up with for that is it goes back to her. fear of raising a larger alarm. That it's just, like, whatever she can do to try to figure out how to have fewer people come to Rushville the better. So, like, going back to sort of, like, they should have just killed Hal. But she's like, if we kill a lantern here, more lanterns will come. You know, if, like, if we kill these Gotham goons here and neither of them come back. It draws more attention. It draws. More goons will come. And so, she's like, let's try this and if this doesn't work. Yeah. then I'll kill everyone who comes to. to Rushville. Yeah, and I guess in an episode very, very centered around the idea of the bargain, then that becomes a version of that for Zoe. That Zoe has to make bargains and decisions, too. I guess that is. It is very much a social contract, like. For sure. sort of situation. I hear what you're saying. I don't disagree with it. I do think that. It's, like, it's nagging at me a little bit. There's something. I don't know. But, like, I don't. A thousand people had to keep this secret. People who left the town had to keep this secret. How often do they kill new people who arrive? Like, does that. Does everyone who arrive, like, get to stay? Or do they just sort of, like, try to, you know, in a Music Man fashion? and cold-shouldered them out of town. You know what I mean? Just sort of like, pay up front, leave. Yeah, no one was just passing through, got hurt, had to go to the hospital. I was like, why is no one here? I mean, maybe that has happened many times. So I don't know. Something about that didn't totally click for me in this episode. Interesting. All of the emotional beats, all the story arc stuff, that's like kind of almost a core mythology of the Manhunter in the show thing that isn't 100% locked in. For me, I'm just asking questions. Everything else in the episode, I think it's great. I think it's great to ask questions always. As you know, I love questions. I think for me, because the emotional truth of the episode feels like it lands perfectly, that matters more to me. But I don't disagree with your question. I guess my follow-up question to that is, what do you think the Guardians knew and when did they know it? Or is it the Guardians as a whole or is Lyanna rogue-agenting? Or is it Lyanna rogue-agenting this thing? Like, do all the Guardians know what's going on in Rushville or is it just Lyanna who knows what's going on in Rushville? Yeah, I mean, I think that we've been on, huh. Just the one Guardian. Just the one, like, corner for a while. And it definitely is possible that there's a, this is season one of a larger story we intend to tell and so we will introduce more Guardians over time answer to that. Something, was it last episode? Yeah, it was last episode that Lyanna was like, I checked in with all the other Guardians and I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. So it had the air of like, that's the thing you say when you have definitely not done that thing, right? 100%. In a fun way, in a way that got our theory brains racing. So, yeah, Lyanna feels to me like she is operating independent of the larger whole. We have no information one way or another, but like, if I had to pick, I would say rogue Guardian agent. We have some emails about this that we can talk about in the sort of spoilery lore section. But if it's, like, what does Lyanna, because it feels clear, you know, Lyanna is so unsurprised by the Manhunter heart and the bag. So it just, like, seems clear that she knew what was going on there. Did she know, how long has she known that a Manhunter was there? Is that why your question previously was like, she seems to want to get the lanterns out of Rushville? Gone, yeah. You know, is it because she knows, is she somehow involved in what happened with Abin Sur? Like, you know, how far back does this go? How deep does this go? All the way to the top, who knows? Yeah. But like, if that's the case, if that's the case, if Zoe's operating, let's say, just theories within theories, but like, if Zoe's operating in Rushville, and there's one guardian who, like, knows she's there, and, like, is like, you can hide there as long as you don't, you know, make a scene outside of this town or something like that, if there's some reason that Lyanna has struck a bargain with her, you know, make me a new Manhunter army in this town, something like that, you know, like, that would allow Zoe to, like, operate a bit differently than if she's, like, not a single person can know that I'm here, you know? Interesting, yeah. That's. I don't know. I genuinely don't know. That's an interesting possibility. To this point, and even just, like, the. Lyanna holding that heart had, um. I don't know. It made me think of, like, a kid who has fucked up, and, like, they get to somehow, at the last second, cover it up before their parents found out. It had that. There was, like, an air of relief, that this had been. This loop had been closed, and, like, probably it hasn't, but that she maybe thought it had. That's interesting. So, the thing that Anton said to John in episode two. And, like, one thing I'm trying to keep in mind watching the show, even with, like, there's a. We'll get to this later, but the way that previously Hal had said to John, like, weakest member the Manhunter attaches to, and then Anton says to Hal, strongest member, and I was like, oh, fun. Like, Sinestra was trying to put a wedge between Hal and John with the. the weakest thing, you know? And then this is the truth and Hal has to confront that. But then when we learn that Anton was in a romantic relationship with the Manhunter, you're like, maybe that's just how he wants to think about it for himself. That is, like, one of the great delights of the episode and show. So, who knows if what he said is exactly true or what, but Anton said in episode two, the scale of our tragedy drew the attention of a green lantern sent by the Guardians. The lantern took the monster into his custody and guaranteed he'd be executed. Why? I do not know. Then we have, the Abin Sur conversation. We had Hal reach the, like, oh, Abin Sur, right? Immediately. John brings it up, as you noted. The response from Zoe. So, like. That's an interesting one on the how often is Hal's gut, right? Like, corner as well, right? It's just 50-50, honestly. You think it's coin flip? I'd say more like 70-30, but. 70-yes, 30-no? Yeah, I think so. Okay, generous. I am very generous, but when it comes to Hal Jordan, there's no question about it. I think he has dazzled you with his rumpled hair, but sure. I've got some stuff to confront on the Hal Jordan front in this episode. But, yeah, so did Abin. So, did the Guardians send Abin Sur with the Manhunter to execute and Abin Sur broke rank, right, outside of the Guardians, and then. Abin Sur got seduced by Zoe. And then Zoe seduced Liana. And then Zoe was just sort of like, everyone. Who hasn't Zoe seduced? And honestly, I get it. Honestly, I get it. Or, like, there's still the Sinestro involvement possibility here, right? Was. Is it possible that Sinestro was the one who actually was tasked with executing the Manhunter and Abin Sur intervened? Is it possible that Sinestro. It was Abin Sur's task, but Sinestro interfered in some way? Is it possible? I mean, there are so many endless possibilities. Is it possible that Liana had, like, sent Sinestro after the other Guardians because Liana's like, I don't want these other Guardians. I want to be the only Guardian. And then if it's that or something like it, then what role did that play in opening up Sinestro's larger, like, are these the people who should be in charge? Here's my ranking of people that I don't trust on this show. Liana number one. Liana number one. Sinestro did nothing wrong. I mean, yeah, you can't even put Sinestro on your list. You love him. Liana, Zoe, right? Yeah. Sinestro. Uh-huh. Yeah. Hal? Hal? He let John. He's working through a lot. Burned to death. Terrible stuff from the car. Terrible stuff from Hal. It was horrible. Yeah. Very sad. John. That's sort of my ranking. Everyone else is. Well, Carrie. Now I don't know if I'm going to do it again. Liana number one. Carrie's pretty high up. Carrie number two. I think that's right. Sinestro number three. Yeah. Zoe number. Only because she's dead and she can't do anything else. Zoe down there. Then Hal. Then John. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about Hal's final lesson to John, right? Final question mark. He says, here I am at the training. We don't know because we still have some blank years in between. John wakes up in the car. He's stuck. Hal comes to look at him. He says, I'm going to have to move you off the game board, right? As John says to his parents later, there's no indication here that Hal plans to kill John. Right. He's just sort of like, you're stuck here. You're not. You can't be part of whatever gambit I'm about to pull off with Anton and Macon Senior and Zoe and stuff like that. I just don't want you in the mix. I don't trust you because you lied to me. So I will give Hal this, that he couldn't necessarily know for sure that the car would catch on fire. But he still left him for dead, which is what John does to Hal later in the episode. So, even Stevens? I think later when John. When Hal says to Zoe about John, one thing I know about that kid is he's not a coward. If he wanted me dead, he'd do it himself. Just a wonderful moment for that relationship. They're in love. What they have actually really learned about each other. I just thought that the end of this episode was so good. So that's different. You know, John, despite being really repulsed by Hal and the active judgment that he shares with Hal directly and then obviously what he says to Liana about Hal and what the desperate need to hold onto the ring has done to Hal is very powerful. He's almost like you're going to live and you're going to like have to live with the regret and the failure and like sit in and that. That's. To the pain. Yeah. That's a little. It feels less bad than what Hal does which is like I. I'm actually not referencing him leaving him in the rubble. I'm referencing him using him as bait with Zoe. Does he know he's going to get the kill shot with Zoe before Zoe kills Hal? No. He can't know that he's going to be able to kill Zoe before. He is like the best sniper in the world and super fast. He is. Of course. And he runs off with his bare feet and he makes it like. But he uses Hal as bait and it could have gone very poorly for Hal. No question. We see how quickly Zoe can snap a neck. She just got caught monologuing unfortunately. It happens. It happens to the villains. It does. It does. It does. Alright. So this was. I will say on the car crash run and just. Because you had asked last week like. Yeah. They're kind of like playing on our. Oh, we had the fun cute opening of the series car crash and John had the ring so he was able to make bubble wrap and then they have a fun little conversation about it. Bubble wrap. Aren't you a genius? And you were like, wait, he didn't have the ring. Like, what if he's really hurt? Like, I was. I don't know. This was all astonishing to me. Like, it had not occurred to me that John would be like on the brink of death after. As a result of this. Like, when the car exploded. That's obviously not this scene. It's later. But like, when the car exploded, I was like, holy shit. Like, I did not think that was going to happen. Obviously, what that allows Zoe to then do so he lets it happen so that she She can say, hey, man, you're extra crispy. Real nice body, but it would be a real shame if something happened to it. I know. The Faustian bargain that so many different characters have to make with Zoe in this episode is really interesting. But my question is, like, has she just found a way to do that with every single person in town? Maybe. And then how many of their children are actually just little, like, you know, 3D printed out the machine? Johnny accuses Hal of trying to take credit for killing Zoe, and Hal responds, we don't kill. And we do see later that he does avoid killing Zoe when he handcuffs her to the helicopter at the cost of many, I would say. Yeah. But he says, I can't speak for the Guardians once I hand her over. John, of course, will kill Zoe. Sure. This is very Buffy and Giles. We don't kill humans sort of thing. But Hal's, like, desire to not kill her is not just this code, this altruism. Yeah. But this sort of, like, I'll let Anton and Macon have it out while I go after Zoe. I'll be on Oa. The big blue bastards are going to be lining up to kiss my ring. Right? This is exactly what Sinestro told him to do in episode four. If one were alive on your planet, that information would be of great interest to the Guardians. Deliver the Manhunter to the Guardians and disgrace Stuart in the process. Tell me, does he speak to the Guardians directly? Yeah. You know, so Hal is enacting exactly Sinestro's plan. And something that I don't think we dug into last week, but something that the writers have made clear, is that, like, all of the bids for intimacy that Hal makes to John in last week's episode, like, when they're digging in the tunnel together and stuff like that, that that was him also following Sinestro's plan. Because Sinestro was like, get close to him, use that confidence sort of thing. And so, like, that Hal has been, yes, sir-ing Sinestro's plan. Yeah. There was a moment when the path could have gone differently because in doing so, he got to know John. And sort of felt for him. But then when John lies to him, he's like, oh, no, back on the Sinestro plan. Yeah. It feels very neatly in parallel and in concert with what John has been doing to Hal. Where, like, John is, you know, up until this episode, right, where there's obviously a major rupture. Working for the Guardians. Yeah. And kind of following the beats of not only the path, but the plan. And doing the things and getting in position to take the ring in those moments. And, like, the long pregnant pause and all of that. Like, but also. That the things that transpire between them when they're both running their games is authentic on some level. And the ability to find those kernels of connection inside of a respective and mutual bit of theater is so, like, delicious to watch. It's funny because, like, this, I mean, this scene, watching Hal here was, like, really harrowing, obviously, intentionally. I mean, first of all, the fact that he's, like, willing to sacrifice the town to. Preserve his own standing is just so damning. Right. On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, it, like, seems so clear that, like, he didn't believe it would go as badly as it goes. Yeah. He seems, like, surprised a couple times. And I was just, like, everyone keeps telling you what's going to happen. Outright says to him, like, she's going to. Yeah. And then the Manhunter just, like, blows up a bunch of stuff. And he's, like, what the fuck? I know. And I was, like, why are you so surprised, Hal? It has a little bit of the, like, you know, the old, like, the J-School, like, negligence or malice aspect to it. But I am kind of, like, Hal is a little bit of a dipshit. So he, like, I don't think that's something he should have been surprised by. It's kind of weird. But, you know, I think on the we don't kill thing. Yeah. For someone so, kill Jesus Christ Jr. For someone so desperate for the ring, you clearly missed the fine print. I think given what we've talked about across the season of Hal's relationship to the oath, something that we know in other ways, he has broken very recently. Right. Like, I don't know that I watched what transpired between Hal and Zoe thinking that Hal would have been unwilling to kill Zoe. Much, I was much more focused on what he's, on what he says here. The other part that you noted of, like, he needs to be able to present the living article to, like, get the. I think if push really came to shove, he would have killed her. For sure. And, like, that he's relishing and mocking John's. You, you, you are obsessed with wanting this thing that you don't even really understand. And then, of course, the question at the end. Of, like, who doesn't really understand it, actually, is. But on the other hand, I really feel like it's more in that sort of Buffy Matt Murdock vein. Sure. Where it's just, like, we don't kill humans unless. It's like, well. Unless I really kind of have to. Yeah. And, like, and, right. You know. And, or, like, you'd make decisions. Self-defense. You had to do it. And you didn't do it with your bare hands. But you made decisions that led to a thousand people, like, being dead. So what the fucking difference does it make? Which is, in some ways, more damning, actually. Right? If you say that you don't do the thing, and then the cost is the same, and then you tell yourself the blood's not on your hands, like, that's so gnarly and fucked up. And I agree. On the other hand, what I think is so interesting about this episode is, like, you know, several characters say what happens next is on your head, right? Like, Anton says it, and Carrie says it, and stuff like that. And I'm just sort of, like, I know you're not saying that, but I'm just saying, like. A lot of blame to go around. Yeah. But I just think that's so interesting. It's, like, is how responsible. It's responsible for a lot of what happens here. Are there other tactics that they could have used? Could we have regrouped and figured out how to come in and, like, grab Zoe in a way that didn't risk all of these people? Does he make a calculated risk and a bunch of innocent, though how innocent are the citizens of Rushville? We don't know. People die. Yes. On the other hand, like, he's not the one setting off a single one of these bombs. Yeah. That's, like, Anton and his crew and Zoe and her incredible tablet and her Yes Man soldiers. I mean, everything in this town's, like, rigged to blow. Yeah. You know, the satellite's waiting above. So I would say, like, on the power ranking of blame, Hal's on the list, but not, certainly not number one. Yeah, number one, Leona. Always. Number two, Carrie. Always. I, you know, what is, to the episode's credit, obviously, and the deftness of the storytelling is that, like, we have the scope of that carnage, right? What happens to all of these people in Rushville and all of the different parties and groups who are involved. Mm-hmm. Who are involved in some way and who bear some culpability, but also who bear the cost, right? Mm-hmm. But you have a scene like this between Hal and John, or obviously a scene like the one at the end of the episode between them, and it's, like, the thing that Hal, this is, I think, just kind of, like, human nature as a viewer or a reader. You're thinking about the bigger thing, of course, but you're, like, it's shocking to see Hal do this to John. It's just shocking, like, the way that that hits you inside of a one-to-one intimate relationship that we're so invested in. It bears such weight. I thought that the, like, the coldness and the cruelty that we saw from Hal here, the moment where, like, because John's leg is pinned, he's trying to get out, when he kind of lurches forward and Hal just, like, leans back. You know, he had been kind of leaning down the window. He just leans back and looks down. I was like, that's, like, villain shit, right? Well, and I think having him do that and Zoe, who is our, like, clear villain. But, like, it's villains all the way down, right? Because it's just sort of, like, we talked about this when Sinestro. And you're, like, Hal's the antagonist to John on the show to a certain degree. And they give Hal an antagonist in Sinestro. And then Zoe's an antagonist over here from the other side. So it's just sort of, like, we're surrounded by. And then Liana, for sure. And please don't get me started again on John's parents. So, like, you know, there's just sort of, like, these, and Carrie, what is she doing? And Noah, we don't trust him. And all of the Macons. So is it just, like, John alone in the world against all of these forces against him? But, like, Hal's fear corruption. Right. You know, which, again, like, we talked about this a bit more in depth in sort of the comic book lore section. But, like, the idea of, like, fear corrupting Hal Jordan is something that has, you know, precedence in the comics. But, like, when he is sort of spitting back Sinestro language. Yeah. Then it's just sort of, like, is that Hal doing it? Does he bear responsibility? Does it make us feel a little differently about seeing him dead in 2026 to know that, like, he was on this corruption path or something like that? Maybe. But, like, also. Also, we have empathy for him because we see some of this corrosive thing happening to him. Yes. I think, definitely. I think there is. I'm still disappointed. Versus the Manhunter is just like, this is just who I am. Yeah, exactly. I think there's a difference between, and this is really, really one of the fun things about the show, villains and villainous acts. Right? And I think that, like, because what is happening. Like, Hal does terrible things in this episode. Like, he, we have such a clear understanding of how Hal has arrived. There's still stuff we don't know about Hal's journey, obviously, to this point. But we understand very clearly how the fear, the insecurity that Hal feels, the need to hold this ring, to keep the one thing in a life now defined by loss that he could not control. Right. Tragedy. And then, and betrayal. Sinestro. Right? And then the decisions that we understand that he has made that have been there since the first episode of the season and the way that other characters talked about him and then we heard him talk about directly in episode four to deprive himself of connections. And so he has arrived at a point where the only tether he has is to this person who he thinks is there to replace him, because he is, and the ring that he refuses to lose because he doesn't know how to define himself. so deeply deeply human that i feel despite watching how air yeah like deeply invested in him and hopeful that we can still find a way forward i think that the sinestro of it all like you you said a couple minutes ago something about to hear him use the language right and like it's not like um you know my replacement to replace me is uh anyone could have said that but we know that sinestro like that hammer moment of say what he really is my replacement so when we get the to replace me here it's just like to understand really fully how sinestro was how effectively the wedge that he inserted the poison in the well took root and how primed how was for that already to have heard how repeat sinestro language similar to what we've been talking about in terms of like carry and make in repeating zoe language i think is a really interesting parallel i also think in a meta context and more responsible people than me refrain from psychoanalyzing the people who make uh these shows but like it's one of my favorite things to do the fact that like the tree let's think about the trio of creatives behind this right um chris mundy tom king dame linda loff yeah these are all men who have had decades of careers behind them right and so this idea of like and then they have staffed their writer's room as they responsibly should with like a bunch of young writers and so like every time you know we see a writer from this one of these episodes interviewed on the official podcast or whatever like this is a different generation of writers so that so like funneling in this idea of like relevancy and sort of like who gets to tell the story and who who still belongs in these roles and stuff like that i think is such a potent strain of this so like hal's sort of like just like that refusal to let go but then like hal can still do his job he's still quite good at his job we see him do it we see me to see in this episode for never charging the ring other than that we get to see in this episode like i really love the moment when he like walks in among like the town see the corpse is already there like figures out the angle of whatever and like that's like great fun so like the shoe leather detective stuff that we get to see from again the 50 50 gut whatever attackers enough to throw the shield up right before the guns come out like great stuff we love that um but to have like a generation of storytellers tell a story about a man unwilling to like let go i just think that's really rich and potent and really interesting um all right let's talk about zoe's final lesson to noah please conclusively final because uh her heart got cut out so i think we're done unless there's some zoe dna in the machine in a different machine somewhere yeah i mean is that possible is the heart necessary to put the tissue around the heart wants what the heart wants i don't know how do you manufacture a new manhunter heart i don't know how this tech works and what i mean what what are we doing with that heart oh what is liana doing oh you're putting it on the mantle with your fungo pops no question about it okay no question about you got to clean off the the blood in the viscera i feel like liana's gonna keep that liana's gonna put it in a in like a case yeah like a like a cube of glass like a signed baseball or something yeah yeah yeah or like the arc reactor or something you know what i mean it's just gonna like go in that and then okay um all right mobilize initiate protective measures seems like everyone knows right like it's a it's a it's a town-wide alert everyone knows everyone battle stations everyone knows what to do yeah except for billy who's like i want to play and they're like no billy your job is guarding noah was the woman who how you know we got some glimpses of heroism from hal amid the to borrow the phrase from liana shit storm um you know how has that woman when he tries to pull the woman out of the car was she like i'm actually not gonna um mobilize and initiate protective measures i'm gonna bounce thank you though do you think cooler guy was trying to leave well here's my question about the people who are at the motel i mean the rip cooler guy because he's the he's the uh legless corpse at the end where with a wife and child i guess uh sort of crying over him but like who the people who stay at motel are they residents of rushville or are they just passing through and if they're just passing through then that's some great question what if they're there what if they're plants to just watch whoever actually is passing through oh great question or like conspiracy is all around also to your earlier question about or the conversation we talked about like sort of this villain antagonist shell game it goes back to like a story we love to talk about which is like to the monsters were the monsters yes to rushville nebraska yeah the monsters the alien invaders are the lanterns without question these are the villains yes um all right so which brings us to noah so zoe goes to talk to noah and she says what did i tell you about spying first he throws her the football and she catches it which was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die which was just i thought iconic do you want to comment on her on his throw her game he's got he's got ground to cover the the lesson that john gave him just imagine it helped yeah clearly um i'm not seeing an all-state arm yet what about her hands the kitchen hands she did great great she did great he repeats back her lesson see what see without being seen right so one it seems of several lessons she's taught him yeah she is training him yeah oh yeah she's training him oh yeah a human child and definitely not a manhunter child for sure i mean that right on the heels of this billy exchange your place is here out of the way the most useful thing he can do right now is to protect you because he's a mini manhunter what else are we possibly supposed to deduce from this well just sort of like let's pretend it's a child and and we care about protecting children um we do i mean yeah we do we do ill time shrug you're like that was on behalf of everyone in the making ranch to be clear protect the children yeah i don't know it seemed this seemed undeniable in the in this scene i think really dead a lot of people you are uh you love are going to you know are going to die today people you know some of them you love are you gonna die he says we'll see but no matter what happens don't forget everything i've told you promise i promise okay yeah among above and beyond the is noah a manhunter question yeah is did noah kill hal jordan in 2026 and does noah know he's a manhunter he knows there's something to learn here i was thinking back to the weird thing we talked about last week with carrie the what am i she was his grandmother what am i supposed to tell noah like was that just i need to pretend for a second that i think she's dead and like i it's as simple as that it's just like a beat of saying something that you think you should say in that moment and then you're like what am i supposed to tell him about being a manhunter exactly but your tutor yeah is now but she knew she wasn't dead so that doesn't really make sense huh uh does little noah know he's a manhunter i'm just like talking about this like it's an absolute lock we have no idea so true but like here's here's the thing about like in terms of like who killed hal jordan yeah it feels like it has to be one of three people a character we know right it's got to be yeah i think well four okay okay john stewart i don't think it is but john stewart i'm unwilling to accept it next i just had to put it on the table i don't think it is but i just had to put it there okay here are my real three suspects okay tell me the family it's carrie it's billy it's noah so the living members of this yeah this core making contingent provided that billy is alive in 2026 which we don't know but we do know that there is an odd noah i think the fact that noah is mentioned right at the very beginning in in the first 2026 scene the fact that noah gets a mention what's noah up to the fact that noah gets a mention also like off the back of something like spoilers spoilers spoilers for mayor of east town if you did not watch that show spoilers for mayor of east town that's a big one hit fast forward twice if you don't want to hear this yeah but why haven't you watched mayor of east town great okay i haven't said it yet because i was talking about other things keep fast forwarding yeah the kid did it yeah you know what i mean so like that feels kind of irresistible so either here here are my main theories okay is there no possibility given that it's a wound to the head that he did to himself yeah okay five yeah john stewart hal jordan carrie billy noah i refuse to accept the john nomination but i am willing to consider all the others um liana oh liana liana is in the mix for sinestro no what if our guy was just out there on the football field out there sinestro did nothing wrong and he's like let me check in on your 40-yard dash time and your three cone didn't like what he saw from hal and he's like they were right you were obsolete boom i think either noah did it or carrie did it to like protect noah well those are upsetting possibilities and i have to say to go back to the the what what zoe says about like i had to do it this sort of manhunter self-preservation thing like is that a possibility for noah where it's just sort of the programming of like i had to do it like if hal finds out that he's a manhunter if what transpired between zoe and john in that conversation is real yeah then it feels like it's there for a reason yeah so i i like where you're going with that theory a follow-up question on theory corner here are we eliminating we got to six there six possibilities i'm thinking back to the possibilities we ran through at the very beginning of the season one of which you tossed out and i think we got emails about this is that definitely how are we like sure it's how is it 100 how are we are we getting are we moving off of the question because i know that was a big topic i think the way that the writers have talked about it yeah makes me feel like that is i think we have always felt it was how But that was a big, like, could that be? And especially now that we're in this episode where it's like, I got a little bit of your skin and your DNA and I made a. It feels like that could, like, pick back up again after this episode. The question of, like, are we sure that's Hal? We think that's Hal. That's the most interesting dramatically. Are we sure that's John? That's an interesting question. Oh, my God! Darkest timeline John with a beard. I don't know what to believe. Good God. Anyway, all of this, like, a lot of people are going to die today. People you know, some you love. Are you going to die? We'll see. But no matter what happens, don't forget everything I told you. You promise. I promise. Feels like a real vengeance-y kind of, you know, vengeance for my grandma sort of thing. On that front, what does Zoe want? We've talked about the primary directive. Zoe wanted to survive. I made it. Here I am. No one's going to kill me. Everyone who I give something to, I grant a gift to. We'll be tasked with preserving and protecting me. So is. But then, elsewhere in this episode. I love all those red shirts that are just out there, just ready to die in the darkness for her. I know. They're just like our queen. Like, was, like, the corn you grew that good? I don't know. I had some. Oh, my God. But if you had, like, super. I have. It's great. buttery Nebraska corn. Wonderful. so good. Wonderful. How do you conquer a community? Yeah. Conquer. Culture. What a cool word. Planet. Yeah. Now, we know from Anton. the history of Anton's people with the Manhunter, like, we know this is the thing Zoe does. But so then with this conversation between Zoe and Noah and our Noah mini Manhunter theories, it's like, well, wait, what is the actual ongoing mission beyond just protect Zoe? I, Zoe, am going to protect myself. Is it take over Earth? Populate the Earth with other Manhunters, is my guess. Here's my thought, is that she's trying to, like, perfect, and this is all just to say, Billy, what a piece of shit. Perfect the art. Like, I don't think that the town is, like, teaming with Manhunters. I really think it's probably just Billy and Noah, I think. Could be wrong. Happy to be wrong. She's trying to repopulate the Earth with Manhunters. And she's like, Billy, first pancake. Didn't really work out. But Noah, this is my, yeah, this is my piece de resistance. And once I master that. First pancake is brutal. Billy, first pancake is brutal. Connor, Connor Roy, I'm thinking about you always. Always, always. You know, and so it's like, but with Noah, they've perfected it a bit, or they're working on perfecting it. She's giving him all of his lessons, all of her lessons, so that they can build an army of Manhunters. He is the future of her people. But also, are they, is he a Manhunter? Or, like, what does the human Manhunter, like, hybrid mean? Like, when we get the very important Anton we couldn't conceive, like, she's been trying to make other Manhunter hybrid types of things. But what does human DNA, because, like, what we know about a Manhunter, Zoe, Zoe can look like any thing she needs to look like. Yes. They haven't really explored that narratively. She's not showing up looking like a bunch of different things, but we know that from it. Like, she looked different elsewhere, or like, oh, she adopted a male persona here, or something like that, you know? Yep. Can Noah shapeshift? Like, can these other, can a Billy shapeshift? You know, like, can these other Manhunter hybrids, if that's what we want to call them? Again, we're just making up lore now, but, like. I mean, the combination of the we couldn't conceive line between Macon and Anton, when Macon is pretending to be the Manhunter, it seems amazing. We pair that with what Carrie says in the conversation with Hal. I fucking owe her. You can never understand what she gave me. What did she give you? A miracle. A miracle. That gives me, I could not have a child, and now I do. 100%. Vibes. That's how I felt, and I think as viewers, we're supposed to think, oh, she grew back her pinky, or, like, freed her from Gotham goons. I mean, growing back your pinky is a miracle. It's not nothing. Yeah. It's not nothing. But I think she's talking about Noah, yeah, 100%. I mean, in Fallout, they just take one from a chopped finger, from a drawer of chopped fingers, and attach it, but it looks gross. No, thank you. No, thank you. It's a pass for you. It's a no for you. All right, let's talk about Hal and Hal and Carrie. We already talked about this, about Hal and the hologram on Chekhov's water tower. Really fun use of the water tower in this episode. The fact that we've had several scenes on the water tower, and then it finds out that it's full of darkness. It was really fun. Yeah, I loved it. Really, really great. I just, I don't know Hal without being able, because Hal's gone, and we can't update the hologram. Maybe he'll update him, because I just really prefer. While Hal is always super hot, I just really prefer. The gray in the hair. You're going to be bummed if we get dark hair hologram. The double RL jacket to the hologram look, so I'm wondering if it's possible to slightly tweak that, but it is still wonderful. We're just, this is like, it's all great. I mean, two Hals, no way. I know, I mean, it's great. Hologram's non-corporeal, though, right? Like, can't touch anything? Well, he's standing on the ground. I'm trying to think of. That's not, so I will just say. Yeah, that doesn't. Non-corporeal rules usually means. We need to see, like, a person interact with him, or him interact with a surface other than the ground, right? A non-corporeal thing in storytelling usually can, like, sit and stand, but, like, it can't pick up things, and hands go right through them. Yeah, so we haven't seen anything to test that yet, actually. The reason I ask is for Carrie's sake, in a real Anya Xander Xander kind of way. Like, does Carrie get to have Hal and the Hal of the day? Yeah. Yeah. Hologram. But if he's non-corporeal, it's not as fun, you know? I mean, my mind is racing in a wonderful way right now. Just wanted to provide that for you. Oh, man. Great stuff. I liked to, like, beginning to think, you know, you'd forgotten about me. We already knew, again, from the John-Hologram conversation in the first episode, like, Hologram has not been called upon in some time, but it was fun to see Hal have to directly confront that. He looks, like, disgusted with himself. Yeah, like, he tucked this part of his life and himself away. Like, sneering at him, you know what I mean? And the way they talk about John. Well, when he says, we drew that, it was incredible. 10 out of 10 Kyle Chandler delivery. Yeah. We drew that. So good. The Texas, like, jumped out. It was so funny. Maybe, you know, I think undeniable number one Kyle Chandler moment in the episode is just the, like, coitus, but this was really good as well. I actually think it's when, right after this, he lands in front of Carrie's car and just kind of smirks at her. Very powerful and important. Very good. Very good. The trainee. Damn, we drew that. The trainee. John. I met him the other day. I like him. You know, so it's just, the hologram continues to tell us so much in very limited screen time. Yeah. Like, we talked previously, okay, what does it mean, given the conversations in the 2016 timeline about how I'm not wearing the suit and the thing, how it says, like, the taco stand, you know, you're not, like, I'm not, like, in the tie anymore trying to impress, right? What does it mean that already at that point the hologram was not in the lantern suit in the upload? But also then. I'm just, like, so much less certain that that means something rather than just sort of, like. I feel, I want it to mean something. Yeah. Something more than I feel, like, sure it does necessarily. But, like, you know, I, then it's, like, okay, the, the, what maybe things had already happened in his life to that point that, that led to some sort of change, but everything we've seen from, there's, like, a, an enthusiasm, right? A positivity. There is not the, like, hard, cynical, lost, and lonely aspect that defines. Daddy betrayed me. Yeah. Yeah. Our, our hell. And so, like, thinking about. Because, like, you know, that's a long time, but it's not really in the, like, scope of a life. But it is. I mean, a day is a long time in the scope of a life. I mean, how. Wait, what's the, what's the math? How old is Hal supposed to be right now? I don't know if we, like, know exactly when he was born. Well, let's say it's 46 to 56. Like, is that what you would say, maybe? Let's see. So, 20, what, what timelines do we have? So, 2016, we know the hologram is from 06. When John, young John. Is watching Hal on TV, that's. 96. 86. The moment is 96. 96. And they allude to 86. Yeah. Which was, like, implied in that 60 Minutes interview that 86 was when he became Lantern. Yeah. Green Lantern. So, does that mean he was born in, like. 66, let's say. Let's say he's 20 when he becomes him. It's all sixes. Yeah. All the way down. 66. But wait, then how old would that make him in the 26 timeline? 60. How old's Kyle Chandler? In his 50s, right? He looks, he just aged, like, oh, he's 60. Yeah. He looks great. Yeah. So, let's say he's born in 66. Yeah. So, let's say he's 40, generously, right? In 2006. Mm-hmm. And then 50 in 2016. So, between 40 and 50, how much does a man really change is the question we're asking. Yeah. And I don't think that in a, in a, I'm in the midst of this, you're about to start this, like, 40s sort of journey. Mm-hmm. I don't think it's a hugely transformative decade, necessarily. Can be. We're all, we're always growing and changing. I intend to change. I intend to evolve. But I just, I think, I think the difference between, like, 20-year-old me and 30-year-old me. Yeah, it was huge. Was huge. Yeah, same. Same. So, just in terms of, like, a consequential decade. Right. Which was your original question. Yeah. And then just sent us spiraling down a, how old is he really? Like, B-roll it and say, oh, it's coming for us. But, like, the fact that just 10 years ago, Hal would not have been threatened by having a trainee, but actually found it kind of cool and interesting. Yeah. That is a big difference. It really is. Yeah. So, that's just, that's, is that just the Sinestro thing? How many other things happened in that, that period of time? Or just, like, feeling younginess. Along your 40 and your. You're still like, I'm still with it. And you're 50. You're like, it's a youth are coming for me. All right. We already talked about a lot of this Carrie and Hal interaction. I will just plus your sort of a miracle Noah question with why don't you think about your son? I am thinking about my son. Like, yeah, that also feels again on the Noah watch. Yeah. So where are you and just Carrie? How Carrie is navigating the bargain she's made with Zoe. The desire to keep Noah safe. What she says at least about wanting to keep the town safe. But that there's still at least a degree of. There's a little chip of a spark off the old Green Lantern ring. Working with, you know, Hal here. I mean, on the one hand, yes. Have you seen Hal? On the other hand, she unloads the gun on him. And like, yes, he's the Green Lantern. He can put a shield up. And yes, she has a plausible reason where she's like, we can be seen but not heard. And I can give you information. And I kind of believe all of that. But also. Like, yeah, if she had hit him with the gun, like. It's done. It's a wrap. It's done. I mean, he survived a gunshot before. And the jacket is amazingly preserved. Not a full clip of a gun unloaded in such a short range into him. Yeah. Yeah. But by the way, these these amazingly powerful satellites. Yeah. We can't we can't hear. We can't hear. Oh, we couldn't be like activate audio. There's too distracted by cloning people to master all the audio tech. They can't be like, you know, it would be helpful to parent the video audio. Oh, man. Oh, boy. All right. Let's talk about Zoe and John. Right. OK. So Zoe heals John a miracle. I'll carry. And then. We hear that John doesn't trust the Guardians, not because not just because of the way they treated him and his family, that that would be reason enough, but because the way they treated Hal. Right. They didn't tell him he was going to be replaced. They just expected me to take the ring. So that's about him. Right. What they want him to have to do. We already knew that he was displeased with that. But like they didn't tell him he was going to be replaced. Yeah. So like that's that's his affection for Hal jumping out. Yeah. And even as he's burnt to a crisp. I know. Because Hal left him in the car. Oh, my God. And the way he said to Zoe, you let me burn fucking inhuman. Fucking inhuman. And so to be able to maintain any degree. Any degree of affection, empathy, even just a desire to understand the capacity to think about another person for Hal is like astonishing and such a credit to John. But yeah, this rejection of, you know, this this this path we're watching to the rejection of the Guardians and also to the path that John's parents put him on. This was this is a really a key moment while we hear from him here. And I think there's the there's the how part of it, but also just the way John thinks about honor. Right. And the way that John because like one of the things we hear John say at the end about Hal is like, you know, the oath, like him betrayed the oath, betrayed himself. But he had the code. Right. The idea of like a code is something that matters to John. We've heard him say elsewhere, like, well, you know, I think it was last episode that we we went back and kind of enumerated the examples from prior episodes in the season of talk of the word like respect coming up. Right. And the idea that you don't have to like somebody, but you can respect them, which Hal then got his version of in the conversation with Sinestro. And when John had talked about, you know, how his father taught him to be a good son, taught him to respect people who help other people and work to save other people. And that like all of this is in the mix with John, all of it. But that there is something undeniably wrong about what Liana is doing in the way that she is doing it. And that John is going to work toward the place by the end of the episode where he has seen what the ring has done to Hal. But also he's like, I'm not going to be a part of this. Is that what he said? Or did he say, I don't want it? I don't want it. I mean, it was hard. It was hard not to type just J-O-N instead of J-O-H-N in my notes the entire time. It's just wonderful stuff. Wonderful stuff. I don't want it. All right. We talked about this sort of like peace conversation that they had. Then they had this sort of skin color conversation, right? When he's getting healed, he says, if I come out white, deal's off. And if you come out darker, my brothers would never let me hear the end of it. I just want to shout out that. So. So. So Donna Britt, who is the mother of Justin Britt Gibson, who I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, as far as I can tell, and I could be wrong, please, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com if I'm wrong about this. But like, I think she's credited with sort of courting this idea of like, when you talk about parents giving their children the talk, in some contexts, that means like the birds and the beads. But in sort of the African-American experience, it means like what it means to move through the U.S. as a young Black person, and specifically, I think, as a young Black person. So like, that idea of the talk as it pertains to Black families inside of America. And so Donna Britt wrote a very significant op-ed in the Washington Post, but a series of op-eds sort of just about this conversation that she as a mother had with her two sons. Especially because her younger, her middle child, Daryl Britt Gibson, the actor, is named after her brother who was shot and killed by, I believe, a white cop. And so just sort of like this idea of the legacy of her brother and, uh, how she was trying to like, really in the mid-90s is when, is when she was writing these op-eds, sort of like in the Rodney King, uh, conversation era. And then I saw that, I found this interview that she gave to, and she and her two sons, Justin and Daryl, gave to NPR after the Trayvon Martin shooting, talking once again about this idea and, and what these two young men learned from their mother and, and what she wanted to impart. But I, I think all of this is interesting just to think about like Justin Britt Gibson as the author of this episode, this idea of like, um, Blackness's identity. The, the fact that, um, Daryl and Justin, uh, are brothers who have one dad and then they have a younger brother who has a different dad. And if you look at all three of these boys together, the youngest brother is lighter skin. So this idea of like two brothers with a darker skin and a lighter skin, younger brother, and all this stuff that John is dealing with and the way in which, uh, Justin could put his personal experience into the film. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's interesting. I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's, I think about Gita Patel as the director of this episode and hearing what Zoe has to say about what it, why she chose this form and what this means to her. And like, though I, I feel wildly unqualified to speak about a lot of this and wildly unqualified, especially to speak about what Zoe says about how being an outsider, you know, is actually the best way to infiltrate and, and conquer. And then the crucible, um, that all of these challenges form for her. I feel that there are people who are going to agree with that and people who are going to disagree with that. And I think that'll be a really interesting conversation. Um, I again, don't feel like wholly qualified to, to weigh in there, but again, I do think it's interesting to think about who wrote this episode, who directed this episode and the choices that were made behind that, you know? Yeah. I, I also, um, I'll be curious to see if like anybody says it. Cause again, we're, we're recording this book, uh, heading into the weekend before it airs. Um, so I'll be curious to see if like, there's anything about this and the official pod or anything, but I, I, you know, I feel like this is also in here because of the big discussion about colorism when Aaron Pierre was cast. So that felt like, uh, connected to that as well. Um, yeah, I, you know, I thought like later in the Anton, um, well, Macon scene when Anton says to Macon, you don't typically take the form of an elite. So, because with anything, any character saying you're wondering if they're being truthful to the other character, but that was like cement corroborating and it felt so emotionally true. What's that? What Zoe was saying to John here, but this look, okay. So what Zoe said there, um, and like to go back and think about in the earlier episode, when she's talking about her husband, what she sees in him, it's like the blonde, uh, you know, uh, a blonde bimbo, essentially like he chose me instead, you know, could have picked. Yeah. Somebody right. Want wants me. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I, I think that, that like, the fastest way to understanding a civilization is for you to start from disadvantage to understand that that is something that Zoe, that the, the manhunter believes and that that's, um, I'll be curious to see what the conversation around that is. Yeah. I'll be very curious on the, um, guardians front again, like, and, and just Zoe and like a tie, because again, there is this, I agree with everything you said earlier, I think with Zoe, we're watching these sequences, these moments with John. I mean, we were talking about this before this episode, like the, the motel parting in episode four, like the question of, okay, it feels tender and sincere. Yeah. Can those things be true at once where there's a part of like, so he does actually want to protect John and, and, you know, there's the gain and the obvious, like, okay, well now I've made you part manhunter. I mean, there's even just such a, in the visual language of the scene, the overhead shot of it's so Anakin Skywalker is about to become Darth Vader. Like that's like Anakin's burned body on the slab. What's so funny is that when, um, Hal and John have their fight in, in the motel room, I also wrote down Anakin and Obi-Wan, but like from the opposite, you know what I mean? Hal's really in the Anakin, like, I hate you sort of like energy. Literally like don't deserve it. It chose me. I'm the chosen one. Yeah. So waiting for your new empire, you've become the very thing. You swore to destroy. That would have been great. John had the high ground. It was over. do what can you do no the you so the like little bit of manhunter canon clarity sprinkled in when john says to zoe you know they created you right the guardians so we get we get that definitive and and obviously that's canon um and to to build toward like then inside of that conversation you you don't have to die how does another kind of my protection has a price right the the bargain that john will have to make there and you get the ring that is rightfully yours i liked i really liked because so much of what john is going to reconcile with and grapple with is what did the guardians want why what did my parents want and why zoe is now another version of that the manhunter wants me to take the ring why and so this question for john as we build toward him leaving it on the ground like if everyone wants you to take it for their reason can it ever be yours you know allison hightower um how could i know how could i know that's a great point i also think in terms of like again what i love about this episode so much is that you know she's being truthful with him and seducing him at the same time right so when she says the ring that is rightfully yours that is like a seduction tactic and in addition to like everything else yes it's just sort of like a flattery and and yeah there was never a doubt in my mind that like john was gonna like turn in any kind of way that he was ever gonna be on the manhunter right side of things like that that was never a question i had i don't think it's even answered necessarily in the flash forward i just like don't i just did not think that that is something that that john would be tempted by right so same but i do think um the emotional toll it takes on him to kill her oh for sure is so juicy like it's just juicy to know that it was like it was a challenge you know what i mean absolutely that it had like he he broke out he you know he yes went to beat the shit out of hal and all this sort of stuff like that but the game the the plan was yeah he went and he got a sniper rifle that's what he did like that that was the plan and so like for her and and it devastated him to have to do it yes but similarly to the way that that zoe's like i didn't really want to kill abin sir i kind of believe her you know what i mean like i don't know why i do but i do maybe because her hair is so shiny and she's so pretty and tall um you see how she does it every time um but yeah the the i agree with you it never occurred to me it never entered my mind and it's not supposed to enter our mind that john will align with the manhunters but they're the fact not only the cost of what he has to do for a person he has forged a connection with but like then the the potential parallel to the place that hal gets when hal and carrie are talking in front of her um her her truck and it's like you know another conversation about fear you're afraid and the fact that hal is a character who like as we've talked about many times now this season can often only reduce his assessment to are you afraid or are you not afraid right and like that such an unuseful binary it's so limiting it's so constraining and so the the fact that like the clarity that carrie john in part because of what hal shared with his lonely fucking life with john last week the cost of pushing people away of not allowing yourself to form a connection now is the connection john should form with the manhunter who is keeping an entire town in her cult i mean no probably not but still it's a person who he felt close to that he had to eliminate so pretty it is so pretty by the way she looks great with her clothes off too just saying i mean i'll really miss her the uh not to get too biological here we've already talked about what might what might happen with the tissue the the dna sample they took from john on the subject of dna so the really kind of gnarly shot of the blood the manhunter blood going into the eyeball and like the quick kind of like spider web of of yeah what does it mean that he's got a drop of manhunter blood in him he's got manhunter blood in him the manhunter you know the fabrication of the the skin but also i was kind of like wait okay she needed to take the little pinch of the machine took the pinch from the arm but like they've had sex like they've swapped bodily fluids before yeah so she had his dna was there amy was is there was there any like manhunter in john already uh or like like spike would say does it have to be the blood you know manhunter in him from like a i don't know you know they fucked each other yeah like she puts her dna in his body and now this procedure is possible yeah like was there any like is that part of i need you to be specific well you know the vaginal secretion saliva i just wanted you to all of it any of it into a microphone i'm happy to i i don't i don't know i was like wait was there any like uh love the brains children it's blood all right exactly um our listener jamie wrote in on this sort of like how do you how to conquer something from the outside or this us versus them the idea of the social contract you know the idea of the social contract that goes through this existence of rushville nebraska which is just sort of like we've all pledged allegiance to our queen zoe uh and because of her our corn is juicy our hospitals are empty and we enjoy there's peace in the valley right this is the contract we've made and we're going to have to and and we have sworn fealty to her this is the bargain that we see carrie strike in the cafe like time will come when you will have to defend me will you do it yes you know okay so that's the social contract that goes back i mean we've talked about the social contract among many things but i think chiefly among the last of us is when we've talked about the most and we got this email from our listener jamie just flagging this cool conversation that happened on bernie brown and and uh the the question of can we build an us without a them he said that felt relevant to so many properties that you cover thrones were the ring star wars uh that are compelling often because of the us versus them but in our world can we find belonging with an us without having to define the others i'm not sure but thought you might want to listen to their discussion on it so i have started the podcast i haven't finished it it's a great conversation i think it's really interesting in terms of like a lot of these conversations we have but like the othering of everyone else is a great conversation i think it's really interesting in terms of like a lot of of everyone who isn't us right to misquote cersei but like everyone outside of rushville this this fear that zoe has infected them all with of like the being conquered and the others and who comes in from the outside and so she has just like cemented the us you can't spell rushville without us it's true right like um the us of this community in that we are all allied together in this social contract and everyone else is a part of it and so i think it's really interesting to think about that and i think it's really interesting to think about that and i think everyone else is the enemy especially the lanterns if not also uh these aliens with bombs in their bodies you know something to think about um all right i think we've done all of that okay let's talk about coitus i would love to experiencing the pleasure of the galaxy coupling uh so we mentioned that how how comes into uh the cafe uh you know puts up the shield before the people emerge and so i think it's really interesting to think about that and i think it's really interesting to think about that and i think it's really interesting to think about there is this sort of john wick slash mando-esque um uh all points on on the entire town is mobilized against hal this is his evidence that he shows to anton that he is like i am the enemy of the manhunter so i am the enemy of my enemy is my friend um if johnster was the fiddle he had coitus of the manhunter john had a little coitus but candidly i was making stargate we were very pal shandler everyone john had a little coitus is like one of the best uh written lines and delivered lines i've ever experienced very uh coitus is so funny fascinating you've always presented as heterosexual hmm you know when you've experienced the pleasures of the galaxy as much as we have it's less about preference and more about opportunity it's just incredible episode four hal said i've seen some shit been to a planet with sentient tentacles but this is weird right when can i expect your hal jordan visits the planet of sentient tentacles and experiences the pleasures of the galaxy fanfic mallory send it to you right now it's already written okay and there's some fan art do a company e for explicit beyond hea happily ever after dead dove do not open okay uh how sort of zomboli processes i think when anton says innocent people are going to die looks unsure about his own decisions as he looks at the ring like there's a couple moments i feel like where hal's like am i on the right is that how you interpret this yeah i mean there's definitely a there's a desperation from hal right there's a recklessness born out of the desperation of the circumstance there's also obviously some hubris like even i felt like the uh compromised by the manhunter played him like a fiddle lucky for you i know who the manager is and where you can find him so you can blow him the fuck up hal is just trying to take the decoy plot that was i can do a better version of this he's like i cannot weenie the weenie hal would literally say that yeah you know he would definitely think it and he would also say it so There's that in here. A lot of little coins. So funny. Needed a laugh. It's an intense episode. So I was very grateful for this. Very, very amusing. It was that and we drew that? We drew that. It was so, so, so funny. And this is where we get the, they seduce the strongest in a given community, the alpha, bending them to their will. And you know that, because it's not what Sinestro said. I already talked about the Sinestro part of that, but you know that Hal's like, oh, wait, shit, is he the, oh, wait, like. Yeah. Zoe didn't come for me. She went for John. Tough to hear, tough to know it. Oh, boy. All right. R.I.P. Ailey Benn. This is when the Macon Ranch is blown apart by suicide bomber aliens. One blows up the weenie. R.I.P. possibly to the tech. Maybe. Yeah. If she had more than one replicator, interesting. Yeah. Now, listen. Again, we're just assuming this is a replicator. I guess we've like built this entire story. We have no idea. Well, but it's interesting because it actually does look different from the skin fabricator that we see used in this episode. Two different machines, two different purposes. That I'm just like, one of them puts skin on and one of them builds you fully like it did with Noah. 3D prints you. We just assume and now know. Has to be a Manhunter hybrid we've determined. We've just like decided all of this. We have moved the number of times on this podcast. We've been like, hold your theories loosely and we're talking about this like it is fucking fact. We're clutching it. We have no idea if this is true. It's true. The great moment where the first of the lead car because Anton and his other hit squad members will follow but this lead car goes into the gate and they're like, oh, I was just sorry. Directions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like, get out, you know, put him against the car, pat him down. Now, look. He's beeping. This, the skeletal bomb activates with a quickness but I was like, the Macon Ranch Militia too dumb to live? Like, we're going to take time to pat this guy down? Ailey Ben, she's not going to miss you at all. I really like the guy who ran hauled ass towards the weenie. That guy was great. Good stuff. Yeah. And he made it. So Macon prepares himself to pretend to be the Manhunter. This phone call was so good. Oh, it was so good. The switch to the language. But also just like how much careful prep has been done, right? He speaks the language. He knows the first thing they ever said to each other. The last thing they said to each other. And to go back to this idea of like, this is like a breakup, right? Yeah. The first thing Anton ever said to Zoe was don't stare at the suns too long. Yeah. Does that not sound like a date night sort of romantic pickup line sort of thing, right? And then the last, you're a monster, which is like, does that not sound like you're responsible for an apocalypse? A cataclysm. And also you broke my heart. You're a monster. There are plenty of people broken up in the last thing they said to the other person was you're a monster. I definitely. Yeah. You never did the dishes. Monster. Thank you for everything. Thank you for the extra time. I loved every minute of it. Yeah. Knowing that he was on borrowed time, you know, just great. The scene. I mean, Garrett Dillon was really good. Good in the show. I guess it makes a little more sense. Like when we saw the San Diego Comic-Con panel and we were like, why aren't they asking Garrett Dillon and Porter and Jack and more like questions? We were just like, ask these great actors more questions. And they still should have. But A, I think those actors were having to to give this moderator who we did not fancy a bit more benefit of the doubt. A, they had to hide a lot of information about who their characters were. Oh, yeah. And B, looks like they're out of the book club. Looks like they're out of the show. So they're like, you know, a couple episodes and done characters as well. Again, I was like so swept up in this conversation that I just wished. It was a very satisfying mystery. And so I'm, I don't, I don't like necessarily want an alternate path where we knew the entire time that Zoe was the Manhunter and saw them talking about it openly and understood exactly how their operation was functioning. All the like benefactor stuff, the NDA stuff, it was really good. Like, it was, it was compelling. Macon Senior, great actor. This like 30 second phone call was fucking riveting. So I just, I do find myself wishing a little bit that we had gotten to see them interact so openly with each other. I also, more than this one time. I also just really like knowing that like Macon Senior is like great, like she's like a god who has visited them, right? So like he is of the church of Zoe is like thank you for the extra time. Like all that sort of stuff. That savior exchange last time. Yeah, yeah. But also, like genuinely does love her. She genuinely does love him. Yeah. In her way. Yes. And, and so then like all the comments about John fucking her, you know what I mean? Where he's just sort of like, I'm not happy about it, but also my wife's a god. So. What am I going to do? People are going to worship at her altar. Yeah. Maybe fucked half the town. That's what she does. But like, but she comes home to me. I'm the one she taught the language to. I'm the one who's like been chosen. Right. To pretend to be her. To be worthy of this task. Yeah. I, on the, we, you know, we've got a lot of notes for the Manhunter, but we do find ourselves like believing a lot of the things that Zoe says and feeling like there's a truth behind it. her hair is so shiny. It's beautiful. The, to your, I believe, I believe that there's love there point. Thinking back to that, hilarious, by the way, we didn't mention this, but like the exact, the corner booth that Zoe's not only in the cafe, but in the corner booth where she was waiting in a prior episode for John. And in that conversation, the like, you know, well, like, why are you with him? It's worth it. Like, well, I'm with him because I love him. You know, it's like, and all these other reasons, but that that's also true. There's a little bit of a, I really love what you said earlier on the conversation about just love stories. Right. And there is, when you were saying that, it made me think a little bit of, I don't know, the like Rob cat. It's stronger. It lasts longer conversation about like a love that is built out of a different circumstance than just lust and longing. Right. Like there's a different kind of trust and understanding you can forge methodically over time. A marriage. Yeah. You know, a partnership. Yes. Yeah. Really interesting. Do you think that like, so because of the extent to what you're saying, like how much he knows, he was very prepared for to speak the language, to share these facts when Anton came. How many other versions of Anton could have come here? I don't know. How many times did she do a genocide? That's my, that's my question. Oh, wow. That's my question. I thought it was just the one, but okay. I'm not so sure. Great. I am not so sure. Anton, they do the, we couldn't conceive, again, very end of marriage kind of language, I think. And then. Yeah. Anton takes Macon's heart out. I love the way he leaps up on the desk here. Incredible. Very cool. You would never welcome death. And this is, this is an important moment because, to watch one of Zoe's ex-lovers, Anton, cut this heart out for the heart to not change, you know, so that primes us for later when it does. But like, that John has to do the same thing. Another ex-lover has to do it. The way that the camera is just on their faces as they're cutting into the flesh of, you know, if he decided he believed to make it in any kind of way whatsoever, the flesh of a beloved, you know what I mean? And it's just, guess what? This episode ruled. And it's also just, take the heart out. The emotional turmoil of that, it was so violent and visceral. You could hear it, you could feel it. Literally visceral. Yeah, the strength that is required to do it. I, you know. Could you do that? Could you carve into a ribcage? How sharp are those knives? Anton has an alien knife, but John, John is super strong. John is super strong, but he's just like hacking through a ribcage. Don't you need a bone saw for that? I don't. I don't know, guys. I'm not equipped to comment. I've never cut open a rib, but like. Let's, let's ask the Yellow Jackets. You know, they've sought some bodies. Or maybe you can like cut between the rib and sort of like use your hand as a rib spreader. One thing, often we're like, you know, hit up the inbox. Don't tell us how to cut up a body. Nope. Don't want to know. You know, we often see. I have gotten emails about how to hide a bone. That was for Prestige. I can't remember which show we were talking about, but you know. Did you, what did you do? What did you do with those emails? Were they. Reported them to the authorities. Were they connected to very specific details from actual crimes? I definitely reported them to the authorities and didn't put them in a box to use later. The like, I don't know. Don't cross me. Something about the. There's a version of this Anton Makin scene that is like. Okay. First of all, on the Sinestro front, you've got your Sinestro was right mug. You've had it the whole time. We knew about the crystal. Heart because of shirts made do it for a pillows. It's Widow's Bay season. Why not? Shout out Ruth. They'll do some embroidery. Needle point. Whatever it's called, you know, you don't play this crystal heart nugget that we heard how share with with John last episode came from Sinestro. So this is like a small way of actually showing us that Sinestro was right. Not you're not only right, but telling how a true thing, you know, well, the best lies always wrapped in. Yeah, to a truth. wield his weapon and, you know, that's obviously, like, just in general with the ongoing assessment of control, you know, the fact that, like, the Guardians, the reveal about the Manhunters being Guardian creations, this idea of, like, okay, well, once we can't control you and you don't do it, it's not that the Manhunters weren't brutal or aren't brutal, but you're not doing exactly the thing we want, so we need to redo. Like, what does that clarity do for Jon toward the decision he makes? But with Anton and Makin, there's just, like, a version of this scene that is so, like, show, don't tell, this didn't work. You know? And this was so not that. Like, we understood an entire history that had transpired between these characters. So this works a bit better for you than, like, your dad was a snitch and you're a snitch. It's in the genes. And it's part of why that opening scene didn't work because I'm like, this is, like, gorgeous. Haunting. Yeah, this is just so, so, so good to allow us to really understand. And, like, the sorrow of that, like, we couldn't conceive. Do you know what I mean? Like, just sort of, like, what's the pain here? You're grieving with them even though you have not spent a single day with them. It was almost the conversation version of, we talked about this in episode two when Anton and his crew captured John in the first place and, you know, they made Bix comp and Andor. And, like, we didn't see what John saw there, but we felt what we needed to feel. Same thing here, right? We're not getting, like, flashbacks paired with this or anything, but we are understanding fully what we need to understand. And also, like, to use a, it's like, yeah, the old husband and the new husband, you know what I mean? Like, rips the heart out of a man who he thought, there was, like, a 1% chance it could have been Zoe. Right. But if not, then it's, like, her new husband, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I, like, you know, I really, what you said earlier really struck me, too. Cellar novella shit, love it. There is, I don't know, the, like, it would be enough to go on this vengeance quest because the Manhunter had just decimated your people. That would be enough. But to have this extra personal, not only the personal, not the hurt, but the responsibility that Anton is bearing. I let this person in, 100%. Yes, right? I just, and then, like, does that, is there a comp there for our characters in the primary story of who you've gotten close to and what the cost of that is? Carrie. All right, John phone home. He's talking to his parents. They're asking if he took the ring. We deserve an update. I'm out on these people. I've been out, I'm out. On the comedy, the surprising comedy in the episode front, like, come on, was I on speaker? John killed me. This is like, we're racing toward the guns and ammo shop. The tension is so high, but I, like, I laughed because that was amazing. But yeah, this is, this is an intense, intense thing on the kind of entitlement of where we deserve to have this information on our clock. We invested all of this in you. Yeah. We're in this with you. And he's like, back the fuck off. I'm in the midst of an alien attack. Also, again, like, not a single, this reminds me of one of my favorite screenplays all the time, which is Tremors. It feels like there's not a single step wasted. So why are we shooting up on the water tower so that later when the water tower dumps the darkness out, it's, like, satisfying? Why did John go into the guns and ammo shop and deal with those chuckle fucks so that he could break back into the guns and ammo shop and we're just like, oh, we've been here. Like, it's just like, it's very tidy in its construction in that way. Um, John's in his bare feet. Very John McClane of him. This was amazing. Um, also, I would say, Aaron Pierre's character in Rebel Ridge does get his shoes burned off at one point, but it's not really, like, a prolonged John McClane walking on broken glass-esque, like, thing. But I was like, didn't he not have shoes on at one point in Rebel Ridge? And he, and that's true. But, but, like, this is much more in the John McClane territory of him just, like, running around in his hospital gym jams with no shoes on, you know. And his new. I'm sure it's definitely fine and nothing to worry about manhunter skin. Created and forged skin. It was interesting, actually, that he, like, shared that information with his parents on, on the call. Um, you know, you, you mentioned earlier what he says about Hal here. You know, almost burned me alive in it, the car. Uh, I'm pretty sure he didn't want that to happen, but I'm not entirely sure. Which is the point. I, because I, I can't quit these two and I don't want them to find a way back to each other somehow, even though the, the, there's, you know, the, the heavier emphasis falls on the end of a point. Right? So, but I'm not entirely sure which is the point is, like, carrying more weight there. Yeah. And yet I found myself really putting stock in. I'm pretty sure he didn't want that to happen. Yeah. It's like a little glimmer of hope that John is at least open to the possibility that, uh, Hal would not have wanted it to go that way. Um, we've already done this confrontation. Uh, with, with the darkness and the helicopter and, and the, the first person shooter POV green vision. I'll just say Hal in the goggles actually also got a laugh for me. And then maybe just cause I was still thinking about Spike in his goggles. And then also Zoe escaping the handcuffs cause she literally just like left her arm behind. Again, I'm like, Hal. Like we've spent the entire series. Hal, I want to believe. I want to root. But you make it so hard. It took her a minute. She didn't do it right away. She was like, every time he turned back, he was checking, he was checking. And then, but I'm like, dude, we have had how many conversations since the very second this show started about tech we've never seen, not ever once in the history of planet earth. And it's like, let me just cuff her to the chopper. Now that's where times, you know, you do what you needs must. You do what you have to in urgent peril. But I'm like, this is the manhunter. And you know that you thought this was going to work. What was, what should he have done? I guess that's the answer. Just, there was no alternative. I don't know. Maybe like take, can he, can this green lantern, how many like green constructions can one hold at a single time? Well, and we do get the, the ring charge 5% before this exchange. Right. So he knows he's working with limited ammo. So he can't just put like a green bubble around her. I guess that's part of it. He's got to save it for the green tornado that he uses to, to whisk Anton away. Um, I bet John could hold many, many constructs at once and have just the one. Just the one. Um, I, I think the, the goggle cam darkness cloud worked a little better for me. I was like, this is kind of fun and cool. No, I mean, it was fun. It was fun and fine. I'm just saying like, it was fun and fine. Yes. Yeah. Fair. I did get a kick out of the. And what I liked is that it wasn't like so, so protracted. Yeah. No. Yeah. It was long enough to feel like a legit set piece, but not so long that we were like, all right. Yeah. And we had gotten the setup for it. With like, it frankly paid off more quickly, quickly than I was anticipating that. No wasted. No. Made me, it makes me think. What do we go back to the slaughterhouse? Well, I feel like even that paid off because when, when Macon. Yeah. Yeah. You know, with the little sensor under the table. With the Matt Lauer button under the desk. God. God. And the, the. Yeah. The little sensors activate all the lasers to just. Yeah. With Anton. Yeah. We knew what that, we knew what that meant because we had seen it. That's true. We knew what that meant because we had seen it. But no jazz to warn us about the evil coming. No jazz can't be a good sign. Um, I really did get a kick out of Anton just charging. You know, we just had this incredibly rich emotional. Yeah. Sequence with him and then he's just. The beeping, drawing Hal's attention. Yeah. Better than the. This was a real premature. Making ranch. Premature ejaculation from Anton. He, he activated too quickly. He started detonating. Beeping too quickly. He wasn't inside the fucking cloud yet. He didn't even just the tip it. He was nowhere near Zoe. Like what? Come on, Anton. He was going to make it though. I mean. But you can't wait too long. I guess. Yeah. And we also don't know if that darkness works on him the same way that works on. True. Of the humans. True. Pretty great when Hal just like turn, heard the beeping turn, saw him through a little, you know, goes out, tosses him up. Yeah. He explodes and then just goes right back in. It was great. Amusing. It was great. Good stuff. The Rushville Motel. I mean, what, what haven't we said about this fight that you want to say? I just thought the savagery of it, the violence of it. Really good. The things that they do to each other. I mean, the, I was, you know, you're, you were seeing like the, I mean, they both are choking the other at given points. A vicious punch to the thigh. I don't know why that. The thigh, like groin punch. The reaction to that. The, um, and I guess like, was that the. The leg that had been pinned. I mean, he's been healed by, uh. Yeah. He doesn't know that he's gotten an entire new body built, but he's like, oh, your, your thigh's probably all bruised up from that glove box. Not you got melted in a car and rebuilt in the last hour. The fires of Mustafar claimed you. Um, the, the, like grabbing the lamp and, you know, swinging it. The, the way that John throws Hal into the wall and into the closet, the, just the way that in between some of the, you know, some of the, the heaviness behind these punches, not just the physicality, but the emotional weight behind them. The couple moments where they stop and just look at each other. Um, really, really, really intense. The, what the fuck are you doing? You don't deserve this fucking ring. I don't deserve it. It fucking chose me. It fucking chose me. Like, that Hal still doesn't know. First, that he doesn't know that he wasn't first and how sad that is. But also like the idea that eventually it did choose him and you can, you worthy, and then you can lose that. you can lose yourself which is of course john's point at the end i'm gonna i'm gonna say yeah just because the rain didn't go to him first doesn't mean he like he's the only one who answered the question correctly yeah exactly and so like you know he's still the the worthiest i mean i think he's like it came to me in a weird i just still don't understand this rings process honestly but like i like that he doesn't have the but he's like i lifted mjolnir exactly no one else did you know he doesn't have the full clarity but also it's like it was true you know it was true and then the fact that now he's not worthy of it and that that fall and having to confront that and john saying that so clearly and where that leads john is just really wonderful i thought that the way that hal was said i've said like desperate or desperation a lot the desperation with which he my precious like crawled and scrabbled for it on the floor my ring my ring yeah um also i think fucking replace me i think the way that he like hold like holds on to like as john is ripping the later as john is ripping the ring off his finger the way that he just sort of like tries to hold on it's over yeah anakin yes he has the high ground and he's just like yeah you know it hits us so hard because it's like you're harder hit than i am because that's like hal has always been he's an asshole and a dickhead and that's part of why he's like entertaining but yeah i think there's like i don't know he's holding on to the power and the station and the mantle but also he's like holding on for the last second that he can uh before he he can't deny anymore that he's like fears the things that other people have been saying about him you're old you're obsolete it's like okay once that's off my finger it's over how do i quiet that what shield do i put up against that that's sad here comes carrie hopefully she can help um man john uh takes a shot cries i just i thought that was you like you know like i see you call back i see you zoe also the way that he has i mean hopefully if he's connected his mommy issues here has to be thinking about shooting the apple off of his mom's head of course you know like among his other sniper times with a sniper rifle but like you know aiming at a woman that he loves head just all the target practice that's like defined his life and you know when we when he's in the machine it's different getting the apple shot off your head and aiming the gun at your mom's head i we also we got the gray wolf mission flashback in that in that really rapid fire stretch a lot of flashback yeah which was really funny because i'm like we just watched that episode i mean i understand that he's experiencing his own life but i'm like yes i also just watched that episode um all right john's still barefoot there's a tweety bird child's watch and the rebel oh by the way this was my gut beat was another chalk it up for the my gut for how let's just say it okay 50 50 let's give him credit he's not getting a lot of credit he's not getting a lot of credit he's not getting a lot of credit in this episode let's give it uh it's cooler guy he's dead a woman and child are crying over him john says i'm sorry again to the monsters where the monster hands her watch which when this feels important because it takes us back to john's lantern test right the the draw the building we're in but then this the next test was a watch is there a watch my father's watch the idea of like what john being able to uh construct the inner workings of the watch the mechanic something as detailed as a watch what that told the guardians and john about so it just takes us back to john's relationship to his family to the guardians to the path all of it so does the bird that shows up here that little bird chirping he puts he he takes the ring did you for a second think because you hear the bird before we see it did you think it was going to be the green bird no only because that ring is out of charge it's like but john is very special he's he's like i can drive four miles without gas like i don't need any charge one percent i can do whatever i need i do that all the time by the way i drive on zero all the time in my car don't tell the dealership makes me very nervous to hear that in california and los angeles where the freeway traffic could not be worse oh i don't actually i don't do it as much in la okay good i used to do it a lot though um the fact by the way also now is this self-preservation yes but like so john has hallen in the chokehold and how has the ring on still at this point barely any charge left protective bubble around them both that's true protective bubble around them both i mean it would be really hard to do that in the freeway traffic could not be worse oh i don't actually i don't do it it would be very hard to protect himself without protecting john but i did at first write down oh you're protecting them both and i'm like how would he not have protected john in that moment but i'm with you i'm inclined to give how some credit for that for sure uh john is uh walking through the ash in the rubble of rushville gets surrounded by the town's militia this is where carrie tells him to stand down dude this needle drop asked about how how did you talk to me about it how do you feel about it i googled this because i i was just like oh this song's really good so i had not heard the song because i don't really listen to um that much contemporary music but this is uh bonnie ver's things behind things behind things which i was now i've listened to a few times great song the lyrics obviously very applicable but more the mood the mood that it's at and the length for which like the accompaniment there was something so intense and somber about the calculus this idea of the choices and the layers right as john was walking toward this major decision i don't know i really i just this was a good a good needle drop i quite liked it the decimation it's always a good time for bonnie ver bonnie ver is like a very cozy fall i mean it's scorching hot and disgusting here in los angeles but allegedly unbearable allegedly we're in cozy season so um all right i don't want it i would be lantern and a guardian walk into a bar uh she says the ring looks good on him asks about how he says he's still alive she looks quite disappointed she defined that how is alive bombed crushed uh what's in the bag your sins and consequences do you guys do you think it's an excellent name for an ipa sins and consequences absolutely stone brewing oh yeah oh i love the stone yeah i love sins and consequences it's a great one let's logonitis call me sure sins and consequences also love logonitis all right uh great barrier brewers actually okay uh she's got i mean i've always loved these driving gloves on her she's worn them but like like the fact that she's handling the heart with like i mean they may or may not be made of kid but like kid gloves you know what i mean it's just sort of like kid gloves are something very specific i i'm not gonna you know it could be cat's leather i don't know but like very like very like handling it with gloves like just sort of like a remove from even we make mistakes all we can do is correct them she just kind of shoves the heart in the bag down the bar i guess to your point so that she can later put it in a case and mount it on her mantle yeah um she would prefer it it be hal's uh still beating hard that she puts in the case on the mantle but um i love this part john listened to our prestige tv conversation with michael waldron uh check it out if you haven't uh talks about what he thought having the room would make him feel pride gratitude power versus how it actually makes him feel empty i would just say i mean i didn't yeah i was just like nodding vigorously along when waldron was telling us this story on the prestige tv podcast about sort of like what it meant to how what he thought he would feel sure uh given a certain accomplishment in his career and how he just like came home sat on the couch and felt like more depressed and empty than he's ever felt in his life and i will just say like like when i got my first cover story for vanity fair and i'm like oh this is gonna be the oh it's not okay yeah when i when we published our book and i was like man i published a book no like you feel worse and then like later you're like you could look back later and be like oh those are nice things that i accomplished and you're grateful and you're like you know like all these other things like you're not like a snotty little brat about it but you're like oh i really thought this would yeah be the thing that made me feel like i've done something or i am whole and complete or whatever and guess what it's not and so like yeah so putting on that ring he's just sort of like huh so i mean like i think all of it was building up to this you know but i don't think he had really made i mean per him and not really made the decision until he had the ring yeah you know like all the things he says in this episode is very is leaning very much like i don't want it but like really it took the ring finally actually being his for him to be like wow and i think the question of like whether any one thing that happens as a final push toward this decision would have been enough absent the other things is like interesting one one step after another down the path to get here yeah you know and especially given the nature of the path and john's life and like thinking about how it's all about this goal and this thing you work toward the idea that like you know he's he's taught so we have we have everything with zoe we have the the confronting the conversation with his parents we have confronting how he's feeling about the guardians and of course we have hal and what he says about hal here right hal betrayed everything to keep the string his code the oath even himself and it broke him probably doesn't even remember why he wanted the damn thing and neither do i boom that was just and then puts it on the counter we just close on the shot of it they're like this was sick ending incredible scene i love okay laura lenny i mean in the show more than i thought she would be in the show yeah yeah i thought she was gonna be like a one and done episode or something like that but like she keeps popping in great for me i'd love to see more sinestro please soon i need it um need it but uh how unimpressed she looks by him here yeah you know what i mean she's invested she like there's a way in which she could have looked like disappointed like or angry or all sorts of stuff like that but she's just sort of like yeah this disdain i'm just sort of like okay yeah and like you think back to then what we heard her say when she flickered into the hotel room the gaslighting and the manipulation of like i had my doubts and i should her gut yeah i should have listened which like was a was a tactic to manipulate him mother was wrong but then like we have this larger question you know you were asking was it last episode yeah it must have been last episode about well like what did they make of how from like minute one you know just like how does this the guardians in general but this guardian like think about humanity well it's such an interesting thing to consider here's my question okay so john gives up the ring we don't know what happens yet but like uh again our ongoing question is how the fuck did guy gardner get a ring and so is it like the guardians pick guy gardner next is that what happens or does a ring pick him we don't know right yeah but like either way i still have questions about that as like who's worthy or not but like right if the guardians like spend decades investing in john stewart and john stewart's like i don't want it and they're like okay fine we'll give it to guy gardner well right like is that a new a new candidate how we taught one of the things we talked about in episode three when there's the like entering the door someone's exiting the guy on the how many candidates were there do you go to another candidate and they were like that hair that's our guy did he have that hair for when he was like a little little baby no but like uh the the interview process was two weeks ago but i'm just now envisioning what if like little baby guy had that just there got right out of the womb but yeah and then like you know so we have the guardian question we have the guy gardner question but we also have the john question because inside we have to i have this question oh what happens to john next well there's like inside of the story but then also in the like larger dcu this has like this is a question to think about with three episodes left in season one of the show and whatever the plan is for lanterns overall but then there's just like john stewart is gonna be green lantern in the dcu like he's in man of tomorrow so so given that we've solved who the other manhunter is and who killed alan all that sort of stuff like that the ongoing mystery yeah we're probably wrong about all this stuff but the ongoing mystery not about noah not about noah we are not gonna be wrong i mean we might be i don't know i would like us to be right about jason ritter as well being a manhunter that would be great um but um how does john get right the ring because he doesn't have a ring as we talked about in episode one when he reaches to look at hal's hand and hal doesn't have the ring in the 2026 uh bleacher death scene john does not have a ring at that point yeah and he seems like surprised to not see it on hal's hand because why check it i'm but yeah that's it's interesting to consider that so then there's i guess like we have a few questions first of all just on the relationship front the ring is a part of it obviously but like what is the potential path for hal and john that's one question we have right and a hope that we have that is still is still there right i think like the insight that john has here about how what he says feels like pretty right in a lot of ways yeah and and and hard to hear but fair but we can apply like the touch of empathy that we have from everything we've learned about how to that and say like okay the ring becomes the only thing he can hold on to for the reasons we've already talked about you're afraid to lose this this one way that you define yourself the one way you find purpose and then if that's the only thing then what work-life balance buddy i know you and peter we are not equipped to comment john's clarity like okay i'm gonna seek life on my terms finally right that's what john is saying here it's a rejection of a thing but it's also an embrace of something else those things are inextricable from each other so finally john being at a place where he could say like what is right for me we talked about in you know the scene in art school right exactly i was gonna say we talked about art school of like sort of john getting to do a thing that he loved but also like that his mom had applied for him right so and made him an even better candidate to be a lantern yeah bernadette john now being in a place to say what do i want what don't i want what do i want and then how am i gonna pursue that and in this moment that meant rejecting the ring because it didn't feel like what he thought it would feel what other people told him it should feel like does that mean he can't work back to wanting the ring again oh no i feel it's and he has to do that on his terms right and what's exciting about that is like sort of similar to thinking about a rust cole in true detective yeah and sort of like who rust was uh when we first meet him in the in the in the past yeah you know short hair tie looking nice looking great mcconaughey then like broken down by his experience in the past time ponytails and crushing beers but then like where we find him on the on the end of that is not back to where he started but right in a better place yeah right so where will this 2026 journey take john stewart right with only three episodes to go yeah what's his path what will make him what will his reasons be yeah you know that's yeah three up i mean on the one hand i feel like we packed a ton of story into five episodes on the other hand three episodes is not a lot nope that's not a lot i'm excited i'm excited to see where it goes and like what is how what happened what happened those are a lot of questions about john like what's next for hal jordan who has been the green lantern for decades and now is not so a decade between not having the ring and winding up dead on the bleachers yeah though again as you just said like john did reach for his hand like is there any chance he gets it back could how get the ring back could that happen early on his dead body well i'd love to see leona's dead body because fuck her in a mounted on your mantle okay theory corner and comic spoilers great incredible that the first bullet point is noah is a manhunter watch that there was ever a possibility that we would wait till now to talk about that i almost i was trying to kind of do that for carlos to make it like a convenient little social package for us it was impossible it was impossible noah's manhunter we agree we think billy might be a manhunter i had a whole bunch of bullet points but i think we've hit them all um does billy know he's oh we don't have a relationship like that about billy uh in a previous episode like we've never had sex noah came out of a machine actually um billy uh anthony my son blah blah blah blah uh watching noah's the most important thing during the attack we already talked about that um on the like noah and or carrie killed howell front here's the carrie front okay it's the pinky she says it's better if i do it in terms of chopping off the pinky the way in which carrie's like yeah i'm gonna do the thing or like right for for zoe to say i want to someone who would give up a piece of themselves so there's give a piece of themselves in like a dna sample for the for the machine emotional peace but emotional like who you are so like give up a piece of herself like if if if carrie killed howell yeah i don't i with you that when we see that scene in the pilot she feels genuine sadness yeah about him yes so if she killed it i don't think it's something that she like wanted to right do you know what i mean so like give up yeah part of herself in order to do that i won't be sad i don't know jeez i just feel like this is the kind of show where like every line sure oh yeah i agree that has to count i mean that would be that would be it's better if i do it yeah it'd be great to have a reason for that uh pinky coming off that carrie scene other than the bangs the bangs aren't enough they are you're right i retract the comment they are someone who knows how to fight their way out someone willing to give up a piece of themselves can i count on you yes yeah on the comic book lore theory front uh there's a popular fan theory got several emails about it uh the idea that liana our beloved laura linney uh is a comic book character named scar yeah um this is what our listener matt said so scar is a guardian who turned on the other guardians a corrupted former member of the guardians who turns on the others and and kicks off uh this story line called the blackest night which i have have you read no okay i i but i know i have a a sense of the yeah the story i've read some of it it's a it's a lengthy uh arc but i've read some of it in the weeks that we've been working on this and like it's fucking cool yeah uh you know it's dc resurrection of dead heroes uh and also corruption of of current heroes and stuff like that and so like the idea of like a zombie like that your loved ones can become zombies anyway they're clearly not doing that in the last three episodes of this season but like is that something we're we're going towards yeah uh i think it'd be really cool if they did blackest night uh would they do it like a dc like would james gunn do something like that like across the dcu like could we get you know our current superman our current supergirl like blah blah involved in this sort of like universe-wide event it'd be pretty sick i mean we have nathan fillions guy gardner in superman and we know because he was in the trailer and he crashed the comic-con panel yeah he's in this show where tonally yeah he does not belong he does not belong and so to me that means anything is possible okay in the dcu connected universe and if guy gardner can be in this television show and superman yeah they can figure out a way to make any of this work um i think the scar theory is really interesting i think we have a really good bit of evidence inside the show so far that this is true remember we and this had not occurred to me previously but like remember we talked about in episode three i was just like this is interesting and feels like oh that we didn't see her face did not see her face yeah yeah she transformed one of the biggest like in real time i was not like oh is that because she's i thought it was because they thought it would look too goofy to show it and they're trying to like keep it grounded they're like the sinestro being pink is enough that's as far as we're going i mean because if you think about like anton and his and his people like they just look like guys you know what i mean so they haven't like gone full in real time that was my right yeah that was my thinking too was just like this wouldn't they don't want to like commit to the look yet or it doesn't feel like it belongs here but like now it feels very possible that the answer is because we would see the scar and we will in fact see the scar on the side of her face the scarred guardian usually called scar for short yeah um i like this theory it's fun it would be fun it would be like i think it'd be extremely cool no okay i'm of two minds because inside of the dc universe of storytelling um i like the idea i mean obviously like supergirl and um superman are connected superman is already connected to this lantern's universe and i don't know if i'm going to be able to do that but i'm going to be because john stewart's going to be in the next movie guy gardner was in superman is going to be on the show um they haven't really figured out their gotham stuff yet um right um so on the one hand it is all connected obviously like peacemaker suicide squad all this sort of stuff like that but on the other hand i like the idea of them not going too far down the sort of like previously interconnected universes of comic book movies like maybe we're ready for me because that has really bit marvel in the ass ultimately it was like the key to their success and then part of the key to their downfall and so when we think of something like clay face you know what i mean like i like the idea of let's just tell cool fun stories and like to your point about tonal tonality like the idea of a guy gardner in this show i'm really curious to see how that works like that is really a fascinating prospect but like if we can have the crossover while keeping the tone feeling yeah it's exciting more distinct yeah that's something that i would like to see but the way in which the mcu started to feel flat and then i just never want people to feel like they have to do homework so i'll be curious to see how guy gardner shows up here like if he shows up and it's just sort of like you don't have to i mean everyone saw um you know the superman movie but like right the homework right now is already done and super manageable because it's so because it's just superman contained but that's how it started with that's how it started you know yeah so yeah um no it's a good it's a good flag well so on the scar theory corner front as well like your agenda to restore sinestro's good name that part has to be on our mind too in terms of like by my merch sinestro killed a guardian we sure you sure about that are you sure about that or did he cause a scar on her face and she's like i will burn everything probably that it's probably that yeah i mean i just think it's a shard of one of his i was right mugs yeah could be that um could be that yeah it just says i was right that'd be incredible um oh my god yeah i uh i i just do think no matter what it is deeply suspicious that we have only seen liana acting on her own wildly suspicious it just has to mean something yeah could mean we weren't ready to do it it could mean we weren't ready to do it it could mean we weren't ready to commit to the other guardian characters yeah but it for a story and tom pelfrey and julia garner were not available as you know i would love that let's get rachel in here the whole ozark crew uh yeah i think this is i like this this is cool i'm into it all right hobbits and dragons at gmail.com if uh you have any further thoughts or theories on this front how will you cope if no one's just like a like just a just a kid just a nebraskan uh just a kid a real weenie a real sort of like look over here and it was jason ritter all along dude what if we got weenie we got hella weenie and it was jason ritter all along it would be jason ritter all along wouldn't it i mean that would be wonderful yeah that would be hashtag billy did it billy the first pancake what was like wasn't the first line that a character says to billy like usually it's the villain who offers to in the courtroom let me find this oh that house house is usually it's a villain who offers to like tons of money with no strings attached or whatever okay so billy has charged into the courtroom yeah legal stuff yeah matlock matlock matlock yeah and then uh despite enthusiastically accepting the make and services hal says i tend to find this stranger should give me a couple hundred thousand dollars no strings attached and i'm usually turn out to be the bad guys billy all along billy all along billy all along what if that's not about will making at all but billy again that feels like a jason ritter casting spoiler in a fun way for those of us who care about jason ritter which should be all of us um melanie nalinski we await your comments on this um oh man it's only three left sad exciting to see you next time yeah can't wait like it's season two of this show it's deeply wild to see well will there be a season two god penguin yeah what's up with that canceled dad geez all right thank you to carla sherboga scott lee jacob cornett arjuna ron capel joe mia dineron and john jones helping out uh and thank you to mallory rubin thank you to joanna robinson thank you to those crazy swingers the makings we'll miss them i will miss the makings thank you to illy ben oh my god thank you to anton you went out strong shout out bit bitsy bits shut up bitsy table four two uh see you soon bye