Review: Lanterns, "Bad Optics" | Season 1, Episode 6

In retrospect, I wish I had thought more about how Guy Gardner relates to Lanterns. He’s Earth’s current Green Lantern, introduced in Superman, which obviously meant that neither Hal Jordan nor John Stewart was. His membership in the Justice Gang with Hawkgirl and Mister Terrific is so different from Hal Jordan’s lone wolf act that I wasn’t thinking about how they’re technically doing the same job—which only has one person doing it at a time. Going in really being cognizant of the fact that neither of our heroes would end up staying the Lantern would have given the show an extra frisson of tension and mystery, and I regret depriving myself of it by simply not realizing. 

Gardner’s arrival is the headline event of “Bad Optics,” the sixth episode of Lanterns, but it’s just one part of an ambitious hour that resets the show for the last three episodes of the season. “Bad Optics” is a John Stewart-centric episode that follows him back to Rushville to try to solve Hal Jordan’s murder, which is what the rest of the season will presumably be about. The 5/3 split is a cool and novel way to structure a season. It’s two stories for the price of one, with fun interplay between them, like a girl to whom Stewart gave a watch amidst the rubble of Rushville in 2016 coming back to blackmail him in 2026. I didn’t love everything about the execution of the episode, but I really liked the concept, and thought one scene in particular is one of the finest of the season.

The 2026 version of Stewart has changed a lot. He swears more, he eats meat, and he has a goatee. More importantly, he’s at least somewhat estranged from his parents, who don’t respect his choice to not be the Green Lantern. However, perhaps most notably, he’s more comfortable letting his anger out. This Stewart has a temper. It would have taken more antagonism from Jordan to rile up the younger Stewart so much that he publicly punches him in the face so hard he breaks his nose. The stresses of real, normal life—work, money, aging parents, arguments with siblings, resentment about things that happened years ago that he’s still holding onto—have sanded down his layers of self-discipline. He’s not as worn out as Jordan, who spent ten years in prison and is now back in Rushville trying to make amends for the destruction he caused, but Stewart is far from the fresh-faced recruit he used to be.