‘Lanterns’ Review: Episode 4 Is All About ‘The Weenie'(s) — Spoilers

[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “Lanterns” Episode 4, “The Weenie,” including the ending. Find last week’s review here, or for a spoiler-free analysis, read our full season review.]

“I really did forgive you. Thought you’d be honest.”

So claims Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) right before he betrays his partner, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), by wrapping his rental car around a telephone pole and flying off to meet with the alien hit squad who’s expecting to see the other Green Lantern (and only the other Green Lantern).

It’s a fitting, if disappointing, ending to an episode that’s all about trust — fitting for many reasons (structurally, thematically, effectively) and disappointing because seeing Hal and John get along, even if they might be faking it, is so rewarding. Ah, what the world could be like if we all could set aside our baggage and focus on what matters: be it helping save a town or helping save each other.

After last week’s deep dive into John’s origins, Episode 4, “The Weenie,” opens where we left off in Episode 2: with Hal visiting Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). The disgraced mentor and his endangered mentee share a prickly conversation about Manhunters and — more so — Hal’s replacement. “You really will need to kill John Stewart,” Sinestro says matter-of-factly. Hal rejects the idea, but listens as Sinestro suggests using John’s confidence against him: “Make him believe you’re embracing his worthiness as your replacement.”

Is that what Hal’s doing when he returns to Rushville? When he hands over the ring as they infiltrate Macon’s compound? When he gives John the equivalent of a “hoorah” for recognizing the slaughterhouse is a trap? When he starts asking personal questions about his parents and — gasp! — his emotional state?

Maybe, maybe not. Episode 4, written by Breannah Gibson and directed by Geeta Vasant Patel, keeps the question open-ended all the way through the closing car wreck. Maybe Hal is listening to his old boss and manipulating John for his benefit. Maybe he knows how effective a charm offensive can be. Maybe he’s a jaded old dog incapable of learning new tricks.

Or maybe Hal really wants to trust someone. Maybe he was so hurt by Sinestro’s betrayal that he can’t bring himself to do the same thing to someone else. Maybe a part of him recognizes John is the one guy he can talk to about his “lonely fucking job.” (The squirrel just wouldn’t get it.)

When Hal says, “I really did forgive you,” I want to believe him. But Hal is also the type of guy you always want to believe and rarely rewards that faith — which is John’s dilemma in a nutshell. He, too, doesn’t know if he can trust his partner, and he spends the episode trying to decide how long he can afford to try.

And he is trying. When Lianna (Laura Linney) tells him it’s time to take Hal’s place as Earth’s Green Lantern, she has to threaten to take it back before he capitulates. When Hal hands him the ring, inadvertently giving John the perfect opportunity to take his place, John backs down. When he calls his mom to tell her the Guardians’ orders, she doesn’t understand his hesitancy.

“I know exactly what the fuck he is,” John reassures her, but that’s not entirely true. Yes, John sees Hal for the old, entitled white guy he is — a man who was handed a “massive power” that he “didn’t do shit to earn.” John even tells Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) he knows Hal is lying to him (and that she is, too). But Hal, whether honestly or disingenuously, appears to be coming around to John. He’s doing some of the things a mentor should do. He’s acting like a partner worth working with — until, that is, Hal sends John speeding face first into a telephone pole.

One step forward, two steps back. Just as our green detectives start opening up to each other, their disparate pasts rattle them back to a distrustful status quo. Hal has been avoiding real relationships long enough for that to become his first piece of advice for anyone joining the corps — a “lonely” disposition he’s gotten used to since losing both his parents long ago. John, meanwhile, has been working to become a Green Lantern since before he could speak, let alone recite the oath. As soon as the Guardian implies all that work was for naught — that he inherited “his father’s weakness,” that he’s still afraid — John snaps back to his disciplined stance. Back to the mission. Backward, not forward.

If not for their baggage — if not for the influence of others, in the past and present alike — John and Hal may have been able to be partners, even friends. But halfway through “Lanterns'” eight-episode first season, they can’t be honest with each other. Dark days and black nights await.

And with that, it’s time to tackle the biggest question posed in Episode 3: What’s the deal with the weenie?!

The Case

Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler in ‘Lanterns’Courtesy of John Johnson / HBO Max

The weenie, as it’s first introduced, is fairly straightforward. It’s an architectural term made up by Walt Disney to describe a property’s focal point. Supposedly, Walt came up with the term after noticing what his pet dog, Lady, would do whenever he fed her hot dogs (aka “weenies”). If he had a hot dog in hand, Lady would follow him wherever he went, so he coined the term “weenie” to describe the part of his parks that guests would naturally gravitate toward. They see Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disney Land, and they’re drawn there, almost by magic.

Here, in “Lanterns,” which is not a Disney show, John concludes the weenie has to be one of two things:

1. A hidden fortress where the Manhunter hides out.
2. A decoy.

In the end, it turns out to be No. 2 — a decoy filled with otherworldly weapons where the Lanterns get caught, trapped, and dragged in front of Macon (Garret Dillahunt), who threatens to kill John before Sheriff Kane (Kelly Macdonald) shows up to bail them out.

Are Hal and John mad about being duped? Not really. Sure, they acted like a couple of hungry mutts hunting for a hot dog, despite being two grown-ass men wielding the most powerful device in the universe, but they still made progress in the case: The weapons confirm Macon’s affiliation with the Manhunter, their visit prompts Zoe to sneak over to the motel to see John, and her “death” brings them to the slaughterhouse, where a fake Hector Hammond (Jason Manuel Olazábal) identifies the Manhunter as… Macon.

Hector Gutierrez is, of course, lying and/or wrong about who the Manhunter is, but hey — sometimes a tricky case sends you in circles. (Plus, it’s extra fitting that he’s full of shit since, in the comic books, Hector Hammond is a real bad guy — and a pretty big deal.) Our duo might be legitimately peeved if they did all that and still didn’t know who the Manhunter is, but they do.

It’s Zoe.

The Suspects

“Hey, Junior,” Hal shouts across the motel parking lot. “We found Macon’s weenie.”

Before digging into the case against Zoe, let’s take a seat and admire William Macon’s weenie.

Not that one! (Although John sketches quite the trunk.)

Macon, from the beginning, has been a fantastic decoy. He’s a wealthy white guy running a ginormous ranch like a military compound, but he’s also an affable good ol’ boy who will invite you over, cook up some steaks (or vegan “steaks”), and split a six-pack. He’s made of red flags, but he carries them with a convincing nonchalance. You want him to be the bad guy, but you also can’t quite bring the hammer down; not when he can always plead ignorance and point to a decoy of his own — the “mysterious benefactor” no one has ever seen.

Macon is the perfect figurehead for a system that discourages scrutiny. When everything is peaceful in Rushville and everyone’s making money, none of the residents are inclined to question why things are going so well. Like the man says, “Crops grow, kids thrive, and no one gets sick.” Even fake Hector was gifted unprecedented cow-killing technology to expand his business! Everyone is winning, and Macon’s charms make going along to get along that much more inviting.

It’s only when a few out-of-towners show up (who can’t be bribed and refuse to leave) that things get dicey. And even then, Macon makes himself an unignorable suspect. He sucks up all the oxygen in the room while presenting his elephant to the room. His request to be painted like a French girl could be explained as a proud husband trying to take the power back from his wife’s new lover, but a) John isn’t phased by a little nudity. (He’s not phased by anything, other than his parents’ imminent death, but he also must have studied the human form in art school — this isn’t his first hand-drawn schlong.), And b) even when he threatens to kill John instead of Hal, it doesn’t feel like a plausible threat. It’s more like further posturing meant to discourage additional break-ins.

Well done, Macon. You were a credible distraction and a fun one. But now that we’ve seen behind the curtain, it’s time to examine what’s real.

The Co(r)ps

Laura Linney in ‘Lanterns’Courtesy of John Johnson / HBO Max

Hal and John’s closing car ride is a test — perhaps John’s last test — and he fails badly.

“They find a path to power every time,” Hal says about Manhunters. “If they identify a threat to that power, they’ll manipulate that threat into believing anything they want them to. Remind you of anyone we know?”

After a long pause, John suggests Macon, and that’s it. The game is up, since Hal knows it’s obviously not Macon. While the wannabe cowboy has certainly tried to boss Hal and John around, he’s not a master manipulator — he’s direct. He’s not seeking anyone out. He’s not engaging emotionally. He banks on his privilege (money, weapons, power, etc.) to protect him.

But Zoe glommed onto John his first night in town. She sleeps with him before he even knows her full name. She chats him up in the diner when he’s in a vulnerable state, identifying with his plight as a person of color working under an old white guy. She keeps sleeping him, despite Macon knowing about it, and she even confesses to keeping secrets from John. “When I tell you what I know, everything changes,” she says. “I can’t yet.”

John is so wrapped around her finger, he’s drawing her portrait from memory and lying to his partner about whether he thinks she might be the Manhunter — which she all but confesses to in bed that night. At the compound, Macon says Zoe was his nurse when he was getting miraculous cancer treatments from the mysterious benefactor. Macon credits the benefactor for curing him, but when Zoe’s alone with John, she says she saved Macon’s life. That seems a little excessive, no? Would a nurse take all the credit for administering a miracle cure to a patient that was developed by someone else? No disrespect to nurses, who are often angels walking among the dying, but doesn’t it seem more likely that she’s taking credit because she’s the “savior” he serves like a god?

Hal doesn’t know all that, but he knows enough to tell John is lying when he suggests Macon is the Manhunter. Hal knows John cares about people, as evidenced by his freak-out over Hector threatening his parents. So why wasn’t he torn up over his girlfriend getting blown up? “You aren’t upset because you know Zoe isn’t dead, and I don’t know how she managed to get out of that car unless she’s a Manhunter,” Hal says. “What I can’t figure out is how long you’ve known.”

It’s a fair question, and you could even claim John not openly sharing his theory is his first cowardly act (which makes him the weenie?). But what Hal ignores in his irate reaction to a perceived betrayal is that John may not share his perspective on Manhunters. When Hal confesses to visiting Sinestro, he shares that Manhunters are “ruthless. They assimilate into communities by attaching to weak spots. It’s what they’re programmed to do.”

John replies, “So what you’re saying is they have no other choice.”

Hal presses on, laying out the reasons why they need to find the Manhunter and bring it to justice, but he ignores John’s empathy. He’s not convinced the Manhunter is evil or ruthless. And why should he be? Rushville is thriving. The people there seem happy. The only reason there’s trouble is because a group of aliens showed up seeking revenge for something that happened 20 years ago, and the Manhunter defended itself. Now, the Lanterns have to find the Manhunter to prevent those aliens from blowing up the entire town, but the Manhunter isn’t the bad guy just because another group of aliens — and the Guardians — say so. Heck, even Hal tells John not to trust the Guardians all the time!

For John, a guy who’s lived his whole life doing what other people tell him to do — who’s always following orders, who wasn’t raised as much as he was programmed — he’s got a good reason to identify with a Manhunter who lives the same way. He’s right to be wary of handing Zoe over before sorting through all the lies, but he also has to consider she’s gotten under his skin. Hal’s right to worry he may have been covering for her, and that his judgement is compromised, even if he’s also wrong to trust Sinestro and the Guardians over his partner and, frankly, his own experience in Rushville.

But once their trust is out the window, so’s Hal — bailing out of the car before it plows into a telephone pole. Now, the aliens are on their way to town, Hal is ready to turn over the Manhunter, and John will have to make the biggest choice of his largely choice-less life: Will he follow orders and help Hal find Zoe, or will he go his own way and take the ring for himself?

Grade: B+

“Lanterns” releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

“Good Luck or Oh Fuck” (Points of Clarity)

• Never forget: Damon Lindelof loves a good dick joke.

• If anyone said the name of Laura Linney’s Guardian in the show, I missed it, but the actor herself called the character Lianna in last week’s behind-the-scenes clip, so I’ll go with that moving forward.

• “Let me guess, if I want the tomato, I gotta buy the ham, too?” Look at John, getting all cheeky! And then he cracked a joke about Disney Land? Wow, Hal really is rubbing off on him!

• “Did you draw this just now?”
“Yeah. I’m creative.”
Proud of you, John. Keep getting those laughs.

• Hal saying his dad was “fearless — at least, that’s what he wanted people to think” implies Papa Jordan was actually afraid of something, just like Papa Stewart. One just had the courage to admit it (and that same one just so happens to still be alive).

• The expanding black goo that brought a cow into the slaughterhouse looks a lot like the expanding black goo that John jumped through to get to his interview with the Guardians. Connection? Or is that just how all extraterrestrial travel is done?

• I, for one, am looking forward to Hal and/or John extracting a human heart from someone’s chest to confirm whether or not they’re a Manhunter. Sounds chill. Not gross at all. (But watching it turn to crystal should be cool!)