Lanterns – Bad Optics review S1 E6

Bad Optics picked up the present-day storyline with the fallout to the shocking reveal in the Pilot cliffhanger and the Rushville incident.

With the spoiler warning out of the way for Green Lantern fans who want to binge the full season of Lanterns, let’s get into the heart of Bad Optics.

It’s been a decade since John took Hal Jordan’s lantern and ring and handed it to the Guardian, Lianna, as essentially his resignation notice — effective immediately. John has managed to rectify at least one relationship from his past as he and his brother, Marcus (Jared Grimes), own a business in Midway City where they create panic rooms for the rich and famous.

John has bigger plans to expand on the concept based on his experience in Rushville and to protect others from the next Metropolis or Starro incident. To tap into his passion as an architect so now the outraged comic community can lay off that John was “stealing” Kyle Rayner’s gimmick. John and Marcus just need federal funding, and they can set up these underground panic arks throughout the country. Maybe John just needs to talk to Samantha Redmond instead of worrying about some stuffy military general’s approval…

Bad Optics shows that despite John walking away from the inevitable grief, heartache and isolated life that comes with being a Green Lantern, not all is well with the Stewart household. His brother, Aaron (Romeo Brown), is still resentful of how John was treated by their parents as he calls John “Chosen” as in the Chosen One to be a Green Lantern.

John isn’t particularly interested in his father’s emotional wellbeing although he’s paying for John Sr. to get high end care at a senior care provider. John doesn’t call his mother “Mom” and lists and refers to her as Bernadette. Of all the relationships in the Stewart household, it’s telling that the one that seems the most irreparable is between mother and son. That’s one of the most essential core bonds a child can have and to feel constantly let down, lied to and betrayed by Bernadette it’s a wonder that John is still so well-adjusted.

Bernadette tells John that Hal is in Rushville and wants to apologize. Ten years is enough time for John to at least be OK being around Hal long enough to have one chat with him. Bad Optics contains yet another Bernadette lie as Hal isn’t interested in apologizing. The way Hal sees it, he took the fall for John. Hal’s disdain for “the gym teacher” aka Guy Gardner and the guy in Gotham is amusing and mirrors the dismissive attitude Bernadette and John Sr. had for Hal when he showed up as Green Lantern.

Hal gets on John’s nerve one time too many especially when he mentions how John should be more respectful to his mother. That lands Hal a broken nose and a warning from John to stay away from his family. The exchange doesn’t go totally unnoticed as a woman outside the cafe sees it all play out.

MORE:

• Resident Evil (2026) review
• Batman: Knightfall – Part 1: Knightfall review (2026)
• The Runner review (2026)
• G.I. Joe Classified Series HasLab Arctic Flint review (2026) No. 228

John barely made it home when he gets a call from Sheriff Kerry, prompting another trip to Rushville to see Hal’s body with the broken nose and a gunshot wound to his head. Kerry explains that while he was in prison, Hal started mailing her. They corresponded long enough — and her marriage to Billy was crumbling, that they started seeing each other. Hal was so hated in Rushville that she just wanted someone else who’d actually care that Hal was killed.

Hal was aware of the public sentiment against him, but he wanted to make amends by asking the Rushville citizens who stayed in town how he could help. Very few took him up on that offer and most had nothing but loathing for him. It’s ironic how Bad Optics focuses on both Hal and John trying to move on from the Rushville incident by helping others by building — oddly similar to constructs — means of feeling safe.

For John it’s building massive structures to protect against the weapons from the sky whether from Manhunters, Lex Luthor or giant fish. Hal is taking a back-to-basics approach and getting in touch with his humanity by interacting with people to help regardless if they want his help.

John said he’d stay at the motel, but it never got repaired. Kerry tells John that the people who could restore it left and those who couldn’t had to just make do. In lieu of a hotel room, Kerry gives John the key to Hal’s place. Just watch the shotgun self-defense system and a plant called Earl ready to swallow up any strangers.

While he meets with Kerry for breakfast, John notices the woman he saw outside the cafe is actually the waitress, Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler), who lies about Hal being by himself at the booth the day he got killed. That was simply so Maggie could demand reparations from John down to the specific dollar amount to square things up. She was the girl who John tried to comfort after killing Zoe, who’s grown up carrying a legit hatred for Hal and John.

It doesn’t feel like Maggie thought through her specific blackmail plan very well since John punching Hal (one punch!) doesn’t exactly lead to him being the murder suspect. Especially not when Kerry’s son, Noah (Shea Pritchard), has all of the legitimate beef with Hal to kill him.

It’s not like Noah knows Hal wasn’t the one who literally pulled the trigger that killed his grandmother. Hal did greatly contribute to the town being struck by lasers although Noah also didn’t know his alien grandma was the culprit behind that either. All Noah knows is that Hal was dating his mother after years of being “the” guilty party responsible for his hometown being blown up, his grandmother getting killed and his parents getting divorced. John can’t see those angles naturally and while Marcus calls to get John prepped for the meeting with the general, he insists he needs to take care of some loose ends in Rushville.

Bad Optics seems to strongly suggest the end game for the series and possibly John’s main arc is for him to utilize his architecture passion and rebuild Rushville. To make it the slice of life Americana town it was before Zoe, before John and especially before Hal. It probably beats building panic rooms.

The medical examiner is no fan of Hal’s and does the bare minimum walkthrough to ensure she did her job. Among Hal’s belongings was a key with a tag that reads Fortress of Storage. Has Superman actually disclosed his Fortress of Solitude in the DC Studios universe or is this just the Bad Optics writers getting cute? In the storage unit is Hal’s vault, which he brought all the way from his Coast City mansion. John tries to use a voicemail Hal left Kerry to open it, but the vault won’t allow it and warns that trying to access it without Hal will be a problem.

With no next of kin, Hal’s body is going to get cremated. John’s suggests giving Hal a proper burial complete with Hal being buried in his old uniform and decommissioned ring. This shows again that John never had to take Hal’s ring for Lianna. It was the Guardians’ way of humbling Hal since they could always have created another ring. John needs the help of the current Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, who is concerned about the bad optics of doing something on Jordan’s behalf.

Initially, Lanterns was going to be this multi-decade spanning series spotlighting various lanterns including Gardner and the actual first Green Lantern, Alan Scott. Gardner got more attention in the Superman film, but it does feel limiting that in the show called Lanterns that he only makes a cameo. One that was referenced a lot in the early trailers for Lanterns, but a cameo, nonetheless.

Guy lets John know that someone freed Sinestro. That seems random and hardly the kind of development that needs to drop with two episodes left in the season. A Sinestro/John Stewart confrontation hardly seems earned at this point and it doesn’t feel like this season has enough time to properly flesh out any kind of grudge between the two characters.

Noah brings John a suit for the funeral and John offers up some more sage life lessons for him. After one throwing lesson from John prompted Noah to become an All-State QB, who knows how this conversation will impact Noah’s life? Guy did make it to the funeral and delivered Hal’s outfit and ring showing he’s not a jerk in this series. Hal being a bigger tool than Guy doesn’t quite sit right, but whatever.

He won’t stay though as that would be bad optics leaving the full assemblage for the funeral of one of Earth’s greatest heroes is John, Kerry and Carol Ferris (Amie MacKenzie). Speaking of bad optics… Carol’s arrival at this stage of Lanterns feels like another throw another low effort bone to the comic book fans without actually doing anything meaningful. Maybe the comic fans can fanfic actual development of a Lanterns-era relationship between Hal and Carol?

Hal wrote his own eulogy, because of course he would, but there’s some sadness in how he imagined these throes of people coming together to pay their final respects and the crowd is just three people. After Kerry and Carol leave, John has an idea of how to get into the vault. First, he’s got to a bit of light gravedigging.

Before he can finish, Marcus calls and the general is on the other line. Since John blew off the meeting, the general took the time to get on the phone simply so he could hang up on him. Ouch. Marcus says John has been stuck in Rushville for 10 years and he needs to figure it out before he ends up dead like Jordan. Fair.

John does strike payday and for the second time, takes Hal’s ring. This time it’s to do the hack charge to trigger Hal’s backup, who’s royally annoyed to find Hal’s body in a coffin. Truly bad optics.

That opens up the possibility of course of John occasionally getting a pep talk or some counsel from Hal in his peak hero era before his downfall and allows for Kyle Chandler to still take part in some form of the Green Lantern escapades.

Bad Optics starts the season’s final stretch of current day episodes with the last mystery left to solve before John can truly accept his destiny.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: HBO Max

After watching Bad Optics, check out Green Lantern Rebirth on trade paperback at Amazon.

As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.