Lanterns – The Jordan Boys’ Legacy review S1 E7
Lanterns’ penultimate episode offers a different perspective on Hal Jordan with The Jordan Boys’ Legacy. This is essentially the companion piece to John Stewart’s hero’s journey told in OutKast with the added bonus of John learning another side of his “mentor” albeit from an unexpected source — Hal Jordan.
Jordan Boys’ Legacy starts off in 1975 with a young Hal Jordan (Henry Samiri) still in his baseball uniform as the coach awaits his father, Martin (Jake B. Miller).
In an eerily similar fashion to J Alphonse Nicholson, who plays John Stewart Sr., and more closely resembles the comic book/cartoon versions of John, Miller looks like he would have been an amazing Hal Jordan if he lost the mustache.
The coach explains to Martin that Hal wouldn’t hand over the ball for fear that his relief pitcher would cost the team the game. That prompted Hal to fight his teammates and in a continued defiance of his authority figure, he is still holding onto the ball. Apparently, it’s not just a ring that Hal won’t give up without a serious fight.
To his surprise, Martin sides with his son and ends up fighting the coach earning a black eye to match Hal’s. While chilling on the tarmac, Martin gives Hal a key to his fail safe in the event of his death in the same manner that Hal’s grandfather gave a key to his fail safe to Martin. When Hal rightfully asks shouldn’t his mother have it, Martin says she shouldn’t carry it, but Hal can. It’s the Jordan Boys’ legacy.
Martin promises to be around for a long time, which would scream he’s about to die if we didn’t already know he’s dead. Young Hal stands over his father’s gravesite leading into a fantastic transition into 2026 with the Halogram looking at Hal’s body in the open gravesite.
John tries to calm the Halogram down by saying the funeral was great and everyone was there, including the squirrel. The Halogram has Hal’s BS detector dialed in and asks about Mogo. Not realizing that Mogo is a planet-sized Lantern not a person, John walks right into Hal’s set up and explains that he’s not a Green Lantern — just the guy trying to figure out who killed Hal. To do that he needs access to Hal’s failsafe vault, which was important enough for him to bring to Rushville.
With that opening convo not going as well as he intended, John shuts down the Halogram. He’s getting desperate now and calls his brother, Aaron, for the money that Maggie wants to keep quiet about seeing John with Hal the night he was murdered. That hardly seems like enough to use as blackmail and a silly plot hole in the Jordan Boys’ Legacy. One conversation with Kerry eliminates anything Maggie has over John. Also, paying a blackmailer is always a losing strategy. There’s no incentive for them to stop.
The Halogram isn’t interested in what’s in the vault or discovering the next chapter of the Jordan Boys’ legacy. It does want to talk to Kerry. The sheriff is otherwise occupied with Noah, who has his hat ceremony to determine where he’s going to school. The Halogram is impressed that John can keep it active without wearing the ring.
John isn’t very interested in talking about why Guy Gardner has the ring and starts singing Outkast’s SpottieOttieDopaliscious to distract his mind and shut Halogram off.
John gets a moment with Kerry in the aftermath of Noah’s hat ceremony that wasn’t since he’s going to wait until the championship game to declare his school. In a back room at the school, the Halogram appears to meet Kerry. Kelly McDonald does a fantastic job conveying the mix of sadness and happiness of being able to see a lost loved one for one final time. Halogram asked what Hal said about John.
“You talked about John like the football team who was always giving you hope and letting you down. He’s the TV you yell at every Sunday, but you never miss a game because you’re a big fan.”
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The Jordan Boys’ Legacy is providing some major insight for John on who Hal really was and what he thought about John. Kerry has been written as a refreshingly smart character. She quickly gets that John dug Hal’s body up so he could open up the vault.
While Kerry goes to tend to the party, John and Halogram go to the vault. John finds some random things in a bag including a gun while Halogram opens up a dark matter portal that could be anywhere. It is another planet. Halogram decides they should move it just in case Kerry killed him. John says he’s got an f’ed up brain and Halogram gets the line of Jordan Boys’ Legacy by saying “There’s a bullet in it.” True indeed.
They head out to the Macon ranch and use the water tower as the gateway location. The portal takes them to a weird location with an upside down city in the sky and a lake in the distance beyond a desert-like environment. The citizens are buried under the dirt and sand. John realizes why this planet seemed familiar. It’s Anton’s planet and he is remembering the memories of the citizens there. They breathed in a gas that made them terrified and started killing each other.
As they make their way across the lake, the gas starts affecting John who starts seeing apples in the water, his father and his younger self. The lake sequence felt somewhat small in scale and more intimate than it probably should have appeared in this vast empty world.
Halogram tells John his father killed himself. He found a note in the safe that explained that he felt like their lives would be better without him. Martin’s father left him a similar note. It’s the Jordan boys legacy. Tom King co-wrote this episode with Damon Lindelof. Both have explored themes of legacies and father in many of their projects. King has a pesky habit in his comic book writing of making heroes like Adam Strange, Mr. Miracle, The Human Target and Wally West get so morose that they become suicidal and in too many cases, homicidal as well.
The Jordan Boys Legacy is another instance of King writing comic book characters who are so broken that they are no longer heroes. The line “I’m not fearless because I’m brave, I’m fearless because I’m broken” is quintessential King, who too often tears the heroes down but never manages to build them back up in the same manner that say a Christopher Nolan and David Goyer did for Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises.
John tells Hal he’s so sorry. This confession has given him some needed insight on Hal despite not being able to do anything more than forgive him and move on to becoming a Green Lantern.
They enter the chamber and a hooded figure grabs John. It’s Sinestro who was looking for a way off the planet. The Jordan Boys Legacy ends with another flashback of young Hal retrieving the ball.
As far as penultimate episodes go, the Jordan Boys’ Legacy sets things up for a solid payoff in next week’s season finale although it did still leave more questions in terms of Hal’s path to becoming Green Lantern. Next week needs to wrap up the murder mystery instead of focusing on the heroic tenure of Hal Jordan. Can the creators stick the landing?
Rating: 8 out of 10
Photo Credit: HBO Max
After watching The Jordan Boys’ Legacy, check out Green Lantern Rebirth on trade paperback at Amazon.
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