Lanterns - “Bad Optics” Review
“Bad Optics” functions as something close to a midseason premiere, jumping forward a full decade to 2026 and resetting the show’s dynamics with the confidence of a series willing to restructure itself mid-run. The result is a genuinely riveting hour, one that trades the mystery-box momentum of earlier episodes for something more elegiac – a meditation on grief, unfinished business, and the particular difficulty of mourning someone who hurt you badly and never got the chance to make it right.
The decade that’s passed is conveyed largely through implication, and the show trusts its audience to fill in the gaps: Hal spent years in prison, Guy Gardner became the new Green Lantern after John rejected the ring and built a life adjacent to his old calling, designing bunkers and panic rooms with his brother – architecture and crisis preparedness merged into something that lets him keep circling the orbit of heroism without ever fully committing to it. That John’s mother has been secretly maintaining contact with Hal, and that Hal’s attempt at reconciliation excludes John specifically, is exactly the kind of betrayal this show has built its emotional core around. The punch John lands on Hal in their café reunion – an ugly, unresolved goodbye – becomes even more painful once we realize it’s the last exchange these two men will ever have.
Kyle Chandler’s absence for most of the episode is felt precisely because the show makes his absence the point. Feeding Hal’s carnivorous plant Earl in his empty, unexpectedly humble apartment, John registers his mentor’s death in the specific way grief actually works – through small domestic tasks that suddenly carry unbearable weight. The show’s attempt to construct a funeral worthy of the Green Lantern, complete with John’s ill-advised attempt to summon Guy Gardner with a Bat-signal knockoff that gets him arrested, balances genuine emotional stakes with the kind of dark comedy this series has always been willing to risk.
Aaron Pierre continues to demonstrate why he’s the season's most reliable emotional anchor, conveying John’s grief, resentment, and reluctant admiration for Hal without ever tipping into melodrama. As this episode closes with John summoning the Halogram from the ring, the show promises a very different register for whatever comes next – one built on memory and unfinished conversation rather than mentorship and rivalry.
With two episodes remaining to resolve the 2026 storyline, “Bad Optics” has set the stage compellingly.