Lanterns - “The Jordan Boys’ Legacy” Review
Written by Damon Lindelof and Tom King and directed by Alik Sakharov, “The Jordan Boys’ Legacy” is the best hour Lanterns has produced thus far, and it earns that by trusting its emotional architecture over its mystery. It opens in 1975, with Hal’s father Martin called in by a baseball coach who wants to know why the young pitcher never hands the ball to his teammates. The way Martin turns to face the coach plays like a flash-forward to the hotshot Hal we know. Afterward, over Popsicles and bruises, Martin asks his son, “You scared?” and tells him it’s all right if he is. It is a tender scene, and Martin soon gives Hal a key to a lockbox, and when Hal asks whether his mother should have it instead, Martin says, “It’s not something she can carry.”
In the present, the Halogram, a version of Hal last updated circa 2006, catches John lying about the grandeur of the funeral when John mentions sitting beside Mogo, since, as the Halogram points out, Mogo is a planet. The banter between an exasperated John and a younger, cockier, more hopeful Hal is a delight. The Halogram also refuses to open the alien lockbox until John brings him to Sheriff Kane. Kelly Macdonald’s face registers shock and agony, and Kyle Chandler plays a man who seems astonished to find he was ever able to be vulnerable with someone.
The mystery plot opens up from there. The box holds a gun, supplies, and a fabric portal that leads to a barren planet with a floating, abandoned city, and a mass grave underfoot. John recognizes it from the vision Antaan showed him earlier in the season, one the audience never saw, and he describes the fear gas the Manhunters used to make people kill each other and leap to their deaths. Fear has always been the Green Lantern’s oldest enemy, and this episode makes it something more intimate. As the two men row toward a distant flame, John sees his father and his younger self in the fog. Then the Halogram reveals that Martin Jordan’s plane crash may not have been an accident. His lockbox held a suicide note.
That reveal raises the possibility that Hal, so well prepared for his own death, may have followed his father’s path, which probably isn’t true, but the possibility is enough to click the season’s emotional pieces into place. This is a story about fathers and father figures who, though present, are so closed off that they pass their damage down to their sons: Both Martin and Sinestro to Hal, and both Hal and John Sr. to John. Ending the episode with Queen’s “Father to Son” makes the point even more bluntly, and it works anyway.
The finale has a great deal to live up to. However it resolves the question of who killed Hal Jordan, I can already tell that the wait to see these characters again will be long and painful.