But when Zoe’s car gets blown up by a satellite, John and Hal call upon Kerry’s surprisingly robust computer hacking skills to trace the machinery to a man called Hector Hammond (Jason Manuel Olazabal), a business magnate who runs a meat packing plant in Rushville. The mixture of grimy slaughterhouse work and clean, high-tech equipment brings to mind the juxtapositions that Lanterns co-creator Damon Lindelof explored in Watchmen. In a standout scene, John and Hal enter a white room, where a portal opens and a cow walks through. Immediately, lasers train on the cow and slice it to pieces, splashing blood on everything except John and Hal, who stand protected in a green bubble.
The scene also highlights the humor that’s been present throughout Lanterns. Of course, Hal’s braggadocio always gets a laugh, but the series regularly pauses for goofy bits. Here, the exploding cow leaves Hal speechless, complete with a slack-jawed expression by Chandler, while John gets the one-liner: “That’s why I’m a vegan.” The jokes on Lanterns land almost every time, yet never come at the expense of the concept itself, which leaves could be open to derision.
The cow explosions leads the two to Hammond who, despite his convincing lack of passion, proves to be a decoy, a one-time engineering student named Hector Gutiérrez recruited by Macon to serve as a cover. But his threat to kill John’s parents, a threat that visibly shakes the heretofore unflappable trainee, is enough to convince Hal that his would-be replacement didn’t cry at Zoe’s death because she was the Manhunter.
Despite all the twists and turns, “The Weenie” unfolds in a legible manner, largely because of the now well-defined chemistry between Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre. Once again, Lanterns showcases Hal’s arrogance and competence, a trust in his gut which is, indeed, never wrong. But “The Weenie” gives more space for John to show off his skills, ranging from an awareness of the operations on the Macon ranch to conjuring a complex construct to burrow through the ground.
Even better, the episode shows Hal and John actually coming to like one another and admire each other. Pierre registers the hurt in John’s eyes when the Guardian reveals that Hal has called him uncreative in field reports. But when Hal’s genuinely impressed at the quality of John’s drawings—prompting the younger man to declare “I’m creative”—the two take a moment to admire one another.
The strong chemistry between the leads only makes the web of influence constricting around them so frightening. The series asks both Laura Linney and Poorna Jagannathan to play aliens masquerading as humans, and both succeed in different ways. Linney has always had the ability to play steeliness under her characters’ sprightly blond bobs, but here she adds an aloof quality that radiates condescension. When the Guardian muses to John about his surprising lack of determination, her words obviously work to manipulate him, but Linney delivers the lines with so little passion that we almost believe she’s simply musing to herself. Conversely, Jagannathan plays Zoe as someone who genuinely cares about the people she encounters, who has no need to boast about her power and merely states it as a fact.
