This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 4It’s been 35 years since Clarice Starling offered quid pro quo with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. And yet the “evil mastermind in prison” trope hasn’t lost any of its potency. That’s a good thing for Lanterns, as the show has finally brought in the big bad of the franchise, the renegade Green Lantern Sinestro. Sinestro has perhaps been the biggest barrier to expanding Green Lantern’s popularity. He’s obviously evil in his design, from his sinister name to his devilish look, all of which makes it hard for the average person to accept that he was once the greatest Green Lantern, whose betrayal shocked the Guardians and his close friend Hal Jordan.The brief scene at the start of the Lanterns episode 4 “The Weenie,” directed by Geeta Vasant Patel and written by Breannah Gibson, erases all doubt. Much of the credit goes to Ulrich Thomsen, whose understated take keeps viewers less into the show’s sci-fi elements from getting tripped up by his pink skin and prison cell on a distant planet. The pained expression he gives Hal as he asks leading questions about John Stewart sets the stage for an episode filled with deception, heartache, and the most alien wackiness that Lanterns has had thus far.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});On a plot level, “The Weenie” finds Hal and John’s investigation coming to a head as they uncover the identity of the Manhunter, albeit via a circuitous route. First, the duo burrow under Macon’s ranch to find a cache of weapons. That leads to a confrontation with the man—and his manhood, as Macon strips naked in a power move that’s played delightfully off-kilter by Garret Dillahunt. Macon allows them to leave with their suspicions intact, but John is dissuaded by the arrival Zoe, who intimates during their intimate moments that she holds the power in the Macon home.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.With all of these alien forces converging on Hal and John in Rushville, one gets the sense that Lanterns is ready to embrace the extreme parts of the Green Lantern mythos. After all, “The Weenie” does put Hal in his suit for the most screen time. Yet, the episode also wisely focuses on the building and rupturing friendship between Hal and John, proving that no matter how many robots from outer space or pink-skinned criminals they may encounter, the heroes of Lanterns are all too human.Lanterns airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.Green Lantern Illuminations:The idea of Abin Sur transporting a Manhunter when he crashed on Earth echoes the miniseries Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn, 1989 Hal Jordan reboot by writers Christopher Priest, Keith Giffen, and (unfortunately) Gerard Jones, and penciller M. D. Bright. In that story, Abin Sur was transporting a creature called Legion, who sought vengeance against the Guardian and who broke from its containment and forced a crash landing.Hector Hammond debuted in Green Lantern #5 (1961) by John Broome and Gil Kane. A petty con artist who gained telepathic powers and a giant brain when he was exposed to a meteor, Hector Hammond has been one of GL’s worst enemies. Casual fans might remember him as the character that Peter Sarsgaard played in the 2011 movie, and he’s currently the most nauseating rich jerk in a world filled with rich jerks in the pages of Absolute Green Lantern and Absolute Green Arrow.Is Hal’s mention of a planet of sentient tentacles a reference to Penelops, the one-eyed, tentacled Green Lantern from the planet Penelo?The post Lanterns Episode 4 Review: Hard Traveling Heroes appeared first on Den of Geek.