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Sorry for the delay on this one!
lanterns launching him into the 2026 of his events, largely picking up from the moment Hal was killed. I was worried that the absence of Hal would be a detriment to the show, but Aaron Pierre continues to shine as the show jumps forward ten years from last week’s violent confrontation.
After one final meeting between John and Hal, the latter is unceremoniously killed off-screen. He served ten years in prison for the chaos that came to the town, and he tried to do justice to the townspeople by doing odd jobs, such as mowing the grass, etc., but he was not very popular in the town except for starting a relationship with Kerry of people, after she separated from Billy. So no one is particularly broken about his loss; even John has little to nothing about him, except the mystery itself.
He ends up burying himself in the mystery of the murder, to the extent that he abandons his brother and father to “tie up some loose ends” in town. It was rough to see John abandoning his brother Aaron; both started a very successful architecture firm and were doing very well with their last field; the town was on board with Iain’s salvage house design, but they needed permission from the military, which Iain may have had due to his time in the army. But he chooses to do that meeting by phone, and the Colonel, on the other hand, thought that was very disrespectful, hanging up almost immediately. Hal was terrible to John, so John sticks around to clean up the mess and ends up digging up Hal’s body to find the ring feeling like his priorities might be out of order.
Speaking of the ring, John hires Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion, reprising his role from 2025’s Superman), Hal’s last place. He’s very different from his big screen version, more gruff and a little shy, but still sporting that awesome haircut. He agrees to fly back and claim Hal’s ring to be buried with Hal, only for John to deceive everyone and find Hal’s body and ring in the middle of the night. At least by doing this, we get more of Kyle Chandler, thanks to the ring that has Hal’s memory backup.
John also has a ticking clock in the form of a waitress at the cafe, who blackmails him for over $300 grand due to damage done to the town. Iain chose not to tell Kerry that he met Iain the night he died, suspiciously, but Maggie didn’t notice this detail. But we don’t know if John will choose to just ignore this, or use the ring to promote fake money like Hal did in the bar.
So the episode was missing a lot of that spark, because we lacked another Hal, but thankfully, Aaron Pierre is great as John. He is empathetic, professional, stoic, and a little cynical, and definitely deep. But with two episodes left, I feel like we have to dive into the mystery that was established in the pilot episode: who killed Hal, and why. This episode focused a lot on John and his hangmen, but there wasn’t much in the way of detective work to go on to solve the answers to these questions.
