Ability Isn’t Defined by Legacy

Line of Fire Episode 4, “Paper Trails,” explodes onto the scene.

Literally.

What begins as an ordinary delivery to the Secretary of Agriculture’s home ends in an explosion on his doorstep, drawing multiple federal agencies into the investigation.

Jane immediately gets pulled in and calls the FBI to ask for Clare to join the investigation.

Their relationship is on the mend since Clare moved back after Logan’s death, and Clare no longer sees herself as her mother’s shadow but as a formidable agent all her own.

But what starts as a mother-daughter investigation quickly turns into a family affair as Mike steps in with the Secret Service now formally involved.

The resulting friction echoes the tension we’ve seen between Mike and Micah, testing Clare’s patience in ways her father doesn’t anticipate.

In Episode 3, “There Are Two Wolves,” Mike’s pride for Clare’s ambition swells, but in Episode 4, it becomes another source of anxiety as she once again feels overshadowed by the Hollingsworth legacy.

“If you’re not going to help me, get out of my way.”

With every piece of information, Clare feels the walls of her lineage close around her as she fights to establish a professional identity of her own.

Having only recently stepped out of her mother’s shadow, Clare now finds herself contending with her father’s.

Her sharp, no-nonsense approach clashes with Mike’s easygoing charisma, introducing an unfamiliar tension between the doting father and his only daughter.

Mike now finds himself on the receiving end of her frustration as she pulls further and further away from her parents’ expectations to perform her job her way.

But what Clare perceives as another expectation placed upon her by her parents may be one she unconsciously placed upon herself.

This insecurity becomes apparent when Mike reminds Clare that her way and his way share the same goal, just different roadmaps to arrive there.

This realization shifts how Clare sees both herself and her parents: her ambitions can exist alongside theirs, adding to the Hollingsworth legacy rather than succumbing to its weight.

Jack’s Absence Reveals Deep Sibling Wounds

If it’s not enough that Clare finds herself enmeshed in another case with one of her parents, Micah lands on a deposition list that Russ has to conduct on behalf of the DoJ.

The deposition takes the audience deeper into the sibling dynamic between Micah and Russ—the baby brother who shields his life from everyone he loves.

In this case, Russ and Micah are at odds but not for reasons Episode 4 places on the surface.

Yes, the deposition keeps Micah from his dalliance with Sydney, the president’s daughter.

Yes, the deposition keeps Russ from meeting his girlfriend’s parents.

But at the core of both relationships is a reluctance to share their romantic lives with one another. Like Clare, Micah and Russ conceal parts of themselves, perhaps to avoid their family’s scrutiny and disappointment.

But as the brothers confront one another with the hurt they’ve carried, it becomes clear that Jack’s presumed death changed the dynamic of their bond.

Clare had Mom.

Micah had Dad.

And suddenly Russ had no one but himself.

Jack’s presumed death didn’t simply leave the Hollingsworths grieving. It changed how they leaned on each other, who received comfort, and who learned to navigate the loss alone.

Now, as the siblings begin to confront those fractures, the secret their parents kept from them threatens to reopen those wounds.

Throughout “Paper Trails,” each revelation exposes another fracture, and every Hollingsworth finds themselves entangled in situations that force them to look at the other in a new light.

Clare begins to understand her father differently, while Micah and Russ find common ground through pain that once drove them apart.

This begs the question:

Would the family turn a blind eye to the law to protect one another?

For Clare, Micah, and Russ, that choice may prove more complicated than anything they’ve faced professionally.

Their careers have been built around institutions that demand accountability, yet their family’s survival may depend on the very secrecy those institutions are supposed to challenge.

Jane and Mike prove as parents they’re willing to go to any length for their children, as the mystery surrounding Jack continues.

But what happens when the children, now adults in law enforcement, must make the same choices?

Counter to the brisk pace of Episode 3, “Paper Trails” slows us down, focusing the audience on the Hollingsworth family as conspirators to Logan’s death.

This gives us breathing room to look at the entire Hollingsworth family as a unit, as individuals, and as potential suspects.

In Episode 3, Det. Nia Wallace found a clue that made her suspect the family, or at least the parents, knew more than they were letting on.

With her on the case and the entire family in her crosshairs, the answer may come sooner than we expect.

But just as Nia digs deeper into the Hollingsworth family, Jack gathers his own counterintelligence against her and the entire task force.

Where Loyalty and Law Collide

Jack’s presence grows with each episode, advancing the mystery surrounding his alleged death and his purpose for returning to the edges of his family’s lives.

He moves in next door to Clare, kills Logan, gets a job that puts him close to the investigation of a murdered CIA agent, and then breaks into the precinct to gather intel.

Why?

Currently, signs point toward Micah, and Jane goes into mother hen mode to protect him from interrogation.

If Nia asks about the origami birds, Micah will answer freely.

This makes him the prime suspect in the murder of a man who died in his childhood home.

Just as Nia doesn’t play fair, neither does Jane.

When Nia comes to Jane’s house to find Micah, Jane confronts her with the truth—evidence of Nia breaking in to find information that supports her case against the Hollingsworths.

But fire meets flame.

Nia returns the heat by challenging Jane, stating that she may be hiding from her children as much as she’s hiding from the law.

For Jane, the confrontation with Nia brings her two identities into direct conflict.

As a U.S. Marshal, she’s sworn to uphold the law. But as a mother, she’s willing to challenge those boundaries to protect her children—the ones still within her reach and the son whose existence she spent five years protecting.

“How could her parents keep such a horrible secret from her in the name of love? Must’ve been eating them all alive.”

At the end of Episode 4, Jane confides in Mike that Nia is onto her, and Mike suggests they tell the kids the truth.

Jane changes the stakes of Jack’s disappearance when she decides to tell Nia what she knows—that five years ago Jack was offered an undercover assignment.

For life.

And to take the job, he would have to die.

Jane takes a risk by exposing her and Mike’s secret to the authorities while still choosing to conceal the truth from Clare, Micah, and Russ.

Jane and Mike decide to keep their secret and face the consequences together, but the truth threatens the one thing their children are struggling to rebuild.

Trust.

But Jane’s admission threatens the entire family as she also tells Nia about Jack’s origami.

His calling card.

The one Nia found at Logan’s crime scene in their family home, the one she discovered in Jane’s house on the windowsill, and the one Jane gave her—taken from a crime scene to protect his identity.

By removing evidence, Jane risks more than her career. Her actions could trigger an internal investigation, expose her to potential criminal charges, and increase suspicion about her involvement in Logan’s murder.

However, the truth comes at a cost.

While Jane’s cooperation may temporarily protect her children from Nia, it can’t protect them from the truth.

And with Jack operating beyond his parents’ control, the Hollingsworths may soon discover that protecting one another will cost more than any of them is prepared to pay.

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The Hollingsworth Family Secret

• Episode 2 Puts Clare at the Heart of Many Secrets

• Episode 3 All Points Back to Jack

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1

When Doubt Creeps In

Line of Fire Episode 3, “There Are Two Wolves,” lands like glass in a smash room.

And everyone is at risk of getting harmed.

From grand jurors to Clare to Jack—no one is safe.

And with a family full of law enforcement, how long can secrets remain buried?

Clare struggles with the fact that Logan was not who he said he was—replaying moments in her mind to feel something real.

But what she finds is real, just not the real that she wanted.

Clare connects with Detective Wallace to find out more about Logan, trying to reconcile why he was with her and how she failed to detect his deceit.

But before she can crumble beneath the weight of it all, a grand jury tampering case lands on Russ’s desk, requiring Clare’s help for a second opinion.

Russ comes from behind the desk and into the field when the death of a juror triggers his intuition, causing him to bring Clare in.

A welcome distraction after finding out her boyfriend of six months wasn’t who he said he was.

And that maybe everything she shared with him wasn’t real.

While a case can’t take away the grief, the next 72 hours buy enough time to at least recenter while Detective Wallace digs a little more into Logan’s background.

And while Clare questions whether she can trust her instincts, another Hollingsworth sibling is struggling to trust his.

Mike and Micah collide as Mike goes analog with the entire Secret Service team—implementing old-school training that the young group vehemently resists.

When we first met Micah, he was looking forward to his father’s retirement. But with an old threat resurfacing and the retirement on hold, Micah is back in his father’s shadow.

He’s both the golden boy and the punching bag among his team.

And like Clare, he desperately tries to claw beyond the shadows of his father’s legacy yet feels like he falls short at every attempt.

The Weight of the Hollingsworth Legacy

One thing that emerges within Episode 3 is the way the law and the Hollingsworths intertwine with one another.

At the center is Russ—the one with high-level clearance and access to information that can help his siblings.

But he’s also the youngest and the easiest to get steamrolled by his siblings’ ambitions.

He is the one most at risk of losing his job right now if any of his superiors find out.

Although the Hollingsworths clearly love one another, it’s radically obvious that boundaries are a foreign concept.

This dynamic couldn’t be more apparent than Mike coming over to Jane’s house to check on Clare when he walks in on her dinner date with Terry.

The Senator.

Every skillset converges in the back room as a family full of law enforcement, and their dates, who are also lawyers and law clerks, help Clare uncover evidence on the jury tampering case.

But just as Clare finds success, a phone call could end Russ’s career.

“Somebody has to toe the line.”

For the first time, it seems, Russ stands up to Clare—showing her that his way isn’t wrong, just different.

While her ambition is admirable, it can cause chaos for those who encounter its orbit.

And in her orbit is a proud father, one who comes alive when watching his daughter succeed.

Mike knows how to admire the parts of Clare that resemble him, but with Micah those similarities seem harder to recognize.

Or maybe just harder to accept.

And for the son carrying his father’s name into the same profession, approval becomes something he continually seeks but can’t quite obtain.

In the entirety of “There Are Two Wolves,” Micah struggles with living up to the demands of a legend while desperately searching for the man he once called Dad.

It’s within the chaos of the house that everyone’s problems and frustrations implode, the truth becoming even more apparent:

The Hollingsworths are at their best when it comes to everyone else’s mess.

And at their rockiest when they have to face their own.

Centered in the mess is Jack:

On the outskirts of his family’s lives, yet integrated in ways we have yet to uncover.

In communities.

At work.

Watching and lurking in the shadows yet hiding in plain sight.

But to what end?

The Family Beneath the Business

One thing to caution as we all come together on Monday nights is the current pace that Episode 3 sets.

Multiple storylines compete, which often makes the premise of a chaotic family dynamic louder than the narrative and the character personalities.

With A through D storylines following each family member alongside their connections to Jack, the question becomes whether this pacing model is built to last.

A more focused A-and-B episodic structure could give audiences more time to get to know these charismatic siblings beyond the crises surrounding them.

Their chemistry is at the heart of the series, and their on-screen interactions reveal a healthy dynamic free of competition and envy.

It would also allow space for us to explore the complicated “ex-but-not-my-ex” situationship between Jane and Mike.

A sneaky-link romance between the parents is one of the surprising highlights of the series, yet Line of Fire hasn’t found a way to let us in on the secret.

That may be purposeful—the hidden romance from the kids and the audience alike.

But it’s a bright spot that scratches the nostalgia itch—not for the audience’s past but for this family’s past.

Together, Jane and Mike provide us fleeting access to what the Hollingsworth family looked like before it was broken—bringing back a sense of whimsy to characters that can often become lost in fast pacing.

“There Are Two Wolves” gives us a glimpse of the family before they became so fractured.

A love they all wish to rediscover.

Peace.

A peace that was shattered when Jack died.

It all comes back to him.

And we’re hoping Line of Fire can deliver a season that makes this whirlwind worth it.

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The Hollingsworth Family Business

• Episode 1: The Hollingsworth Put the Family in Family Drama

• Episode 2 Puts Clare at the Heart of Many Secrets

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1

Hal’s Choices and Consequences

Lanterns Episode 8, “Dirt and Stars,” is all about choices.

The ones that shape us.

The ones that make us.

And the ones that scare us.

The finale doesn’t immediately pick up where we left John and Halogram. Instead, it takes us back to 2016, in the aftermath of the destruction, and then to 2026—the aftermath of Hal’s choices.

When Hal was released from prison, Kerry stood waiting for him.

He had a choice: leave Rushville or stay to face the consequences of his actions.

Hal chose Rushville.

He chose Kerry.

In that, the town chose to remind him daily that he was unwanted and unwelcome—their anger direct and arsonous.

In a house fire caused by vengeful townspeople, Hal lies on the floor near death. That is, until Noah saves him.

The way Zoe saved John.

Noah is a Manhunter.

Now facing Sinestro, John and Halogram realize Hal’s final years aren’t as disconnected as they once appeared.

Hal found out the truth about Noah, but Manhunters don’t give without exchange, and Noah’s (Shea Pritchard) request in exchange for revealing his identity was one man.

Sinestro.

Noah broke him out.

With every passing moment John and Halogram interrogate Sinestro, the truth reveals itself beneath the layers of Sinestro’s careful admissions.

Manhunters are transactional—no reason for morality and ethics to cloud their judgment.

There was a transaction with Hal.

And there’s a transaction with Sinestro.

John will stop at nothing to find out what Noah wants with Sinestro—torturing him until the truth explodes.

Noah wanted Sinestro to forge a lantern.

But Sinestro is out for Sinestro.

First, appealing to Halogram about the new ring being able to bring him back to life for real.

And when that fails, he appeals to John to charge the ring—speaking to the friction between him and Hal.

The friction between a man and his replacement.

But this time, Sinestro’s seeds of distrust don’t work.

With everything John and Halogram went through inside the boat during Episode 7, “The Jordan Boys’ Legacy,” this Hal and John are finally on the same page, leaving Sinestro behind.

Halogram and John discuss the ring and the newly forged lantern.

They bicker back and forth when Halogram, frustrated by John’s stubbornness, suddenly asks what Hal’s last words to him were.

“Don’t tell anyone you’re in Rushville.”

Halogram admits something he knew about Hal all along, and something John may have secretly hoped but never allowed himself to believe:

Hal was always, and still is, trying to protect him.

Always.

This revelation takes John by surprise, continuing to break down his former perceptions of the Hal he knew and finding space to reconcile the Hal he needed.

This Hal.

And they hatch a plan to address Noah.

The new Manhunter.

Where Programming Ends and Life Begins

John’s plan lands him right into the arms of Noah—the yellow lantern ring on his finger—as he demands John tell him why he killed Zoe.

And John tells him plainly: Zoe wanted to be killed to keep everyone else from looking for Noah.

From knowing that she’d found a way to no longer be the last of her kind.

Why she welcomed death with a smile.

And when Noah trusted Hal with his identity, Hal’s persistence in knowing what Noah was up to in the portal led to Noah taking the ultimate steps to protect his species.

Suddenly, survival takes a different shape when filtered through Noah’s fear and his need to protect his identity and the existence of his people.

Noah killed Hal.

But this act cost him.

It cost his innocence, forcing him to struggle with the version of himself who is a product of his loving environment and the one that’s a product of what Manhunters were made to become.

A struggle that John knows all too well.

“For a long time I couldn’t tell where I started and where my programming ended.”

John takes a risk in vulnerability by sharing his life and traumatic upbringing with Noah.

To the boy he taught how to throw a perfect pass.

To the Manhunter with a conscience that now sits beside him.

One who feels.

One who cries.

One who wants to simply live.

Noah and John live with the same question about their purpose, their programming, even though they were created under two entirely different circumstances.

But both were given instructions on who they should be before ever having the chance to choose for themselves.

It’s in this vulnerable space where John connects with Noah the most—where his existence as a human and Noah’s as a Manhunter feel the same.

Noah recognizes this shared experience, but he recognizes where they diverge in their assigned destinies as leaders.

And Noah wants John to release him in the only way he knows will ensure he doesn’t succumb to his programming.

In death.

When John calls on Hal—for guidance or to talk him out of what Noah asks of him—he doesn’t appear.

But maybe Hal’s absence is the guidance.

For once, there is no one standing over John’s shoulder telling him what the right decision looks like.

No commander.

No Guardians.

No mother.

No Hal.

Just John.

So he chooses to trust his gut. To process everything Noah said and everything that was left unsaid.

And if there’s one thing John has learned from Hal/Halogram, it’s to ask questions and pay attention to the answer.

Pay attention to the child.

Pay attention to the mother who would do everything to protect her child.

John recognizes this fierce protection because he felt it every day that his mother waited for him to return home.

Holding her breath.

Waiting.

Hoping he’d survive.

Just like Kerry held her breath.

Waiting.

Hoping no one would discover Noah’s identity.

But Hal never stopped digging.

And it cost him his life.

The Choice John Makes for Himself

Kerry killed Hal.

Not Noah.

And when John asks her why she called him, knowing he’s the one person who would uncover the truth, she admits her fear that maybe she’s been raising a monster this entire time.

That the son she raised is a product of what made him, not a product of who loves him.

But John grants her a gift.

The truth, letting her know that Noah is more than his programming—he wants to be good.

So good he admitted to a murder and asked to be killed just to protect her.

A goodness that reflects John’s internal dilemma that he’s been battling his entire life.

But one that’s finally showing John who he is, not who people made him to be.

He realizes, through Noah and even through Hal, that we are the sum of our choices, not just a product of our predispositions.

Although Kerry possessed those fears about Noah, it’s a fear John has spent the entire season wondering about himself.

And with this recognition, John embraces that fear, allowing it to take on a new form.

Determination.

John chooses to bear the ring.

He activates the lantern beacon to summon Guy Gardner, to let him know that a different kind of hero will protect Earth.

With a new ring—Hal’s decommissioned ring—and a newly forged lantern.

Not quite green. Not quite yellow.

An “independent contractor” not bound to the rules of anyone but himself, his integrity, and his morality.

John chooses not to become the Green Lantern everyone expected him to become, but he doesn’t abandon everything Hal left behind, the lessons his mother taught him that worked, and the many lessons everyone taught him that didn’t work.

With this decision, John becomes something brand new.

Once an outcast by circumstance.

Now an OutKast by choice.

But in his final stand, his subconscious calls forth Hal.

When John thought he needed Hal to help make this decision, Hal didn’t appear. But now that John made it on his own, Hal appears one final time.

For validation.

For reassurance.

For the passing of the torch.

John is scared, but Halogram tells him what he’s known all along.

“You’re ready.”

Halogram urges him to charge the ring, knowing he will cease to exist for John.

But this time, there is love.

It’s always been love.

A spoken love between the two of them that didn’t get room to exist during Hal and John’s training.

The love from John the little boy who idolized Hal in his prime.

The love from John the trainee, who watched Hal piece together information faster than anyone he’s ever seen.

And the love from John the man, who got to experience Halogram—a version of Hal that wasn’t yet exhausted.

It was exactly the moment needed for John to accept that he’s ready, to make a choice on his own that wasn’t driven by anyone or anything else except his own desires.

“In the brightest day and the darkest night I’ll embrace my fear I’ll do what’s right. I choose this ring I choose this fight. In service to this lantern’s light.”

A new oath.

John’s oath.

One that imbues both fear and bravery.

One that honors agency.

John Stewart spent an entire season being chosen for circumstances he never asked for.

But the man standing in the streets of Rushville with his new ring isn’t waiting on orders for anyone to tell him who to be.

“I know exactly why me” now changes meaning. The answer is no longer rooted in why his mother knows and why the Guardians know.

It’s rooted in why John finally knows the answer for himself.

And for the first time, the lantern’s light and the choice to bear it belong entirely to him.

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The Evidence Continues

• Episode 1: The Tragic Cost of a Hero

• Episode 5 Forces John Stewart to Make a Choice

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

The Truth of the Father

Average Joe Season 2 finale, “Teddy’s Dead—That’s What I Said,” takes you into Teddy’s world one week before Joe, Touch, Leon, and Cathy came to Cape Town.

And what we see is a man who’s out for one person and one person only:

Himself.

He confronts Jamila about telling Imani about Joe—the son in America that she knew nothing about.

Teddy’s true colors show as the facade of a husband fades, only to be replaced by the monster no one ever knew.

Not Imani.

Not Jamila.

Not even Joe.

But for every step Teddy carefully planned ahead, Sipho took one more—his men surrounding Teddy as he attempted to flee after killing his own wife.

Imprisoned and surrounded by a family he didn’t choose, Joe, Imani, and Teddy sit in front of Sipho—a man who pursues greatness at any cost.

A man who pursues the greatness of his father before him.

Father and son.

Son and father.

Sins and inheritance live within the confines of brick walls, each person burdened with the weight of the consequences of carrying both.

Leon and Cathy also sit imprisoned with the weight of the consequences of the many decisions and missteps within their marriage.

And it all comes to a head when Cathy confronts Leon with her reality:

“Joe and Imani are not a part of us!”

Years of frustration, years of being silenced, and coming in fourth place behind his friends finally lead Cathy to voice the root of her decision-making.

Feeling outcast by the man she chose.

Feeling alone.

But for Leon, the betrayal is too much, and he asks for a divorce…should they make it out alive.

In both Joe and Cathy’s present circumstances, family changes shape yet again as frays turn into full-blown fractures—pieces of what was once good in isolation now a tragedy when exposed.

But where one door in the family closes, another one opens, and it’s a relationship that is a matter of death or survival.

A relationship that neither Teddy nor Sipho sees coming.

The Inheritance That Keeps on Giving

Bound.

Broken.

Lined up one by one, Sipho demands to know where his heroin is and uses Imani as currency to get Teddy to talk.

Her life on the line, Joe pleads with Teddy to tell Sipho where the heroin is.

In a moment where he can show up as a father, he shows the man he truly is—the man who values himself.

And there would never be room for anyone else.

Instead of answering the question, he places the burden of his choices, his theft, and his lies back on Joe—a cycle of generational trauma that he actively inflicts so long as it saves him from facing the ugly truth about himself.

A cycle that Joe fights with all he has to break.

When Ahmale’s people come to assist Joe, chaos allows everyone to break free from capture, and all hell breaks loose.

Kill or be killed.

If there’s anyone who has nothing to lose, it’s Cathy.

And Imani.

Cornered, injured, and out of options, Teddy uses all that he has to manipulate Imani into turning her gun on Cathy.

But when she confronts him about his actions, about killing her mother, he immediately renegotiates terms with Cathy to kill Imani—willing to sacrifice his own family for the sake of securing his survival.

As the bodies pile up, so does the debt.

And the Afghans come to collect.

With Sipho dead and no successor named, the Lion has to seek another way to get her heroin or her money for the amount stolen.

The entirety of Season 2 of Average Joe has been about family and inheritance—relationships, fatherhood, the family by blood, and the family chosen.

Every decision one makes impacts everyone else, even when every attempt is made to shield someone from the consequences.

And in true Average Joe fashion, Teddy’s consequences are an inheritance that keeps on giving.

Stealing the heroin from Sipho didn’t end with Sipho.

Teddy inherited the product and the debt to the Afghans.

But with Teddy and Sipho out of the way, Joe once again finds himself the beneficiary of horrific circumstances because of the man he once called father.

And who would Teddy be if he didn’t leave behind more clues for Joe to find?

Maybe the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Maybe Joe is like Teddy.

Cars.

Money.

Heroin.

Joe unlocks the final clue to retrieve what he’s been chasing all season long. But if he thought it would be simple, he has another thing coming.

Cathy.

Once again, Cathy fights for her agency and autonomy by looking out for herself—fighting to build a future that no longer resembles her former self.

A fight Joe expects.

One he respects.

Joe realizes that if he’s going to participate in crime, it’s better to do it with the family he knows he can trust rather than go it alone.

A deal is made for Joe, Leon, and Touch to get the money and the gold while Cathy gets the heroin—a deal that pulls the family back together.

Even if it’s only for a moment.

Only for another season.

But the Lion threatens everything when she comes to collect Sipho’s debt.

Teddy’s debt.

Joe’s debt.

And the Lion knows exactly how to harm him.

Family.

Using his wife and daughter as collateral, gunshots ring out, altering Joe’s life forever.

And with the audience left assuming that Angela and Jennifer are deceased, we also have to wonder if Joe is like his father after all.

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Joe’s Dysfunctional Family

• Episode 7: Teddy Turns Family Into His Greatest Weapon

• Why Cathy is the Most Misunderstood Character

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1

The Tangled Webs We Weave

NBC’s Line of Fire Episode 2, “A Bigger Picture,” gets off to a chaotic start as the Hollingsworth family deals with the death of Clare’s boyfriend, Logan.

The murder committed by the brother none of the siblings knows is even alive.

Jack.

And her grief is amplified by the resurfacing feelings surrounding Jack’s death—both losses now living inside her in a panic.

The worst part:

Mike and Jane know that Jack went undercover and is potentially alive.

What they don’t know—but highly suspect—is that Logan was his doing, and Detective Nia Wallace, played by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, suspects they’re holding back more than they’re willing to give.

Det. Wallace heads to Logan’s place to gather more information about him when she asks a neighbor about Joel, a man frequently seen hanging out with Logan at his apartment.

But the neighbor informs Det. Wallace that there is no Joel.

Suddenly, the suspicions around Logan’s real identity increase, and for the audience, why Jack specifically watched Clare becomes even more intriguing.

Even more interesting is Clare’s insistence on staying in the field even though she’s emotionally compromised—her feelings about her mother influencing how she leads her new case.

This places her and Jane on opposite sides of justice, fueling an already volatile relationship that’s been simmering beneath the surface.

All while Russ is unfortunately stuck in the middle of their feud as a new DoJ employee—still finding his identity in the workplace while trying to define boundaries with his siblings and his parents so he doesn’t get fired in his first week.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

FBI versus U.S. Marshal.

Mother versus daughter.

Clare makes a decision that leads her directly between the suspects of her case—and on the business end of a barrel.

And the reality of her predicament is one she won’t fully accept: she is more like her mother than she’s willing to admit.

Each woman goes against the other to prove her case, fighting to be heard—choices that could have cost one of them her life.

A realization that rocks Jane to her core.

The fear of losing another child, her only daughter.

For the first time, Jane shares her human side—her motherly side—with Clare, trying to make her understand how throwing yourself into work to run away from grief can cause more harm than good.

And Clare listens but also lets her mom know that while she recognizes their similarities, she’s carving a path all her own, which requires her mother to trust her.

Trust her with her instincts.

Trust her with her feelings.

And as the episode ends, the concept of trust gets warped under the weight of the enormous lie that Mike and Jane sit on.

Jack.

“I had to tell myself he was dead because, to us, he had to be.”

But believing something in order to survive it doesn’t make it an absolute fact.

Mike and Jane knew Jack went undercover. They knew he didn’t die in service. And that truth alone could be enough to destroy the relationship between the parents and their children.

And while Mike and Jane reconcile the lie they needed to believe about Jack, another truth rocks Clare.

Logan was an undercover CIA operative.

His assignment?

Clare.

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More Crime, More Drama

• Line of Fire Episode 1 Review

• The Rainmaker Season 2 Renewal

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

The Path Given

1975 (Then)

Young Hal Jordan in the coach’s office with his dad, who had to be called in because Hal wouldn’t give the baseball—nor his time to keep shining on the field—to the backup pitcher.

To his replacement.

Instead of allowing someone else the opportunity to shine, he decided to fight his whole team.

And he still never relinquished the ball.

In Lanterns Episode 7, “The Jordan Boys’ Legacy,” metaphors and symbolism take root in Hal’s backstory—painting a clearer picture of how Hal processes relationships, disappointment, and responsibility.

The first teacher of this lesson?

His father.

But instead of his father teaching him a lesson in humility, he fights the coach—telling him that being good is “all that f—matters.”

“I fought with you; I fought on your side long before you were born.”

Lyrics from “Father to Son” by Queen play in the background, bringing into the scene with them a feeling of a father saying goodbye.

A father who on the outside looks and acts tough but does everything he can to fight for his son, even when he doesn’t always win.

And while both bruised-up Jordan boys share a popsicle, the perception of the previous confrontation and everything we thought we knew about Hal changes.

Was it arrogance or was it advocacy that motivated Martin?

Or was it both?

As they sit nursing their wounds, Martin hands Hal a key…

Then asks him if he’s scared, to which Hal replies, “no.”

Immediately, the passing of the key from father to son comes with a story and a lesson about fear and preparation.

When Hal’s grandfather gave the key to Martin before war, he didn’t come back.

Now Martin bestows the key upon Hal—a symbol of responsibility and maybe a foreshadowing of the moment Hal’s father knew he would embark on a mission from which he wouldn’t return.

In that moment, he speaks about that very determination that’s in the Jordan blood—their legacy of bravery and endurance, but also in knowing when to let go.

The baseball.

Hal clenches it still, and his father tells him he can simply throw it away, that he can’t hold onto it—being the only gifted one—forever “because it’s f—exhausting.”

A lesson young beat-up Hal receives after fighting for his perfect game status on the team that echoes everything we know about his fight to hold onto the Lantern title now.

The Path Taken

2026 (Now)

Halogram is stunned by his death and that it’s been ten years since he’s last been called upon.

But just like Hal, he quickly sifts through John’s lies and demands to know what the hell is going on.

John puts him back inside the ring, but it’s clear that John intends to use him to access Hal’s vault.

The key from Martin.

A key that now has a bird keychain attached to it, a symbol that Hal knows is important to John—a clue he knows he would follow.

What does Hal want John to find?

Whatever it is, Halogram won’t help until he takes him to see Kerry.

This is where the heart of the brotherhood shines.

Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre put their biting banter on full display—digs and jabs at one another that hurt, but with enough care not to hit too far below the belt.

This relationship extends even deeper than John wants to acknowledge when he subconsciously manifests the hologram and maintains the projection even without the ring.

John thinks Halogram manifested himself into the passenger seat, but he tells him the only way he is present is if John thinks about him at all.

The sudden realization brings Halogram’s teasing to a full stop as he realizes the complete anomaly of his presence.

John isn’t wearing the ring.

Halogram is stunned and impressed, delivering a compliment about John’s talents that momentarily takes him off guard.

It’s here where John grants himself permission to wonder what his relationship with Hal would have been like had he met this version of him.

Before Hal was exhausted.

For John, this comes as a balm to all of the stress he’s experienced in the last ten years and especially the last 24 hours.

And even if just for a moment, John allows himself to accept the kindness.

A kindness that’s quickly clouded by the secret John withholds from Halogram about who actually killed the Manhunter.

While John wrestles with his new and complicated feelings about Hal, he sticks to his bargain and takes Halogram to see Kerry.

And it’s one of the most heartbreaking moments of the entire series.

“Did we talk about my father? How he died?”

Kerry nods but also discloses how Hal felt about John over the ten years they didn’t speak.

How he was “the TV he would yell at every Sunday, but he wouldn’t miss a game.”

For ten years, John knew Hal as the man who was washed up.

The man who fell.

But Kerry gives him a glimpse of the man who apparently never stopped watching John, never stopped showing up for him, even if it was from a distance.

Suddenly, the revelation washes over John, along with the guilt of learning that their estrangement may not be what he thought it was all this time.

As quickly as the truth about Hal’s true feelings about John enters the room, another potential truth shows up beside it when Halogram tells John something about Kerry.

“She killed me.”

The Path Chosen

The vault is open, and Halogram pulls out a mysterious black blob while John arms up with a weapon.

Halogram asks John if Hal ever taught him Einstein-Rosen bridge theory, then quickly explains the dark matter manhole is essentially a portal.

To another planet.

And Halogram wants to get himself and John wherever they need to be before Kerry returns to the vault to find them.

John takes him to a part of town that’s still recovering from the destruction when he abruptly stops and tells Halogram to ask him if he’s afraid.

Is this to prove a point to himself or Halogram?

At the moment it’s unclear, and John bravely walks through the portal without hesitation to a place that feels to him both unsettling and familiar.

When they look up, they see what appears to be a destroyed civilization.

And Halogram quickly realizes Hal never taught John to fly.

As they walk through the deserted land, John realizes they are walking on top of bodies—the souls of a forgotten civilization.

That’s when it hits John that this place is the land where Antaan showed him.

His people’s experience.

A people destroyed by a rogue Manhunter.

But there’s no time to linger on the gravity of where they stand, and they set out for Hal’s boat—back in a small space, yet again, with the elephant between them.

John and Hal’s relationship.

And Halogram asks him point blank:

“Why did you come back?”

But John’s answer reveals his return is deeper than Hal.

Perhaps even deeper than his mother having the power to convince him to go back in the first place.

So much of John’s life has been shaped by paths other people chose for him—the Guardians, his parents, Hal, the Marines, and the weight of responsibility attached to each identity he was expected to wear.

And it’s glaringly clear John holds a lot of anger and resentment over having no control over his own path.

But instead of just wanting an apology from Hal, maybe John came back so he could walk the path he’d finally chosen for himself.

These feelings take hold of him, coming to an explosive head in the eye of a storm—not just the one surrounding John but the one that dwells inside.

John Sr. appears with an apple atop his head.

“Are you afraid, son?!”

John pulls the gun, thrown back into a childhood lesson as he yells his answer.

No.

Young John Jr. with an apple atop his head.

John freezes.

And his younger self speaks the truth aloud that John himself was afraid to voice his entire life.

He is and has always been extremely afraid.

Before he’s completely consumed by his fears and insecurities, Halogram saves John from himself and his hallucination, the atmospheric gas playing on his mind like a fiddle.

But it reveals a truth John has never allowed himself to confront—his fears, his wants, and his needs.

John’s demons aren’t the only ones present in the boat, however, as Halogram opens up about his own father.

The test pilot story wasn’t a training accident.

He was living with a pain that was growing, one that he could no longer hide from his family.

And the note young Hal inherited about the truth of his father’s death was the very same pain Martin inherited from his father.

Depression and suicide.

The Jordan Boys’ Legacy.

And Halogram confesses what we’ve been running toward the entire season about Hal:

“I’m not fearless because I’m brave, I’m fearless because I’m broken.”

In Episode 4, “The Weenie,” we came to this very conclusion, understanding that it wasn’t fearlessness that made Hal capable of saying yes to the ring, but the fact that he already understood how to live with fear after suffering a devastating loss.

And in Episode 7, Hal confirms what we’ve been ruminating on from the start.

It’s here, within this confession, that John finally acknowledges the ring’s construct as just Hal and extends an apology to every Hal—the man he knew, the man he’s learning, and the boy he never got to meet.

When they make it to their destination, a mysterious figure surprises them and takes Hal hostage.

This time, Hal and John are no longer on opposite sides of their fear.

They’ve found kinship in one another through it.

“Trainee, they’re playing our song.”

And John uses his willpower to make Hal disappear and sucker punches the hooded figure in the face to reveal someone we didn’t see coming.

Sinestro.

“Great arm, kid.”

Hal to John.

The very same words from Martin to young Hal.

And we’re back in 1975 with different lyrics from “Father to Son” blanketing the scene.

This time, young Hal in his funeral clothes goes to retrieve the baseball he threw during the last conversation he had with his father.

The symbolism in this ending frame encapsulates a part of Hal Jordan that maybe he’d forgotten.

Yes, he was broken.

Yes, he inherited his father’s “legacy” of depression.

But young Hal goes back for the baseball—changing the meaning of an object that connects him to his father and his father’s father.

It’s a representation of the exhaustion that lives inside him, but Hal realizes that what he inherited doesn’t get to choose the path for him.

Decades later, returning to Hal and confronting everything he spent years running from, John also makes a choice.

John and Hal realize they don’t have to be defined by their inherited pain.

They can embrace it and still choose to keep going.

This time, choosing to keep going with one another.

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The Evidence Locker

• Episode 5: John Stewart’s Choice

• Episode 2 Turns Everyone From Witness to Suspect

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

The Woman We Perceive

The saying goes, “There’s no woman like a woman scorned.”

But what happens when the scorn doesn’t present itself in open rage and destruction?

What if it’s quietly brewing during years of being wronged?

And when it finally comes to light, it isn’t explosive but calculating and self-protective.

What if the scorn looks like something you can’t stand to face because facing it would mean recognizing some parts of your life within the woman taking action?

These are questions that I pondered across two seasons of Average Joe when experiencing Cathy—a multidimensional and astoundingly dynamic woman who embodies everything we love and dislike in a person.

In women.

And judging by the way audiences react to the escalation of Cynthia Kaye McWilliams’ portrayal of Cathy in Average Joe, they don’t much like her.

McWilliams’ character consistently makes decisions that appear selfish from the outside looking in. But internally, Cathy is also a woman trying to have her voice heard in a world where the men around her often get the final say.

Even now, in Cape Town, Cathy is surrounded by Leon, Touch, and of course Joe—who often make decisions for the group that Cathy openly challenges, only to privately convince Leon that another plan may be better.

Her voice? Suppressed.

Her ideas? Discarded.

And it breeds a resentment that at first appears to be disloyalty but could come from years of feeling unheard and misunderstood.

For two seasons, the core group has been dodging danger across two continents, yet Cathy’s proposed plans have often proved correct after the men rejected them.

That is, after her ideas were shot down, something went wrong, and the men eventually came back around needing Cathy to bail them out.

It’s a cycle many women recognize: having the answer isn’t always enough when people believe you shouldn’t be the one that has it.

Even in a marriage where her husband built a pedestal on his back for her to stand on, Leon questions the validity of her ideas in front of his friends. And with every dismissal and Leon’s wavering support, something between them fractures a little more.

So for a woman on screen who, by all accounts, looks like nothing will ever be enough for her, it’s true.

But it’s not the money or the drugs that aren’t enough.

There’s never going to be enough apologies to fill the emptiness she’s been left with time and time again whenever she was told and shown that her voice didn’t matter.

The Woman They Perceive

In Season 2 Episode 6, “Blind Spot,” this ire comes fully forward as Cathy betrays the group and offers Joe to Sipho in exchange for money and freedom.

It’s also in “Blind Spot” that Joe discloses the secret that Leon lied about being sterile and that it was Cathy who was infertile—mocking her for being unfit to be a mother.

This is information that causes her deep harm, as flashbacks in Season 1 show a brighter, more hopeful Cathy crumble under the weight of feeling “broken” because she couldn’t get pregnant.

For Cathy, the inability to have a child becomes more than infertility. Season 1 shows how deeply she internalizes not becoming pregnant as a brokenness within herself—a perceived failure attached to the life she thought she and Leon would have.

And that pain becomes difficult to separate from the expectations women are taught to carry around motherhood—where the ability to become a mother can become entangled with ideas about womanhood, fulfillment, and worth.

So with Joe’s spiteful confession, Leon’s act of selflessness is now perceived as a wound to Cathy’s agency, further fracturing the trust and family she thought she built with Leon.

And although his decision proved he loved her enough to protect her from the news he knew would devastate her, he didn’t trust her enough to handle her own feelings about it.

In his attempt to shield her from pain, he took away her power to choose how she would have wanted to grieve the loss of motherhood in the first place.

Now, Joe weaponizes this information to further divide her from the group.

It’s Joe’s family.

Then there’s Cathy.

The Woman She Chooses to Be

So what makes Cathy’s anger so difficult to untangle?

She did everything society tells women to do—get married, try to start a family, build security.

All the things that are the alleged ingredients to a life that’s supposed to lead somewhere.

But little by little, the life she thought she was building became something she no longer recognized.

A life for which she was no longer willing to settle.

The easy thing to do is categorize all of her actions as selfish, but underneath them is a Black woman with rage.

A Black woman with grief.

A quiet rage that built over years of being let down.

Years of being silenced.

Years of seeing what life could be all for the possibilities to vanish before her eyes.

And years of grieving the discrepancy between the life promised by doing everything “right” and the life she actually received.

So when following the “right path” gets her nowhere, the opportunity to start over—by legal or illegal means—is attractive enough for her to go into self-preservation mode.

But self-preservation has a cost.

The cost?

Cathy making the same decisions for the group that she herself resents.

Her freedom now comes at the expense of Joe, Touch, and Leon.

Her survival requires someone else to become collateral.

And that’s where Cathy’s actions become difficult to defend even when she remains easy to understand.

Maybe that’s the uncomfortable line Cathy has been walking all along.

After spending years believing everyone else’s needs, decisions, and futures came before hers, choosing herself begins to feel less like betrayal and more like survival.

And for Cathy, survival begins to require the sacrifice of everyone around her, which makes it difficult to tell where self-preservation ends and selfishness begins.

She loves Leon.

It’s been apparent across two seasons.

But in Cape Town, love and survival are at war, and her life depends on every decision she makes.

And each decision she makes in pursuit of survival can make the audience believe she’s incapable of truly loving anyone else at all.

But she isn’t a woman who doesn’t love.

She’s just a woman who decided she loved herself just a little more.

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Average Joe’s Family Dynamic

• Episode 7 Turns Family Into Teddy’s Greatest Weapon

• Episode 6 Exposes the Truth in Every Choice

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1

The Prodigal Father

Teddy.

Alive, breathing, and well.

After one and a half seasons of being burdened with the consequences of his father’s illegal career choices, Joe finally comes face to face with the source of his problems in Average Joe Season 2 Episode 7, “Family Reunion.”

In Episode 6, “Blind Spot,” Joe turned himself over to Sipho with a recon mission to get his sister safely out of the compound and all of them (well, maybe except for Cathy) out of the country.

This becomes foiled when he finds himself locked in a cell with no clear lines of communication to Leon and Touch.

But his incarceration came with a revelation he couldn’t have predicted; even his life depended on it.

Teddy is alive.

And suddenly, Joe’s suppressed rage has a physical target.

In a flashback, Teddy, played by Dennis Haysbert, sits with a more reserved Joe—a conversation that feigns normalcy but exposes the depths of Joe and Teddy’s relationship.

Joe feels small.

Meek.

And childlike.

Given what we know of his strict upbringing from Season 1, we see the power dynamic on full display in the diner.

Teddy isn’t just a figure that’s larger than life.

He is larger than life.

It’s within this flashback that Teddy casually brings up the buck head that, unbeknownst to Joe, contains millions of dollars.

What once appeared innocuous now reveals Teddy laying the groundwork for his disappearance long before anyone suspected he intended to die.

But the manipulation doesn’t end there.

“I love you son.”

It sounds genuine.

It comes out like a fall breeze.

Yet Joe is rendered momentarily speechless from the intrusion of it, as if he’s never heard it at all.

“I love you too, Pops.”

Joe’s inner child becomes present in the scene, unknowingly vulnerable to the events that lay ahead.

Every Teddy defense, every scoff at Imani telling Joe he was alive, and every “almost” respect for his deceased father now shatters under the weight of the truth of Teddy’s existence.

The Son Who Fights Back

Father and son.

Maker and made.

Teddy and Joe.

It all boils down to a confrontation that is long overdue—not just for the mess Joe is in currently but for the boy who sought his father’s love just to be given less than what he deserved in return.

“You think I won’t f— you up for what the f— you did to my life, to my family?”

Finally, the crux of the entire series is exposed in a single combative question.

Teddy destroyed his family.

Joe’s family was destroyed by Teddy’s choices.

And now Joe’s chosen family is fractured because of Teddy’s schemes.

Family, for Joe, is everything he had that separated him from being his father’s son.

But it is now the very thing that is heading toward the very outcome he tried hard to avoid.

Joe can’t change the family Teddy gave him.

But Imani, Leon, and Touch are the family he chose and built himself.

Allowing Teddy to destroy them would mean letting his father take something from him one final time, and Joe refuses to allow this version of his family to be consumed by Teddy.

Another man whose present conflict with family determines how he operates is Detective Akinyemi.

In Episode 6, Akinyemi found Phyllis and Imani at Jamila’s house and brought them into custody for questioning.

But the image of her dead in front of him, alongside the bodies piling up on this case, continues to pull forth his inner demons.

A father whose profession led to an inheritance his son didn’t ask for.

A son who lost his life because of it.

Driven by his need to reconcile not being able to change his son’s fate, he makes a critical mistake that lands him, Phyllis, and Imani in Sipho’s hands.

In “Family Reunion,” everything collides at Sipho’s compound, and the definition of family takes a different appearance.

Leon versus Cathy—a family fractured by lies and ambition.

Teddy versus Jamila—a family curated as a means to an end to acquire power.

Imani versus Teddy—a daughter who has yet to realize how the woman she loved most was merely a blip in Teddy’s criminal ascension.

But new family alliances form as Phyllis and Touch’s season-long yearning finally finds acknowledgment between them—a shared moment that ends with Touch bringing in Joe’s newly acquired family.

Ahmale.

A Double-Edged Sword

Teddy’s transactional approach to relationships inadvertently appears as the very connection Touch uses to try to get everyone out of the compound safely.

A blind spot that Teddy won’t see coming because Teddy believes Joe is like him.

But unlike him, Joe values those he calls family and doesn’t discard them at the slightest inconvenience.

What he did for Ahmale and her people may be the difference that makes her choose to show up for Joe.

Not because of Teddy, but because of who he already proved to her to be.

But Teddy knows something about his son too.

He sent Joe the picture of his wife and daughter knowing Joe would come to Cape Town. He knew discovering he had a sister would make him stay.

Now Teddy has positioned himself as the one parent left Imani wouldn’t leave without. And he knows Joe won’t leave without Imani—playing on his wounds at already losing his wife and daughter.

“You won’t leave without her, which means you won’t leave without me.”

Teddy turns the very thing that separates Joe from him into his final act of manipulation.

Family.

Joe may want to leave Teddy behind, but saving Imani now means saving the father who destroyed them both.

By the end of Episode 7, Joe’s fight is no longer simply about getting his family out alive.

It’s about deciding whether or not Teddy is a part of the family he’ll choose to save.

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Joe’s Family Tree

• Episode 6 Exposes the Truth Underneath Every Choice

• Episode 5 Proves Survival Runs in the Family

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1

A Life Beyond the Ring

The end of Lanterns Episode 6, “Bad Optics,” has me asking myself the same question as I did in Episode 1:

What the hell is going on?

Just when you think you know the direction the series will take, it snatches you back from your machinations and grounds you into its reality—reminding us that we, in fact, do not know what’s going to happen.

This is precisely what makes Episode 6 both incredible and infuriating.

“Bad Optics” begins in 2026 with John, along with his brother Marcus, making a pitch with the Midway City Comptroller department for an underground city panic room.

The moment shows us a somewhat repaired brotherly relationship and a John that constructed a life outside of becoming the next Green Lantern.

But a phone call destroys ten years of avoidance, pulling John back into Rushville, the place he abandoned but never abandoned him.

Rushville’s hold on John runs deeper than he’s willing to admit. Even with his panic room, he’s still building something to protect the lives of everyone around him—a decision that may carry guilt from the destruction he left behind.

And his mother knows John’s protective instincts and guilt still live within him, which is why her call is the only call capable of sending him back.

She speaks of a friendship she forged with Hal, offering John a display of understanding and forgiveness in order to get him to at least hear Hal out and do the same.

John isn’t keen on revisiting the past, but his curiosity takes him back anyway.

But just as soon as John sits with Hal, he comes to realize that Bernadette lied about a friendship.

Or maybe Hal is too proud to admit he missed John’s companionship and looked for it through whatever means were afforded to him.

Either way, John scrambles to gain control of the conversation, releasing pent-up anger and frustration at Hal with zero sympathy for Hal being in jail for the past ten years.

“You didn’t take the fall. You fell.”

Though the statement stings, Hal doesn’t let John sit in his self-righteousness for too long before calling out the fact that John is a murderer too.

John arrives having convinced himself that he’s settled the question of who Hal became.

But in a single conversation, Hal destabilizes John’s sense of morality once again.

The Life Hal Left Behind

That the events in 2016 altered them both as Lanterns.

As men.

But just as the evidence laid before us in the previous five episodes suggests, Hal instructs John not to tell anyone he was there to visit—further solidifying that Hal may be on a mission to uncover the truth about the Guardians and Lianna.

Frustrated and fed up, John leaves Hal alone.

And it’s a decision that may hold great regret when Kerry calls and tells him Hal has passed, taking us back to the end of Episode 1 and unloading a myriad of questions ahead.

At the end of Episode 1, audiences saw that John looked for the ring on Hal’s frozen hand, but there wasn’t one.

But in Episode 6, the perception of this scene shifts as John looks for defensive wounds on Hal’s hand.

How did he die, and, more importantly, why didn’t he fight back?

After Hal’s release, he moved to Rushville to make amends to the people of the town—attempting to right a wrong that could never, in their eyes, be fixed.

Kerry gives John the key to the place Hal lived as he tries to figure out what happened and why.

It’s a somber moment but indicative of the respect John held for him since he was a boy.

But Marcus calls, reminding him of yet another responsibility, another expectation from someone who isn’t himself—binding himself to what’s comfortable rather than exploring a life of the unknown of who he could be on his own.

As much as John wants to ignore Hal’s death, he insists on being deputized to investigate alongside Kerry, making choices that are of his own volition even though he has every reason to return home.

In his belongings lies a key to a storage unit that John and Kerry check out, though Kerry’s reluctance belies a relationship she wishes to keep secret.

For now.

As John heads to Kerry’s house for a quiet evening at dinner with her and her son, Noah, he’s confronted by Billy and his goons, leading to a fist fight that lands him in jail.

But not before he activates the Green Lantern signal.

A Truth That Refuses to Stay Buried

In jail, Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) answers John’s distress call, finally showing just who took up the mantle that John left empty.

“Everything you have is because I didn’t take it.”

There is an arrogance that enters John as Episode 6 progresses, one that sows seeds into viewers’ minds as his civilian identity collides with the one he walked away from—the Lantern the Guardians begged for, not the other way around.

And Guy knows this.

John asks Guy to assist with Hal’s burial by getting his suit and decommissioned ring, but he’s also dealing with his parents as well as Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler)—the little girl from 2016 who was crying in the carnage—who’s now blackmailing him (with an oddly specific dollar amount, which makes us wonder if she’s an alien, but I digress).

Weighed down by everyone and everything, John finds the walls of his past closing in around him.

At the funeral, Guy comes through with the lantern suit and the ring at John’s request—the last thing keeping John around before heading back to his new life at Stewart Brothers.

The eulogy, written by Hal, echoes Episode 1 and the tragic cost of being a hero and the loneliness it entails when those who depend on you for survival turn their backs on you when you no longer serve them.

Hal came to Rushville to save them.

The people of the town blamed him for the wreckage, locked him up, and discarded him.

The loneliness alone gives added weight to John, telling him, “you fell.”

Not just from being a Lantern, but from the pedestal on which John placed him.

It also embodies the feelings of a man who, while well-intended, made many mistakes in the name of saving those around him. What Hal once bore proudly eventually became a burden placed upon him without his will.

This parallels Marcus turning his back on John when John’s decision to return and stay in Rushville impacts their company, digging up old wounds of John as the “Chosen One” while he reaps the benefits afforded to him through John’s very upbringing.

But as John lets the call end, he averts his attention back to his task—digging up Hal’s grave.

It turns out getting Guy to bring a ring wasn’t just to honor Hal but to settle a gut feeling.

As John boots up the last 5% charge of the ring, clone Hal appears.

“Goddamnit” is right.

What in the hell did Hal get himself into?

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The Evidence Locker

• Episode 5 Forces John Stewart to Make a Choice

• Lanterns Rewrites Everything We Thought We Knew About Hal Jordan

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

The Choices We Sow

The cops surround the bar.

The jig seems up, but the owner provides them momentary refuge.

Unfortunately, the truth is barricaded in the room with them.

Cathy’s betrayal.

Average Joe Season 2 Episode 6, “Blind Spot,” uproots everything we thought we knew about the season, putting everyone in danger and making us question if anyone has any loyalty at all.

At the crux of this wreckage lies a broken relationship, placing Cathy on one side and the men on the other.

And what’s heartbreaking is Leon’s denial about the implications of what his wife has done to them.

To him.

Suddenly, every apology, every agonized declaration, every promise that she would change is scrutinized, sending Leon on an emotional spiral.

But while Joe, Leon, and Touch realize the gravity of their situation, Cathy makes her way to Sipho, offering a solution to all his prayers.

And considering the time winding down on his repayment to the Afghans, it’s an offer he may not want to refuse.

Imani.

In a desperate gamble, Cathy proposes a deal to become Sipho’s partner. This deal comes with $2 million and another body on her hands—a deal she hopes will secure financial freedom and a sense of power.

Teddy’s choices and the consequences Joe inherited have colored the entire series, but in Episode 6, the other side of the coin presents itself—offering Joe a different perception of the father he thought he knew.

The father who saved people’s lives. The man whose decision to save Ahmale’s mother makes her protect Joe so fiercely in return.

But one woman’s gratitude is another man’s intuition: Teddy didn’t save Ahmale’s mother out of the kindness of his heart.

He used her to smuggle drugs out of Cape Town.

Just when you begin to feel thrown off kilter, wondering if Teddy was simply a man who accidentally fell into a corrupt life after the death of Joe’s mother, you realize his acts of kindness may be conscious decisions he made to achieve power.

“Motherf—” is right.

Where Cathy’s apology turns into an act of betrayal, Teddy’s recounted kindness does the same—but it’s a game Joe recognizes all too well.

But while her betrayal may be a desperate attempt to protect everyone, Teddy’s benevolence conceals his exploitation.

Either way, Joe is done playing.

The Consequences We Reap

Teddy’s nefarious connections in Cape Town’s drug world include people who have the means, money, and resources to get Joe back into the U.S.

But with Ahmale’s final act of repayment, Joe must truly consider the question that’s been circling his heart like a boa constrictor the entire season:

Is Teddy still alive?

The getaway car that was provided—Joe’s actual first car—compounds that question into a reality Joe doesn’t have the emotional aptitude to consider, yet another memory intertwined with the taint of Teddy’s lies.

And as Touch confesses to having a wild prom night in Joe’s car—seeking some sense of sanity to keep them all from drowning—Leon makes a confession of his own.

One that changes the course of everyone’s relationship with one another and their relationship with Cathy.

As they drive back to retrieve Imani and Phyllis, a new plan takes shape.

But Touch thinks something is up with Joe.

He had every opportunity to leave Cape Town: he doesn’t really know Imani, he seemingly hates his father, and there is no reason to be here.

Yet he never took it.

Why?

What is keeping Joe from walking away?

Cathy arrives with Sipho back to the house, still under the impression that she has a “get out of jail” bargaining chip for Sipho.

However, neither Imani nor Phyllis is there.

Just Joe.

But Cathy doesn’t hesitate to make her next move.

She immediately recalculates her position and her leverage—pulling a gun on Sipho to secure her escape while offering Joe as currency.

This information knocks the wind from Sipho as Cathy threatens to shoot Joe if he doesn’t allow her passage.

A threat that sends Teddy into a fit of laughter.

A realization that renders Cathy speechless.

One that gets them both captured.

But just as the walls of escape close in around them, with Joe literally in Sipho’s home prison, a surprise cell mate brings the consequences of those decisions barreling at him at once.

Joe spent the entire season reaping what his father sowed—ignoring opportunities to escape at every turn.

Now he may finally have the opportunity to find answers within the very walls of his captor.

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Average Joe Breadcrumbs

• Episode 5 Proves Survival Runs in the Family

• Episode 3 Lulls Everyone Into the Lion’s Den

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

The Choices We Think Are Our Own

“Lights Out” opens in 2007 with Kerry Kane arriving in Rushville attempting to escape from two men who were paid to end her life.

Trapped and pleading for her life, a stranger, Zoe, intervenes--immediately disabling the men, breaking bones, and taking zero names.

In exchange for her life, Kerry cuts her pinky off as proof of death to send back home—and if they don’t get the story right, Zoe promises to kill everyone in their family as well as their employer.

If it wasn’t solidified for viewers in Episode 4, this moment leaves no room for interpretation.

“One day some people are going to come looking for me, and when that day arrives, I’m going to need someone who knows what it’s like to feel backed into a corner…someone willing to give up a piece of themselves. Can I count on you?”

In the space between life and death, Zoe offers Kerry a choice.

An opportunity to survive.

An illusion of agency wrapped in coercion that costs her both emotionally and physically.

A boon for the chance to live again so long as she protects Zoe when the time comes.

Nine years later, that time arrives along with the confirmation by Hal and John.

Zoe is the Manhunter.

Lanterns Episode 5 feels like a finale because it moves as if it isn’t interested in the reveal as much as how everyone moves once the truth creates a divide that forces everyone in Rushville to pick a side.

Hal makes the first move by attempting to move John from the game board entirely, leaving him trapped inside a wrecked vehicle on parting words that are neither humorous nor a threat.

Just a fact.

“You were never going to replace me. Here endeth your training.”

It’s an act that feels cruel, but after Episode 4 showed just how much Hal was aware of the Guardians’ plans, even this cruelty deserves interrogation.

But as Hal moves to bring down Zoe, life in Rushville is destroyed, and the entire town moves to protect Zoe—including Kerry, as she empties her clip while begging him to leave.

Hal makes the choice to stay.

To fight.

And the consequences are now his to bear.

John, however, finally receives answers on his own.

Burnt and drugged up, Zoe interrogates John in the hospital, and we learn exactly why John didn’t tell the Guardians about her.

He doesn’t trust them because they never told Hal he was being replaced. Instead, they expected him to betray his moral code by taking something promised to him from birth.

John also discloses that Antaan proclaimed the Manhunter was under the Guardians’ protection—withholding his reports from the Guardians until he could determine on his own what was the lie and what was the truth.

She is not.

They, the Guardians, created her and her kind, and now, because the Manhunters did not bring justice the way the Guardians intended, they want to destroy her.

But is the Manhunter a bringer of justice or a harbinger of destruction?

There was a reason John trusted his gut about the Guardians. But like Kerry, a cost comes from being saved by Zoe.

He must make a choice.

Even in great pain and trauma, Lanterns effectively weaves in humor—this time imbued with colorism and envy.

This moment provides a deeper peek into the childhood John endured and his relationship with his brothers that was cultivated by his parents.

This humor is matched equally by a painful truth when John asks why Zoe chose the color of her skin, and her answer is profoundly simple.

Power.

She chose the skin color and gender of people who face great adversity in the country she inhabits.

Seen as a socioeconomic barrier, she uses it to achieve a higher vantage point, to become stronger “in ways comfort never could.”

She doesn’t see disparities as a weakness but as a way to successfully infiltrate a system that takes the oppressed for granted.

Instead, she sees it as something she can use to mold herself into the disguise she needs. For John, this very adversity was used to mold him into the man everyone else needs.

As she places a single drop of blood in his eye, John is catapulted back to a life of training and endurance—a life full of adversity and a path that was never of his own choosing.

These memories echo the very upbringing we examined after Episode 3 seemingly proved why John was always built to become the Green Lantern.

But Episode 5 forces us to ask a different question.

Who did the building?

Suddenly, the choices made by the institution and his parents for his life become a burden rather than a blessing.

The Choices We Know We Own

John has another decision waiting for him.

As Rushville falls to destruction all around him, John calls his parents to get connected with Lianna.

However, their concern isn’t on their son’s tone of voice nor the audible violence in the background, but on the thing they chose to define his entire existence.

The ring.

And for a brief moment I questioned if John was speaking to his parents at all—the question alone showing just how intertwined, strict and expectant the Guardians and his parents are over his decisions.

A dutiful soldier.

But whether the voices belong to them becomes secondary to what it means in the larger scheme of John’s life.

His parents demand duty.

The Guardians demand loyalty.

Zoe demands connection.

But Hal all but asks that he turn away from the very thing everyone has told him belongs to him.

So John decides.

After Hal narrowly escapes with his life from the compound, he heads to the motel to charge his ring, just for John to ambush him in a fight that was long overdue, yet is a scene that is both powerful and painful to endure.

It isn’t just a fight between trainer and trainee.

It’s a fight for legitimacy.

Destiny.

Power.

Agency.

And as John gains the upper hand, something heartbreaking and beautiful happens.

Hal stops fighting.

Even as John has him in a headlock, ignoring the whirring of the laser beams that come to destroy them, Hal doesn’t use the ring to repel John and save himself.

He chooses to save him.

And as Hal lies broken and bloodied on the ground with a gun pointed to his head by Zoe, John lines her up in his sniper sights and takes her out, Hal’s choice giving John the evidence he needed to listen to his own voice.

He chose to save Hal.

He chose to see the truth.

And he chose himself.

But with every choice comes an unknown consequence.

“They replaced me; they’ll replace you.”

John takes the ring from Hal’s finger, leaving him in the rubble as Hal’s foreboding words follow John through the streets of Rushville, Zoe’s heart in a bag and the ring on his finger.

John meets Lianna at the bar—battered, bruised, but nowhere near broken.

Here, the confrontation between commander and soldier implodes.

“Hal betrayed everything to keep this ring…and it broke him.”

The thing John was trained to be and groomed to inherit suddenly becomes a symbol of a broken promise.

Emptiness.

Loss.

A cycle of lost agency that John refuses to participate in, a cycle of the tragic cost of being a hero.

John now finds himself exactly where Hal was once proud to stand.

Powerful.

Chosen.

Worthy.

And he removes the ring, making a decision that neither his parents, the military, nor the Guardians ever prepared him to make.

For five episodes, Lanterns asked whether John deserves to replace Hal.

Episode 5 finally allows John to ask a better question.

Why does either man have to accept the choice someone else made for them?

And for the first time since we met them, neither John nor Hal bears the ring.

It simply sits between them and everyone who wants it, cold and waiting for someone to choose what happens next.

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HBO’s Lanterns Investigation Continues

• Episode 4 Manipulates John and Hal Toward Betrayal

• Episode 1 Reveals the Tragic Cost of Being a Hero

• Lanterns Interrogation Room

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1© Kivonshe | So There’s That
Original editorial commentary on film and television. All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution without attribution is not permitted.

The Mythology of Hal Jordan the Hero

Lanterns Episode 4, “The Weenie,” may have been the funniest episode of the season, even potentially identifying who the real Manhunter is, but the greatest revelation is that Hal has known who John is all along.

Suddenly, Hal doesn’t seem so unhinged after all.

Hal’s arrogance, intelligence, and intuition continue to prove that he was chosen by his own merit.

But Bernadette tells John in Episode 3 that privilege is why Hal was selected, subconsciously shaping even how we viewed Hal’s behavior.

From the start, audiences were carefully manipulated toward John’s point of view, “OutKast,” doing an incredible job at making us challenge the legitimacy of Hal Jordan.

But “The Weenie” forces us to reconcile that privilege and worthiness can coexist.

This makes the reality of Hal and John’s current predicament as potential allies and enemies settle like an anvil in the ocean.

John was raised to believe he was different.

Better.

But maybe they are simply two sides of the same coin.

Since Episode 1, Hal appears to barrel toward death, welcoming it like a long-lost friend. But his attitude toward being a Lantern and the Guardians is only a peek into the well of loneliness he exudes.

And by the end of Episode 2, as he recites the oath to recharge the ring, something feels strange and wrong.

From John’s point of view, it looks like total disrespect to the organization and opportunity that helped make Hal one of the world’s greatest heroes.

He looks ungrateful.

However, Episode 4 flips perception and hindsight on its head.

What initially looks like a lack of gratitude can now be interpreted as Hal being a man who feels both duped and indebted to the very organization that wants to destroy him.

“The Weenie” also forces us to revisit Hal’s “fearlessness” campaign.

Young John only saw promotions that Hal was fearless. This was the baseline from which his parents began his training.

But in this episode, we learn that Hal lost both his parents, making him, essentially, an orphan.

John knew Hal Jordan the symbol.

The commercials presented Hal as the pinnacle of fearlessness and greatness.

But Episode 4 shows us Hal the man.

This immediately complicates the mythology for both John and viewers, as we now must interrogate what “fearless” actually means and how point of view reshapes the perception of its existence and its absence.

We now ponder Hal’s selection from the very beginning.

Maybe it wasn’t fearlessness that made Hal capable of saying yes, but the fact he already understood how to live with fear after suffering a devastating loss.

Suddenly, Hal and John aren’t so different from one another.

The Agency Hal Refuses to Let John Surrender

As a man whose parents are gone, it comes with a different kind of fear:

Loneliness.

And it shows up in Hal’s relationship to the ring and why he chooses to keep information from the Guardians.

His actions are now clearer, reinforcing the idea that while the Guardians positioned him as a god to civilians, he had to conquer his own fear.

Fear born from being orphaned.

Fear born from belonging to an organization that no longer sees value in him.

And still, like John, he, too, had to move.

Different circumstances created the same scenario in which they had to live with something devastating in order to become someone extraordinary.

So as we revisit Episodes 1, “The Pilot,” and Episode 2, “Trust Fall”—studying Hal’s behavior in hindsight—we see a man at the end of what the Guardians are putting John through at the beginning.

John, a man at the precipice of giving away his agency.

Hal, a man fighting to preserve what remains of his own.

While Hal and John try to figure out what’s going on in Rushville, we now ask whether Hal is also thinking of a way to save John, not just from the Guardians but from himself?

The final conversation in the car warrants this question as Hal drops all pretense, laying his conversation with Sinestro on the table and forgiving John for what he said to the Guardians about Hal being old and washed up.

But what he can’t seem to reconcile is why John still conceals his suspicions about the Manhunter—why John still chooses to abide by the Guardians’ manipulations even when the evidence is in front of him.

He doesn’t have an answer.

This makes Hal jumping out of the car both comical and calculating.

John must choose.

To follow the Guardians’ orders by taking the Lantern title from Hal or trusting himself enough to carve his own path.

But in the time and space between Hal soaring in the sky and John heading fast toward collision, I have to now ask myself:

Did the Guardians send Hal on the mission that led to John’s dishonorable discharge—orchestrating the opportunity in the hotel room to manipulate John into being vindictive enough to take the ring?

Lanterns Episode 4 makes you evaluate every decision Hal made that felt reckless but now seems like a calculated scheme to keep John from becoming like him.

And it makes their shared moments throughout the entire episode much more important to their shared fate.

Hal wants to trust John, but now he must push John beyond the dutiful son, beyond the Marine, and beyond the machine the Guardians want him to be.

Suddenly, the unorthodox training takes shape into something complex, intentional, and purposeful, and it may be the only way John learns how to take a stand.

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HBO’s Lanterns Episodic Interrogation

• Episode 4: Manufactured Enemies

• Episode 3 Proves Why John Was Always Built to Be Green Lantern

• Lanterns Interrogation Room: Analysis & Character Investigation

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

What We Inherit to Survive

Average Joe Episode 5, “Keep It Together,” examines what people inherit from those who left them behind.

Survival instincts.

Guilt.

Grief.

And unhealed wounds.

All of these feelings collide at once as Joe must make a decision to either flee from the violent mess Teddy left behind or save Imani.

In a panicked and desperate attempt to save Imani from kidnappers, Joe makes the decision to risk everything to get her back. 

And while Teddy may be a terrible father, both Joe and Imani show that it’s in their blood to do whatever it takes to survive—Imani even risking her own death just to avoid a fate far worse in the hands of Sipho.

Average Joe shifts in energy as Joe wholly accepts Imani into his family and under his protection, but he’s fighting a war with a man whose murderous history extends back to when he was a boy.

Sipho didn’t just become powerful as a man. He witnessed destruction and power exchange as a child—surrounded by lifeless bodies and then coerced into taking another’s life.

A moment that seemed like Sipho would be recruited into a ruthless army, subject to being controlled for the rest of his life, quickly turned into a calculated execution by young Sipho—demonstrating that his survival instincts are more than primal.

They are decisions that shaped his life from victim to villain—enacting the very violence that he himself couldn’t escape.

But darkness falls, and the shadow swiftly approaches the line the Afghan queenpin drew on the wood of his compound with her deadly heel and even deadlier threat.

As time runs out, the $45 million debt now pales in comparison to the consequences that loom over his mortality.

And the man who built an empire of instilling fear now faces the threat of collapse under the weight of his own fateful decision in trusting Teddy.

Inheriting the price on the head of a dead man—a man whose past actions dictate the outcome of everyone else’s survival.

What We Must Let Go to Be Free

But something deeper is occurring between Phyllis and Touch—the spiritual restlessness that has her reaching for him as he pulls away.

Imani’s kidnapping and Jamila’s death send Phyllis into a spiral that, ironically, Touch saves her from. This creates the space for her to speak about her other sister, Mandipa.

The first one she couldn’t save.

The one who suffered from the same affliction that Phyllis recognizes in Touch.

“If you let me die…”

“…I let her die all over again.”

This revelation and Touch’s plea to be saved ignites Phyllis to go on a spiritual quest to remove the weight that cripples him, hurtling him toward death at every turn. 

Her quest leads directly to Donna—the girl who shot and killed her mom.

A death that Touch covered up due to his negligence.

But it isn’t guilt that binds him.

It’s the lie that won’t let him rest.

The journey isn’t just for Touch, as Donna alerts her to a spiritual gift of her own that awaits.

Jamila and Mandipa.

Although Phyllis couldn’t save her sisters in life, they may prove to be the very power she needs to save Phyllis and her new family from death.

The lie can no longer stand.

Touch finally tells Joe and Leon about his suicide attempt—why he’s been on a mission toward that end for the past two months.

This confession brings the group closer together as they continue to work to evade Sipho, the cops, and get out of the country alive.

And as old wounds are tended and forgiveness is granted, brotherhood and banter make an appearance once again—showing how these men can confess something devastating, reconnect, and make us laugh even as they face their own destruction.

But just as the men come up with a plan to secure their escape, Cathy orchestrates a plan that could lead to their potential end.

Suddenly, nothing is a laughing matter anymore.

Average Joe’s Inheritance

• Episode 4: The Cost of Teddy’s Lies Keeps Rising

• Episode 3 Lulls Everyone Into the Lion’s Den

• Episodes 1 & 2: The Sins of the Father Come Home to Cape Town

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

© Kivonshe | So There’s That

Original editorial commentary on film and television. All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution without attribution is not permitted.

The Enemies Sinestro and the Guardian Manufacture

Lanterns Episode 4, “The Weenie,” takes us back to the moment in 2016 when Hal visits Sinestro to ask about the Manhunters.

But what starts as an inquisition quickly shifts when the man behind bars quietly reveals he held more knowledge than Hal—questioning him on John Stewart and where the Guardians found him.

Right away, the series confronts Hal with a truth audiences have watched unravel over the past three episodes:

John isn’t Hal’s backup.

He’s his replacement.

And just as John was told this during the final moments of Episode 3, “OutKast,” Hal speaks the truth he’s known from the beginning out loud.

However, the acknowledgment of this information showcases where each Lantern’s moral code lies.

Sinestro suggests that Hal kill John, an option that would secure Hal’s position as the current Lantern, but it creates an internal battle between what the Guardians expect of him and his fight for survival.

And Sinestro uses this knowledge to play on a thread of fear within Hal, feeding the other green thing in the room.

Envy.

The suggestion lingers within Hal as Sinestro weaves a tale of playing on John’s fearlessness and the opportunities for mistakes it creates.

Arrogance.

Pride.

Stupidity.

But what Sinestro doesn’t know is that John’s parents rejected the ideology of fearlessness and instead taught him to embrace fear and move with it rather than fight against it.

In just one conversation, Episode 4 provides us a small glimpse into why each Lantern was chosen and how, ultimately, they were positioned to replace the other.

Episode 3 shows us that John knows he’s here to replace Hal. Episode 4 confirms that Hal is aware of the Guardians’ plans for him.

Trust is no longer an issue.

It’s a crisis.

John’s Guardian handler highlights this crisis by putting him in an impossible situation: recite the oath when Hal gives him the ring.

But Bernadette’s words ring louder and louder.

“Even in space you don’t consider us.”

John hesitates in the backstabbing, and the Guardian goads him, provoking his ego by stabbing a wound not yet healed.

“I wasn’t aware your father’s weakness runs within you.”

This form of baiting is an all-too-familiar and painful double-edged sword for Black families having to constantly prove we are “better” or “stronger” than our ancestors when in reality their adaptation wasn’t weakness.

It was intelligence to secure our survival.

The Guardian’s proposition also highlights an even darker reality.

If John was already chosen, what is there to take?

This moment calls into question every conversation that has taken place with the Stewart family up to this point.

So the question becomes, why do the Guardians want to take away everything from Hal?

This echoes the very question So There’s That posed during Episode 2, “Trust Fall”:

Is Hal actually going rogue, or is his withholding part of something bigger?

The Path Hal and John Choose to Take

As the episode continues, the line between Kyle as Hal and Aaron as John blurs, each actor settling into their roles and becoming the Hal and John duo that fans have waited for.

The quiet tension pulls taut as they view each other through a new lens, more curious than investigative as they navigate the mystery of the alien murders and Macon’s involvement.

Following the conversation with the Guardian, the opportunity immediately presents itself for John to follow her orders to recite the oath.

Instead, John decides to move forward and constructs the exact machinery needed to continue the investigation rather than usurp his predecessor.

And John’s advanced construct prompts Hal to ask a few more questions about John’s background given the complexity and ease with which he was able to use the ring.

This creates an avenue for Hal and John to dig (no pun intended) into one another’s past but in a way that appears to accidentally bring them closer to understanding one another.

Their moment of vulnerability completely shatters the opposing counsel from Sinestro and the Guardians, and they come to realize they may be more valuable to one another than a threat to each other’s existence.

But the thing that looms over John, causing his trust in Hal and the Guardians to waver, is one that feeds back into the plight of Black men in America.

The Guardians don’t want to appoint him the title of Lantern; they want him to steal it—painting him as the bad guy just as the Marines did with his dishonorable discharge.

This feeds a narrative that he was never deserving, that he would just take the title of Lantern without valor and without the credentials to do so.

And as the investigation into Macon continues, this reality settles into John’s morality like a boulder.

After a failed recon attempt on the Macon compound, Zoe comes to warn John to leave town, as she’s desperately trying to save his life behind the scenes.

When John denies her request, she leaves in a somber moment, and suddenly she is executed right in front of him.

But Zoe’s death somehow brings Hal and John even closer.

While they don’t reveal their motivations to one another, both still playing their cards close to the vest, tragedy creates a space where they can connect as humans.

Which brings them to a man (Jason Manuel Olazabal) who claims to be the Manhunter, threatening the life of John’s family while also playing a recording of John and the Guardians’ conversation for Hal to hear—trying to sow dissension between them.

But as much as Hal is arrogant, he is also highly intelligent, questioning the validity of the man in front of him who wants John and Hal to turn on one another.

The standoff between Hal and this man pulls the fear John worked his entire life to hide into the small room like a tornado.

Hal recognizes the frantic change in energy and doubles down on the man before him, as well as on his knowledge that aliens cannot fully replicate, a characteristic he knows all too well.

A bluff that ultimately saves John’s parents’ lives.

A bluff that reveals the suspected identity of the Manhunter.

But is this a smokescreen or a ploy to send Hal and John down a path away from the truth while destroying all trust between them?

As Hal jumps from the moving vehicle, leaving John to suffer an unknown fate, one must wonder if he already answered the question for them.

Or maybe, just maybe, this is Hal’s final attempt to see if John, like him, will choose his own path.

HBO’s Lanterns Episodic Journey

• Episode 3 Proves Why John Stewart Was Built to Be Green Lantern

• John Stewart’s Greatest Power is His Imagination

• Episode 2 Turns Everyone in Rushville from Witness to Suspect

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1© Kivonshe | So There’s That
Original editorial commentary on film and television. All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution without attribution is not permitted.

The Boy Beneath the Man

Before the endless training.

Before blindly following orders as a marine.

Before being burdened with the unfair responsibilities from the world, John was an artist.

Lanterns Episode 3, “OutKast,” peels back the curtain on John’s childhood to reveal how fiercely he protected the intimate parts that belonged only to him.

From secretly listening to rap music through his bedroom wall to hiding drawings underneath his pillow, John held close the pieces of himself that existed beyond everyone else’s expectations.

Though the drawings may have seemed insignificant to young John in the grand scheme of his destiny in the making, he could not have known his dream of being an artist was the key to connecting every lesson that built who he would become.

His training built his relationship with fear.

His imagination built his relationship with his purpose.

And in feelings of sadness and disappointment from being dishonorably discharged from the military, his mom reminded him of the boy who lives within—that the promise of being a Lantern would always exist, but his passion deserved the man he is now.

This beautiful moment spoke to how much Bernadette not only paid attention to the soldier John needed to become to prepare for a life of heroism but also the boy who required nurturing to keep that seed of hope growing roots inside.

And it landed John in the test of a lifetime.

What began as a skills-based architectural entry exam unexpectedly turned into the moment John prepared for his entire life—bridging the gap between his military training and artistic skills that would determine whether he was worthy of bearing the ring at all.

Nervous, yet unbelievably poised, he built his father’s watch from the inside out—nuts, bolts, and mechanisms came together to create something structurally sound and fully functional.

John’s instinctual understanding of how things operate on an elemental level makes him remarkably different.

His brain moves through structures like water seeking passage—feeling in his mind’s eye how every part fits, how each piece supports the other, and how it will ultimately exist in the world before the final object is ever constructed.

John’s mind is where the artist, the architect, and the marine merge as a single identity.

The artist understands the idea.

The architect understands structure.

The marine understands the enemy.

And the boy understands the power of imagination that brings it all together.

The Man Who Needs the Boy

Lanterns Episode 3 also revealed an answer to Episode 2’s “Trust Fall,” foreshadowing just how powerful John is.

When he was kidnapped, Antaan questioned how Hal was able to project a construct from great distance, only for John to reveal it was his doing.

And without a ring.

The weight of this revelation shows the audience how intricate and intuitive John’s mind works, even during times of unconsciousness.

Hal’s powers, for example, are connected to his career in aviation, and he conceptualizes the act of flying as a literal construct upon himself—a function that serves to take him from one place to another.

But John’s powers are rooted in his layered imagination.

When told to fly, he doesn’t conceptualize himself in the air. Instead, he conjures a bird—a sentient being with the foundational structure, movement, and form to serve its own purpose.

In the moment, the watch and the bird are one and the same.

John doesn’t construct things.

He constructs ideas.

And Lanterns makes sure not to treat his artistic abilities like an accident.

His art is his power.

This is where John’s presence as a trainee becomes potentially dangerous for Hal.

He sees that John isn’t ordinary, and the bird changes it all.

Episode 3 shows audiences that John knows exactly how capable he is as a future Lantern, making his declaration of “I know why me” much more powerful.

His architectural way of thinking, military discipline, emotional memory, and extraordinary artistic instincts make him a formidable being.

He’s not here by accident.

And as we travel away from Hal’s story and deeper into John’s, we see it is one that is becoming less about if John is capable and more about everyone else realizing he already is.

Which brings us back to Sinestro’s ominous warning in Episode 2, making our question echo even louder:

Is John Hal’s greatest threat?

Or will his abilities be the key to finding Hal’s real threat?

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HBO’s Lanterns Episodic Journey

• Episode 3 Proves Why John Stewart Was Always Built to Be Green Lantern

• Episode 2 Turns Everyone in Rushville From Witness to Suspect

• Episode 1 Reveals the Tragic Cost of Being a Hero

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

The Broken Pieces Teddy Left Behind

Imani’s mom is dead.

Leon is shot.

Touch is arrested.

And one of Teddy’s lies comes to light in a flashback prior to his wife’s death.

The inheritance of Teddy’s deception continues to spread its roots in everyone he loves and across continents, placing everyone in danger while he avoids the consequences of his own deceit.

As danger mounts, Cathy and Leon find themselves in a shootout, and Touch is “arrested” by corrupt detectives, Maseko and Van Wyk, under Sipho’s orders.

Bound and beaten, Touch doubles down on his arrogance and his newfound disregard for his own mortality, quickly piecing together Sipho’s financial predicament with the Afghans in the hopes that Sipho will finish the job.

Just as miraculous as the gun jamming during his suicide attempt, Phyllis comes to save him.

To his dismay.

In the midst of helping Joe, Touch faces spiritual warfare within himself, but his need to isolate and self-destruct inadvertently harms the one person who is aware of what’s going on.

This highlights a journey that causes the audience to wonder just how important spiritual warfare is in this season and how it fits in with the path Teddy has everyone on.

While the spiritual disturbance hovers over Touch like a dark cloud, Joe, Cathy, and Leon are in a warfare of their own—family and friendship threatened by greed and deception caused by Teddy’s duplicity.

The dysfunction Joe inherited is destroying them at a time they desperately need one another to survive.

Which begs the question:

Is Teddy worth the cost of the family they built?

The Rules of the Game Changed, But the Cost Remains

Season 2 of Average Joe continues to heat up in the midseason as Joe, Cathy, Leon, and Touch must rely more and more on their natural street smarts and instincts rather than a detailed plan, realizing they can no longer play by the rules.

And in a city run by a dangerous kingpin, all morality is out the window as they fight to make it out of Cape Town alive.

However, as Sipho continues his hunt for the Americans and Imani, dissension rises in his compound as some men stir with envy over how he chooses to use his power and influence.

With the Afghans holding a $45 million debt over his head, this challenge of power begins to threaten the very foundation that he built.

His men are no longer afraid.

Neither is Akinyemi, as Sipho’s display of power—the Americans’ passport photos blasted in the news before the station received intel—places Van Wyk and Maseko in his path.

And the path Akinyemi follows—from the first body and the urgency to find the Americans—leads to the same destination with the thread he’s been quietly needling since Episode 3, “Choose the Lion.”

As everyone focuses on their own path for revenge, truth, and survival, “Dead Moms and Hitmen” takes a sudden turn, with Imani caught directly in Sipho’s crosshairs, forcing Joe, Leon, Cathy, and Touch to either get on the same page or fall completely apart.

And with Teddy’s lies planting a target on everyone’s backs, their survival hinges on putting everything aside to save Imani’s life.

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Average Joe Season 2 Episodic Breadcrumbs

• Episode 3 Lulls Everyone Into the Lion’s Den

• Episodes 1 & 2: The Sins of the Father Come Home to Cape Town

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1© Kivonshe | So There’s That
Original editorial commentary on film and television. All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution without attribution is not permitted.

The Boy Without a Choice

Lanterns Episode 3, “OutKast,” delivers the backstory that John Stewart deserves, exploring the intersectionality of race, fear, and heroism in a world designed to make him afraid.

And who but young John’s mother, Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones), to question the enormity of this reality for her son who does not yet know the world he exists within?

After a terrifying moment where John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is traumatized by being selected as the next Lantern, the resulting shame of being afraid changes the state of the Stewart family to the near point of destruction.

To extraterrestrials, the dismantling of the Black household is a concept they are vastly unfamiliar with, further leaning into the symbolism of racial and socioeconomic imbalance.

Thus, the asking of a Black man in America, “Are you afraid?”

Yes.

Very much so.

And when Bernadette is met by the Guardian, realizing that the alien musings of her husband are true, she confronts her with a hard truth.

“Even in space, you don’t consider us.”

The grandeur of racial inequity and disparity across galaxies is perfectly packaged in the conversation between mother and alien in a single concise and markedly important moment that changes the trajectory of all their lives.

Raising John to be fearless was rooted in more than preparing him for a life of being a hero. It was to prepare him for the weight of existing in a world that he loves and would never love him back.

For the past two episodes we’ve seen aliens with limited knowledge of the human experience and our nuances, and the offering of a large diamond as an apology for emotional and psychological distress exposes those limits.

The diamond cannot be easily liquidated into a usable currency, let alone believed to be rightfully owned by the Stewarts, shining a spaceship-sized beacon of light on the pacification of generational Black trauma in this country.

And as the episode cycles between John’s childhood and the current interview with the Guardian, the meaning behind his waiting in the seat overnight settles heavy in our bones.

The moment calls forth familiar conversations of having to be three times better than everyone else just to get an ounce of a chance—a conversation Black kids and parents know all too well.

“I like being alone.”

Though surrounded by the truth and the unconventional support of his family, John was still isolated and outcast as a sibling—learning to rely on no one but himself even into adulthood.

The result of that rigor was the horror of a young John asking his father to shoot the apple atop his head, an action that his own mother condones to help remove the fear from both her husband and her son.

But an episode that grabs you by the spine and makes you want to scream at the parents also shines a spotlight on parental fear.

It’s the generational fear of having to prepare children for a violent and unforgiving world, placing them in dangerous scenarios and praying it’ll be a lesson that fortifies them for what’s to come.

While many of us didn’t experience this exact scenario, the added pressure of being Earth’s next hero required an even greater emotional sacrifice from two loving parents whose lives were affected just as much as young John’s.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t just wait.

For them, this required more.

The lessons John Sr. and Bernadette had to teach weren’t easy, and the unfairness and pain are highlighted when a young John comes home and his mom simply offers him food in exchange for solace.

But in the quiet of being alone, he sobs and she’s in pain—both hiding their fear from one another for the promise of John becoming Earth’s next hero.

The echo of the heartbeat that belies this entire episode is a Black mother’s love—tough, unrelenting, powerful, yet deeply unwavering.

The Presence of Fear is John’s Greatest Strength

In one of the most honest and vulnerable conversations of “OutKast,” Bernadette explains why they’re pushing him so hard and why it’s okay that as a young Black boy he has fear.

This world teaches Black men to fear it, and she calls out the privilege of those who never have to experience it all because of the racial constructs within America.

This candor between mother and son becomes the final barrier young John finally deconstructs to become the man he is today.

The thing that’s unsaid about John’s upbringing is that, to others, it comes across as unsavory.

However, the conversation between John and the Guardian during the interview alludes to that fact, as the alien cannot fathom his happiness with his upbringing.

In deconstructing his childhood, we understand more and more the great appreciation he has for the life he lived and how it prepared him to step into the suit today.

As we unpack why John was dishonorably discharged from the military, the gaping realization is that he took the fall for Hal’s interference.

This makes Hal’s withholding of John’s high level of abilities to sustain a construct without a ring more pointed and begs one major question:

Did Hal interfere with John’s mission to purposely sabotage his chances at being selected?

Hal is great because he’s fearless with the privilege to never know true fear, but John is courageous because he lives in a world where every boy and man who looks like him has no choice but to live with it.

Fearlessness and courage are not synonymous, and the lesson Bernadette teaches not only John but also herself and her husband is that fear will always be present for us.

Move anyway.

John’s journey from birth to now was riddled with fear—his own, his father’s, and his mother’s—as he walked through the literal shadows of death, all to come out the other side, alive, fearing no man or evil because that’s who his parents raised him to be.

Hal lived a life of never having to conceptualize a life riddled with crippling fear.

John aimed a gun at his own mother despite both being afraid, building an intimate relationship with fear and using it as a tool for excellence rather than positioning it as an inherent flaw.

They are not built the same.

Their strengths are forged from opposite ends of the “fear” spectrum, yet John comes with a resilience Hal couldn’t construct with or without a ring.

This is solidified when Bernadette applies to art school on John’s behalf following his dishonorable discharge, encouraging him to feed his other talents while the one he knows awaits him takes a backseat—leading to the episode’s interview.

Just as we questioned Hal’s intentions, then and now, the Guardian asks John if he blames Hal as well while propositioning him as Hal’s replacement under the guise of simply being “the backup.”

This revelation turns the entire series on its head.

John doesn’t simply wonder who he is.

He knows exactly who he is.

And scratching at the back of his mind like a bad itch, so does Hal.

“I guess the birds aren’t liars after all.”

In Episode 2, “Trust Fall,” Hal asks John why he constructed a bird, and John writes it off as just a bird.

But as the episode ends, with a bird perched on John’s mailbox, we now know the bird was a message.

A new Green Lantern is here.

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HBO’s Lanterns Episodic Journey

• Why John Stewart’s Greatest Power is His Imagination

• Lanterns Episode 2 Turns Everyone in Rushville from Witness to Suspect

• Lanterns Episode 1 Reveals the Tragic Cost of Being a Hero

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

When the Hunter Becomes the Hunted

Just when you thought Sipho was the most dangerous enemy in Joe’s path, a lion emerges from the trees to take her seat on the throne.

Average Joe Episode 3, “Choose the Lion,” opened in a tense standoff between the friends, and with Sipho hot on their trail, now is not the time to fall apart.

But in a move no one saw coming, we find that Sipho is not the man audiences think he is, and suddenly, the entire atmosphere changes.

While Sipho has grand dreams of restoring power to his lineage, to be revered as a god just as he reveres his father, the truth of his status reveals he’s simply a pawn, a version of a foot soldier caught in the manicured claws of the real boss.

The heroin that Teddy stole in Season 1 traced all the way to Cape Town, Africa, and, up until now, placed Joe, Cathy, Leon, and Touch on the path of the Russians.

But after Joe learns that Cathy and Leon set it all up just to get them there to get more heroin—after it was stolen from Teddy’s stash house—audiences now learn that Teddy is mixed up in a scheme far more dangerous than Joe can even fathom.

What started as an unlucky lick with the potential to change their lives for the better now comes at a high cost.

$35 million too high.

A cost that not only unknowingly rests on our group’s shoulders, but also on Sipho’s head.

The Lion, The Man, and the Ultimatum

Sipho finds himself in a room with a woman who’s endured far worse than he could ever inflict in his lifetime.

His arrogance led him into the room for negotiation.

Her endurance swallowed his ego like a lion with fresh meat.

With just the snap of her finger, the power display stills Sipho right where he sits—an exchange that marks the turn in the entire series.

And as we spoke of Joe inheriting his father’s sins, it seems Teddy inherited the sins of a drug god—one who harbors more control over multiple landscapes and people than we can count.

What started as a half-baked plan to simply hop into Cape Town for heroin and money now splits Joe, Touch, Leon, and Cathy in multiple directions—each chasing their own agenda after Leon’s and Cathy’s betrayal.

But what they don’t know is all their paths lead to one lion’s den.

And she is hungry for everything she is owed.

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More High-Stakes Related Articles

• Average Joe Season 2 Review: The Sins of the Father Come to Cape Town

• Lanterns Episode 2 Turns Everyone in Rushville from Witness to Suspect

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

© Kivonshe | So There’s That
Original editorial commentary on film and television. All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution without attribution is not permitted.

Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight

HBO’s Lanterns, Episode 2, “Trust Fall,” pulls us back to 2016 with the investigation into the five deceased aliens, and Hal and his jaded energy are back in training mode with John.

This time the lesson doesn’t involve going over a cliff in a car but a similar act in nature.

Flight.

Annoyed, yet determined, John makes an attempt to fly, imitating Hal’s signature flight move, but his feet stay firmly planted on the ground.

However, a bird materializes in the sky from the ring’s power—immediately showcasing John as an architect, even if he doesn’t know the depths of his possibilities at the moment.

Confused, Hal instructs John to go to his home for the lantern while he continues to investigate just why an alien wanted to blow the city to pieces.

In a cinematic parallel moment to Episode 1, we see Hal in the bleachers—watching, gathering evidence intuitively while searching for any indication that something far more sinister lurks beneath Rushville.

Hal crashes a Town Hall meeting led by Kerry, and it is clear that his presence is unwanted, so much so that Billy urges him to go anywhere else.

But Hal challenges Billy head on, asking if Kerry told him about the alien speaking of vengeance against a town one would miss if they blinked while driving through.

Yet Billy’s silence is the only answer, allowing Hal to plant the seeds of doubt against his father, Macon.

Four people don’t get shot on a hunch, yet Macon made the decision to do so anyway.

Why?

And how close is Hal to finding out the answer?

While gathering supplies and searching for the lantern, the infamous suit makes its first appearance—held up in the mirror as John gets a glimpse of who he’s capable of becoming.

But things take an unexpected turn when he gets kidnapped outside Hal’s house, leading to the first true action moment for John—highlighting his natural skills and abilities outside the use of a ring, his bird construct acting as both an extension of his fighting and his very essence.

For the first time in the series, the adrenaline rush of what Lanterns will become settles deep into the bone marrow of viewers, making for a watch experience no one saw coming.

And John didn’t see getting kidnapped by aliens coming either.

Restrained and pissed off, the leader of the group—an extraterrestrial named Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor)—asks John about Manhunters.

Manhunters are old beings, one of the most dangerous in existence—synthetic creatures able to take on any form of any species, wreaking havoc in the name of “justice” and wiping out whole civilizations.

And now that it’s been discovered, it’s planning a brutal response to protect its identity.

Antaan solicits John for recruitment, turning a hostage situation into one of partnership, forcing the audience to operate in a space of emotional ambiguity—restructuring in real time who we see as the enemy and who we see as an ally.

And if there was any doubt to the truth of Antaan’s tale, he uses a device to force John to experience the pain and destruction of his people, his ancestors.

Then he releases the restraints.

We discover that the aliens who died were a part of this group but were detected faster than expected, slaughtered before they could locate their target.

This makes the beacon of suspicion on Macon brighter and begs two questions:

Is Macon the Manhunter?

Or is Macon protecting the being by hiding it behind his gates?

Whatever the answer, Macon is willing to use violence to keep Hal from discovering anything on his compound.

And just as Hal begins questioning who really controls Rushville, John returns with information that makes the question of trust the center of the entire investigation.

The Greatest Threat May Be the Person Staring You in the Face

Back at the motel, Hal charges his ring, and John confronts him about the Manhunters, confirming Hal’s instincts about Rushville.

But something more hurtful lingers within John.

Being able to project a construct for the length of time he did and without a ring, a near impossibility, went ignored and downplayed by Hal for the sake of his own ego.

Hal never tells John that what he accomplished was, in fact, an incredible feat. Instead, he had to find out from his captor, forcing John to question whether or not he’s right in trusting Hal at all.

Suddenly, Hal’s motives are under scrutiny.

This is further deepened by his insistence on John not reporting any of his findings to Lantern headquarters.

Is Hal going rogue, or is his withholding part of something bigger?

With a fully charged ring, Hal dons his Lantern suit, and we are taken beyond Earth for the first time in the series, expanding the world-building and truly immersing the audience in a cinematic experience.

And who does he go to see?

Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen).

The urgency of gathering more information about the Manhunters causes Hal to put faith into someone he likely thought he’d never have to see again.

And what he learns is cosmic.

If one still exists, it would be the second greatest threat Hal currently faces.

But then Sinestro asks him to tell him about John Stewart, leading to a burning question:

Is John Hal’s greatest threat?

By the end of Lanterns Episode 2, “Trust Fall,” the audience is shattered and catapulted into every corner of the universe.

Who can we trust?

Who is the hero?

Who is the Manhunter among us?

For a series that has only eight episodes, the pacing, the action, the reveals, and the secrets leave you on the edge of your seat, both extremely satisfied and wanting so much more.

This is the type of writing that makes weekly episodic releases worth the wait, bringing back the magic and impact of “watercooler conversations” that expand the story beyond the ending credits.

Lanterns makes us excited to be excited about TV again.

And it’s only just getting started.

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HBO’s Lanterns Episodic Journey

• Why John Stewart’s Greatest Power is His Imagination

• HBO’s Lanterns Episode 1 Reveals the Tragic Cost of Being a Hero

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.

1© Kivonshe | So There’s That
Original editorial commentary on film and television. All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution without attribution is not permitted.

Disloyalty is a Line You Can Never Uncross

“I had to do what I thought was right.”

After Sean (Rohan Mead) gets caught in a sting that lands him on the other side of the law in Episode 7, “A Boy Made of Trouble,” Sweeney (J.K. Simmons) has a conversation with John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley) that leads to a decision that fractures the relationship between Sweeney and Jimmy (Tom Brittney).

When Jimmy confronts Sweeney about the death of Sean in an intense standoff, conflict ensues that puts everyone and the entire crime organization at risk.

Meanwhile, Bridget (Sarah Bolger) makes her move against the man who murdered her family, Colonel Markham (Harry Haddon-Paton), embarking on a mission that leaves her permanently altered, whether she comes out of it dead or alive.

But in Episode 8, “The Irish Goodbye,” Bridget’s honey trap is foiled as Markham recognizes her true identity, playing into her fool’s mission until it’s time for him to strike. And in the midst of her plan unraveling by the second, she learns that Cahill (Allen Leech)—the one who helped her plan this attack—gave up her parents to Markham to spare his own life.

The reality of this information washes over her as Markham gains the upper hand, effectively dissolving her entire plot. But what Markham doesn’t see coming is Bridget’s cunning, wit, and vengeful determination.

Meanwhile, Sweeney opens up to Eddie (Vincent Walsh) about Jimmy’s response to killing Sean, and Eddie convinces him that any retaliation against Jimmy and his gang is self-defense, leading to a shootout that solidifies the divide between Jimmy and his once most trusted mentor.

But in all of the chaos is the quiet and calm inside the intimacy between Jimmy and Bridget—both dealing with their own demons yet finding resolve in one another, proving why their relationship is one of the most grounding emotional centers of the entire series.

As Jimmy and Bridget escape in a moment of peace with one another, neither has the luxury of remaining there.

Jimmy makes a bold move, reaching out to Sweeney to seek a way to repair the damage. But on both sides, no one trusts the olive branch, which was confirmed when Sweeney gives up Jimmy’s proposed location to Eddie to finish the war before more blood spills.

In this potential double-cross lies a cleverness in Jimmy that Sweeney overlooks, using Sweeney’s emotional connection against him to leverage the predictability in his decision-making.

And that blind spot costs Sweeney everything.

Those You Overlook Become Your Biggest Threat

One of the greatest things The Westies has done all season is keep audiences on the edges of their seats when it comes to morality, right and wrong, and the law.

As tensions rise between Sweeney and Jimmy, FBI Agent Birdie Polk (Jessica Frances Dukes) is none too happy when Gotti discovers the bugs the FBI planted in his home, putting even more pressure on Detective Keenan (Titus Welliver) to find a way inside to flip one of Sweeney’s loyal men.

But what Keenan doesn’t know is that his son, Danny (Aidan Wotjak-Hissong), is directly in the crosshairs of Sweeney.

And as Birdie makes a promise about his safety, Sweeney makes a move to recruit him to his team.

What is Sweeney’s proposal and first act of loyalty? To protect him from rats.

To protect him from his father.

Mickey (Stanley Morgan) is left to deal with Eddie while Jimmy pays off Ruby Stein (Richard Schiff) and makes him an offer he can’t refuse, one that comes with new management once Sweeney is taken care of.

This makes Sweeney’s statement of Jimmy being too pathetic to take his place less and less truthful as Jimmy’s intelligence and street smarts collide beautifully, making him one of the most dangerous men Sweeney never saw coming.

This doesn’t go unnoticed by Gotti, who wonders why Jimmy hasn’t re-upped on product, making him both antsy and suspicious about the quiet.

In the quiet, however, comes the fateful confrontation between Keenan and Danny, alone in a bar with nothing but their pain and silence between them. The fragments of a broken father-and-son relationship lay vulnerable, allowing Sweeney to step in and replace him.

But another father and son face a reckoning of their own.

In the climactic face-off between Sweeney and Jimmy, the emotional core thrums a steady beat as they finally come face to face, tensions boiling over as the student is now ready to challenge the master.

Sweeney expects bloodshed.

Jimmy pulls the trigger.

Yet, nothing happens.

And it’s as Jimmy wills it, making it clear that he wants Sweeney to know what it feels like to be powerless.

That moment becomes the greatest indication of Sweeney’s doubt and underestimation.

Jimmy never needed to kill him to defeat him.

He simply needed to prove that he was courageous enough to outsmart a god.

And as Keenan hauls Sweeney and Eddie off to the station, Jimmy takes his place in the boss’s chair, marking a change in the regime and bringing in a new era for The Westies.

All episodes of The Westies are available to stream now on MGM+.

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Recommended Follow-Up Reads

• HBO’s Lanterns Episode 1 Reveals the Tragic Cost of Being the Hero

• Average Joe Season 2 Review: The Sins of the Father Come Home to Cape Town

Kivonshe—founder of So There’s That—is a film & TV critic who explores compelling storytelling, fandom relationships, character psychology, and the impact of entertainment media through film reviews, episodic recaps, and in-depth theme analysis.