GREEN LANTERN: THE ANIMATED SERIES “Larfleeze” Review

I believe that they needed the orange battery not to defeat Aya but to buy time – just enough time to talk sense into her. None of the crew truly understood what the orange lantern battery does to whoever owns it – in Larfleeze’s case, it reduced him into nothing more but as you quite rightly put it – a pathetic sad lonely creature consumed by his own hatred at himself for allowing the battery and his own greed to control him instead of the other way round. And I am not alone in saying that he sounded so much like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy guarding his “shiny.” I was almost expecting him to say “precious.”

It also demonstrated how Hal is truly a Green Lantern – his will power is a testament to that, but will Aya also have that (the will to remove whatever it is that is corrupting her, and to come to terms with her rejection) – we will never know until the last episode.

I guess too that they needed this episode to highlight Razer’s admission of guilt and the crew’s responsibility particularly Hal at how Aya was dealt with in “Cold Fury.” It took 2 episodes before Razer finally and at long last accepted his own role in what he said and did to make Aya the “monster” she is now. But it also gave us viewers hope – that maybe, just maybe all is not lost and that there may be a way to turn Aya around again, drawing parallels to Hal’s own experience of being bad then coming good again. Another thing too, it’s become official – Kilowog referring to Aya as Razer’s girlfriend – that has cemented the trio finally accepting her as that.

It also gave us a chance to see other Lanterns – we’ve come across the Blues, the star sapphires, the Reds, and now the one and only Orange Lantern. It is a pity that we will never get to see the other colours – yellow, indigo, white and even black…and I hear from the grapevine that the orange lanterns will have their own series.

As a final point, the Guardians blaming Hal and his crew for Aya made us fans even more incensed at their inability to see that they themselves created the manhunters and the Anti-Monitor in the first place and yet have not seen themselves as accountable too. They have covered up their shame at how worlds were annihilated prior to Aya taking over the Anti-Monitor and continuing its goal of eating up galaxies.

So I believe this episode may not be brilliant compared to the other episodes we have seen of late but it was necessary for the home run of the series.