The latest episode of Green Lantern just might anger some fans. Did it anger me? Lets find out. Oh, and while there may be some mild spoilers, considering the heavy nature of the ending, I won’t outright spoil it.
In this episode, the Guardian member Sayd (Susanne Blakeslee) arrives on the Red Lantern planet Ysmault to form a peace treaty between the Guardians and the Red Lanterns, which is made difficult since Zillius Zox (Tom Kenny), the new Red Lantern leader (which he won’t shut up about) is a huge pompous, egotistical jerk who doesn’t want to accept apologies. Unless his ego is stroked, I guess.
Unfortunately, the treaty could be introuble when Manhunters are discovered on Ysmault. The thing is, the Guardians never told the Red Lanterns about the Manhunter invasion, so Sayd hires Hal Jordan (Josh Keaton) and his crew to destroy the Manhunters, in secret. Gee, how can that go wrong?
This episode is both good and bad. I’ll start with the good. The animation continues to fully utilize its CGI for some impressive scenes. The voice acting is solid, with Kenny doing a good job of making Zox a huge jerk. The building romance between Aya (Grey DeLisle) and Razer (Jason Spisak) is innocently sweet.
I hope you like the color red…
Sadly, for me, the bad outway the good. My main gripe with this episode was this: WHY THE HECK DIDN’T THE GUARDIANS TELL THE RED LANTERNS ABOUT THE MANHUNTER INVASION OR THE ANTI-MONITER? Phew. Anyway, I just find this annoying. The Red Lanterns hate the Manhunters; if anything, telling them that the Mnahunters are coming could guarantee that the Green Lanterns have some new partners; instead, the Guardians hide this form the Reds, and come across as liars and shady.
Speaking of the Anti-Moniter, I feel the writers dropped the ball with him. In previous episodes, he talked. In this episode, he doesn’t get a single line. He just….flies around and destroys things. Very, very slowly. Honestly, he has an anti-presence, and makes for a boring villain.
Now to get to the important part: the death scene at the end of the episode. I like it and dislike it. Makes no sense? Well….the death scene is, for the most part, well-executed. The acting is great, and I enjoyed the dialogue. But….the reason for the death felt lame. The character who dies could have easily dodged the energy blast, but said character was busy staring at someone’s eyes. Um. Yeah.
Weeeeelll, I wouldn’t call this a bad episode. Just nothing great either. HOWEVER: it should be noted that apparently, this episode was originally going to air as a movie special with the next episode, so maybe this one is better if you watch it back-to-back with next week’s episode.
S#*! TALKING CENTRAL