There’s a lot of debate among Lanterns fans on whether the people in Rushville, Nebraska are irrational in their hatred of Hal Jordan (and John Stewart to a lesser extent) following the death of the Manhunter, Zoe Macon.
In the eyes of the rural town, Hal is an outsider who inserted himself into what was originally a local investigation. His recklessness made him vulnerable to Zoe’s machinations, as she had no problem blowing up the town to force Hal to burn through his ring’s charge. You could argue that a lot of pain could’ve been avoided if Hal had contacted the Guardians of the Universe, or didn’t antagonize John so much.
Many viewers feel that Rushville is ungrateful towards Hal for trying to save them. To them, it’s black and white. Zoe was a genocidal nightmare and Hal was doing his job of protecting Earth from alien threats. But isn’t he somewhat responsible for escalating the situation to where innocent people lost their lives? Are the citizens of Rushville just crazy Manhunter bootlickers? Does John not get enough grief for his role in this mess since he’s the one who actually killed Zoe?
The answer to all three of these questions is “yes.”
A quick recap of the Rushville arc
The series starts with Hal Jordan and John Stewart arriving in Rushville, Nebraska in the year 2016 after a mass shooting at a high school football game. Hal is convinced aliens were involved but Sheriff Kerry Kane isn’t buying it. She tells them the Green Lanternsl has no jurisdiction over terrestrial affairs, but Hal doesn’t let that stop him.
His persistence pays off when the main suspect does turn out to be an alien in disguise. Unfortunately, he blows himself up before anyone can get any answers.
Then episode 2 “Trust Fall” shows that the metal detectors at the football field don’t detect metal at all. They detect aliens, and it’s looking like cattle baronand power player William “Will” Macon set them up. Around the same time a different group of aliens led by Antaan abducts John and tells him a dangerous synthetic being caller a Manhunter is hiding in town.
Episode 4 “The Weenie” turns everything on its head when Zoe, Macon’s wife, seemingly to die in a satellite attack. John barely reacts despite developing feelings for Zoe and Hal notices. That’s how he figure out Zoe is the Manhunter and that John was keeping that detail from him. Hal crashes their rental car and leaves John stuck in the middle of nowhere. When the car explodes, Zoe heals John but on one condition. He has to let her kill Hal and she’ll make sure John gets Hal’s ring so that he’ll become the new Green Lantern.
Meanwhile, Hal tells Antaan that Will is the Manhunter to distract both parties long enough for him to get his hands on Zoe. Antaan does eventually figure out he’s been played, but that doesn’t stop him from cutting Will’s heart out. Zoe uses her hold on Rushville to put a kill order on Hal. She also uses her satellites to attack the town in an effort to drain his ring of power.
John arrives on the scene to beat the shit out of Hal, uses him as bait so he can shoot Zoe with a sniper shot to the head. John cuts out Zoe’s crystalized heart as proof for the Guardians and takes Hal’s ring as he feels his mentor is no longer worthy of it.
Kerry gets the residents to stand down. Hal takes the fall and spends ten years in prison. After he’s released, Hal decides to return to Rushville to try to make up for the damage he caused. He knocks on people’s doors every day offering to help in any way he can whether it’s mowing the lawn or doing someone’s grocery shopping. His efforts were met with slammed doors and being told “fuck you” a lot. Some mystery assailant(s) even fire bombs his house by throwing several Molotov cocktails in different rooms of his house. Even after he dies, the people of Rushville are both indifferent if not slightly relieved to know he’s gone for good.
Did Rushville know about Zoe being a Manhunter?
Most likely the average person had no idea what Zoe really was. To anyone living in Rushville, Zoe was a devoted grandmother and the heart of the community. Even Kerry probably didn’t put two and two together until Hal and John came to town and she got sucked into their investigation.
Yes, she was manipulative. The reason she had so much power was due to preying on people who were struggling so they’d feel indebted to her. She provided advanced technology that healed people of their wounds or illnesses… the same tech she used to cure Will of his cancer. Hector Hammond says the Manhunter gave him tech to help his family and community if he’d act as a decoy. Zoe saved Kerry after gangsters followed the young woman from Gotham to Rushville so they could kill her.
But she also used her resources to do a lot of good for the town. Because of her, nobody got sick. Businesses thrived thanks to her presence. Even if they knew or at least suspected Zoe was an alien, she presented herself as a benevolent force in the community. There’s a difference between unknowingly harboring an intergalactic criminal and being a willing participant in their schemes. Lanterns does a good job blurring that line until you can’t tell who’s in the know. To the people in Rushville, they lost what they assumed was a kind-hearted soul their town needed in order to survive.
Of course, the town’s hatred of Hal is doesn’t excuse committing arson and attempted murder. But is it really irrational?
Is Rushville’s rage part of the Guardians’ plan?
Could it be that Rushville’s anger towards Hal is just what the Guardians of the Universe wanted?
Episode 8 “Dirt and Stars” picks up almost immediately after the event of episode 5 “Lights Out.” In the aftermath of Zoe’s death and the destruction she caused, Kerry asks Hal how the Guardians will respond and he gave an interesting response:
“I failed to notify ’em, and I put a lot of people’s lives in danger for… selfish reasons,” Hal says in reference to using the situation with the Manhunter to prove his worth to the Guardians. “And that there won’t be any pushback in any court that convicts me of reckless endangerment. Kind of a nice, clean solution to their problem… of me.”
Judging from what we’ve seen in the second half of season 1, everything Hal said came true. It’s easy to miss because Lanterns choose to show the audience what happened after the Battle of Rushville instead of telling us. The implication is that very little info about what went down back in 2016 is known to the public. The Guardians probably refused to address the situation publicly because they wanted Rushville to be a forgotten memory. If nobody is coming forward to vouch for Hal’s innocence, that leaves the door open for people to come to their own conclusions.
With Hal stripped of his status as Green Lantern and the legal protection that comes with it, there was no one willing to step in to keep him out of prison. I’m sure what’s left of the Macon family, particularly Will’s son Billy, made sure that any charges Hal was hit with stuck. Hell, he’s lucky he only spent ten years behind bars (wouldn’t surprise me if he took a plea deal).
Plus, if everyone in Rushville just assumed that Hal and John were responsible for the destruction of their town, it keeps them from looking at the bigger picture. The Guardians don’t want anyone to know they were the ones who created the Manhunters, thus making them responsible for all the devastation they brought into the galaxy.
Letting Hal take the fall for Rushville kills two birds with one stone. The Guardians have a neat resolution to a messy situation, as well as sneaking some petty revenge against Hal for his role in John’s decision to reject the Green Lantern Corps.
Multiple things can be true at the same time
So is Rushville wrong to hate Hal? Sort of. At the end of the day, Zoe is the one who destroyed the small town. She ran the town on favors for years, ordered residents to kill Hal and turned her satellites on her own neighbors. It’s why fans get so frustrated even thinking about the town and the people living in it.
One minor character shows just how complicated the situation is. Maggie is a 19 year old girl who works at the cafe. She lost her dad when Zoe fired her satellites at the motel Hal and John were staying at. You can actually see a young Maggie crying over her father’s corpse while John walks past, stopping to tell the little girl he’s sorry for what happened. When John returns to Rushville after Hal is killed, Maggie demands $314,536.27 from John to cover the damage he and Hal caused. If he doesn’t pay she’ll tell the sheriff he punched Hal shortly before he was shot. Is that blackmail? Yep. Is it wrong? Hell, yes. But she’s also a kid who lost a parent. John isn’t clean either, but you can’t help feeling bad for him because he was only cleaning up the mess Hal made.
That’s the key thing viewers miss. The people of Rushville were gaslit and manipulated for decades. It doesn’t excuse the cruel way they treated Hal after he was released from prison or make Maggie in the right for blackmailing John. But multiple things can be true at the same time. A lot of people love this iteration of Hal Jordan and I do too, but Lanterns fans tend to glaze him to point of making him out to be a perfect saint while painting anyone in opposition of him (like John) as the devil. Though I feel Kerry is the exception here. There’s no justifying how her shooting Hal was an accident caused by a reflex action, but that’s different article for another day.
Rushville is in the wrong for their treatment of Hal but he did make reckless decisions that made the situation worse. Nobody is completely blameless and they’re also not in the wrong either, to an extent.
You can stream all eight episodes of Lanterns on HBO Max.
