Its another cracking finale to a Green Lantern arc, this time offering a little more closure than the Rage of the Red Lanterns arc, which followed much more directly into Agent Orange.
The resolution to last issue’s cliffhanger caught me by surprise, but made complete sense given what we’d previously seen of the blue rings. However, it was also a slight disappointment, probably in part due to having seen the exact same trick pulled off by Paul Cornell’s Captain Britain and MI13 last week.
Talking of Hal’s Blue ring, we finally got the reveal of his hope which activated the ring, and it was a great moment. Whereas most had been speculating about his Dad’s final words or something, instead it turned out to be something fairly inconsequential that activated the ring. A throwaway thought. Again, its something that rang very true. However, we also see that the ring shows Hal a glimpse of the future (suggesting that’s his true hope), and aside from the glimpse of Sinestro we saw, I have to wonder what else might be revealled that he’s seen later down the line.
Hal specifically glimpsing Sinestro saying they need to work together may also provide some insight into Hal’s hopes. We know from Secret Origin that prior to his fall, Sinestro and Hal were friends as well as mentor and student, so perhaps this also hints that Hal still secretly hopes Sinestro can be redeemed one day and he can have his friend back (although granted this flies in the face of his “KILLKILLKILL” Red Lantern moment).
There are various other nice moments as well. We get a good character piece with Fatality and John Stewart where she tells him he must forgive himself for Xanshi, but also interestingly hints that Xanshi wasn’t as innocent as he might’ve believed when it comes to the war of light. Intriguing, and obviously Geoff must have a plan in this direction.
The ending of the issue also gives us two big moments. The Guardians sell out the Blue Lanterns by telling Larfleeze where Odym is and we see the Blue Lanterns about to come under attack. Of course, this is very bad, as despite the blue light’s effectiveness over the orange, we know that beyond basic life support and flight, blue rings are inactive unless there’s a GL in range. Wonder if we’ll see Hal or Kyle get an SOS from Ganthet. Of course, we also know that Atrocious was last seen leading his Red Lanterns to Odym as well. Since Larfleeze has a love of new, shiney things, I imagine he’ll be wanting a red ring as well as a blue, so that may buy the Blue Lanterns a chance.
You do wonder what’s going to happen with the Guardians after Blackest Night. Really their actions in recent issues have been unforgivable. Kyle’s going to be regretting resurrecting them after the damage they’re doing.
And the final pages of the book give us a great lead-in to Blackest Night. I loved how they picked up directly from events in GLC with Ash and Saarek. Sadly it looks like these are another two classic GL casualties, but the giant arms reaching out to grab them was a great scene. Again, we’re also given a tantalising hint, as the ring identifies the planet with the Black Lantern as “Classified”. So its definitely charted by the Guardians. Do they already know of the planet’s significance and are hushing it up from the Corps? Or has Scar quietly classified it without the other Guardians knowing?
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