Hey Junior! We Found Macon’s Weenie

Before heading back to Lanterns, Adrian has some things to say about Batman: Caped Crusader—and very few of them are nice. Dan and Adrian dig into what happens when an adaptation changes familiar characters simply for the sake of being different, why Batman’s best reinventions still preserve what makes those characters work, and how Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond managed to create something new without throwing away what audiences loved in the first place. Also: there is still a Michael Keaton Batman Beyond movie sitting somewhere in the multiverse of missed opportunities, and we remain annoyed about it.Then Lanterns Episode Four, “The Weenie,” gets the season moving again. Sinestro knows far too much about John Stewart, the Guardians are looking increasingly suspicious, and John is quietly instructed to take Hal’s ring the next time he gets the chance. Meanwhile, Hal and John finally start developing something resembling actual friendship while infiltrating Macon’s compound. John conjures an entire functioning tunnel-boring machine after some brief study on Google. Macon manages to capture our heroes and turn their interrogation into the weirdest possible power play by stripping naked and demanding John draw him. Thus fulfilling the episode title’s promise in considerably more ways than Walt Disney ever intended. But beneath all the weenie jokes, this one lands surprisingly hard. Zoe seemingly reveals herself as the Manhunter before apparently being obliterated by a space laser. John’s reaction gives away that he knows more than he’s admitting, and Hal realizes the partner he was finally beginning to trust has been keeping secrets from him. After Sinestro warns that John would betray him, Hal’s disappointment feels less like anger than genuine heartbreak.