The biggest comment under Monday’s video is not about who killed Hal Jordan. It is about one line, and 1,300 of you say I got it wrong.

“Hal did say “No one ever told him the constructs didn’t have to be that green”, not that it had to be more creative. He was criticizing the bright green as opposed to the darker more subdued green.” @CrazyManwich

1,300 of you agreed with him. Top of the section, over every theory, over every prediction, over the eulogy.

And I am going to tell you, with love, no.

Go back and listen to how Hal says the word bubble. “Flew those pandas from China to California in that bubble.” The disdain is in that word. He sneers it. That is a man looking at a construct and finding it beneath him, and it is beneath him because of what it is, not what color it is. Then comes the shade line, “I guess no one told him the constructs don’t have to be so green,” and that is the double tap. That is the after punch. You do not throw the after punch at something you have not already knocked down.

So 1,300 of you can gang up on me, and I love you for it, and I am not moving. As a writer, that line is about the shape first and the shade second.

And that tells you what kind of room this is. Everywhere else on the internet this week, the only question anybody could ask about this show was whether Hal Jordan is actually dead.

My audience is not asking if Hal Jordan is dead. My audience is arguing with me about a single word, and winning the vote.

The Question Everybody Else Is Asking

The rest of the world had one week with this episode. You had the same week. Watch what each of you did with it.

Monday the promo for Episode 7 dropped. Forty three seconds. The Halogram says, “Well, I think being murdered allows for a little paranoia.” John says, “Could have been anyone. Whole town hated you.” And John Stewart punches a man whose face you never see. That one shot, a fist and a hidden face, is the entire outside conversation. Is that Sinestro. Is that Hal. Is Hal alive.

Then Tuesday, James Gunn posted about it, and here is the part everybody underlined: “Us knowing the time of his death, if that’s exactly what that is, is absolutely not the same thing as killing him off right away.”

If that’s exactly what that is. Six words, and the whole internet heard a wink. Every headline, every recap, every reaction I could find this week is the same question asked louder. Is he dead. Is he a clone. Is that mark on his arm in the trailer the same mark the machine left on John.

Same week, same episode, my comment section. Under Monday’s video, for every one of you asking whether Hal is dead, there are about ten of you working the murder. Not whether it happened. Who did it, how they got close, why he let them.

You were not behind the conversation. You already had this conversation. Two weeks ago, on a Friday, we put Fake Hal on the table with receipts going back to September 1st, and you decided you did not need to have it twice.

So while the world asked whether there was a body, this room asked who made it one. That is the file. Not the answer. You were asking a different question, and frankly, you were asking it better.

The Suit

Start with the name, because we have to. Noah.

I want to be honest about something before I read a single card. I said Noah on this channel ten days ago, in Why I’m Not Celebrating the Best Lanterns Yet, and I said it again Monday. So every comment under Monday’s video that says Noah did it is downstream of me. I am not counting those as independent calls. That would be me quoting myself back to myself with your handles on it.

What I am counting is what you brought that I did not have.

“Noah gave John a tailored suit and didnt need to ask his measurements…interesting” @showdownatnoon

640 likes. Twelve words.

I read every outside write-up I could find this week. The prime suspect out there is Noah, same as here. And the evidence out there is Zoe telling him to see without being seen, and a feeling. Weird vibes. He is too calm. He wants to be president.

Nobody out there has the suit.

A kid hands a man a funeral suit that fits, and never asked. You can read that as a small town courtesy, or you can read it the way this room did, which is that something in that house knows John Stewart’s body better than John Stewart has told anyone.

Big E stacked it: not physically imposing, which we were told is how a Manhunter hides, the FEMA letters, mayor to governor to president, and the suit. And Sheija did the thing I love most, which is structure. John gets in a fight with locals and spends a night in lockup, like Hal did. Hal cut open alien bodies to investigate, John digs up Hal to do the same. John gets invited to dinner by Kerry the way Hal got invited to the Macon table in 2016, and brings beer, like Hal did. John owes a local a favor over the blackmail, the way Hal owed the Macons for bail.

Put your producer hat on with me. When a writers’ room runs a character through the exact beats of the man he replaced, you are not watching homage. You are watching a rhyme scheme, and rhyme schemes end on the same word.

Hal’s week in Rushville ended with a Manhunter in a family kitchen.

The Hand

This is where you left the rest of the world behind. Out there, Kerry Kane is a name on a list. One line in one write-up. Nobody argues her.

In here, 150 of you argued her, and I never said her name in that direction. Not once. I said Hal loved her. I did not say she shot him.

“I can’t see Hal giving no fight to Noah killing him. But I COULD see him not putting up a fight to Kerry…” @alexnavas-45

That is the whole argument in two sentences, and it is built on the autopsy. One shot. From the front. Point blank. No sign he fought. Hal Jordan, thirty years a Lantern, ten in a cell, a man who booby trapped his own rental, and he let somebody walk right up.

“I still think it could be Noah, but Zoe made a deal with Kerry. If that deal was to protect Noah, Kerry could have killed Hal to protect Noah. Makes sense with it being close up and Hal not putting up a fight.” @kluv2g1

And Lite N Brite put the character on it. She is the only person in that town Hal would let approach him without resistance. She is grieving because she did not want to. And she is protecting her son.

Luis flagged the thing I skated past Monday. Breakfast. Dinner. Deputize him. Join the investigation. John says out loud that she does not know how to fake cry. Luis says, what if that line is the misdirect.

I do not know if Kerry Kane pulled that trigger. But I know this. The outside conversation cannot even see her, and this room built a case out of the coroner’s report and the woman’s own kitchen.

Alex, if you are watching, I want you to know that “I COULD see him not putting up a fight to Kerry” has been in my head for three days.

The Punch

There is a scene in Episode 6 that I treated as a beat and you treated as evidence. The cafe. Hal needles John about being scared. Calls him Junior. John hits him. Hal asks him to keep the meeting a secret, and John does.

Monday I read that as Hal being Hal.

“About John punching Hal: It reminded me of when the Sheriff shot at Hal saying that “Zoe cannot hear us but she can see everything”. He wanted John to attack him and the bird keys felt like he was obviously letting clues for him.” @NietzscheForSpeedy

518 likes for a reading nobody outside this room has made.

Hal wanted the punch. In Episode 5, Kerry fired at Hal so that whoever was watching would see a fight and not a conversation. Now Hal sits in a cafe in a town that hates him, provokes the one man who might matter, and gets exactly the public beating he asked for.

“The whiplash Hal had when John punched him. He was provoking John, he even called him Junior at the end. However when John punched him and the lie was sold, he immediately called him John.” @josephg3462

Junior until the punch lands. John the second it does. That is a man dropping a performance because the take is done.

And Jack DNH closed the loop on the ring. Hal left five percent in that ring on purpose. He knew John would not take the mantle. He knew the ring would be decommissioned. He left a message on the battery for the one man who would eventually smack it on a headstone.

Put that next to the biggest comment about John this week, because the two halves are the same idea.

“The fact that John starts running a long game, asking Kerry for a funeral, then asking Guy to bring the ring under the guise of it being part of his uniform, all so that he can get that last 5percent of power to get the Sentinel as the only lead in the investigation … that’s top-tier detective sh-t.” @Bob.NamesBob

1,300 likes. The room’s read, assembled. John ran a long game to get the ring out of Oa and into a coffin. And Hal ran a longer one to make sure there was something on it when John got there.

Two men who could not stand each other, running the same play from opposite ends of a grave.

He Was Not Apologizing

This one is on me, and I am going to let you hit me with it. Monday I said Hal went back to Rushville knocking on every door looking for redemption. A man who believed he deserved what was coming.

“It is my opinion that Hal was not searching door-to-door for redemption. He was trying to find more manhunters. There is still hale in rushville.” @ericdelarede2

150 of you agreed with him, and I want to argue with him, so let me try. You watched Hal Jordan write letters to a woman for years from a cell. You watched him move to the one town on earth that wants him dead. You watched a sheriff say he came back for her. That is a man doing penance. That is the reading the show handed us, and I took it.

And I cannot hold it, because of this.

“I think Hal returned to Rushville to get close to Noah, he figured out Noah was the manhunter but decided to let him go because 1. He is no longer a GL 2. Because he fell for Kerry and her love for Noah 3. He feels regret for how things went with the last manhunter.” @orinpax1

Orin did not throw out the penance. He put a target on it. Because a man doing penance knocks on doors and takes the no. A man hunting knocks on every door in town, including the ones that say no, and keeps a list. And the show gave us both. Kerry says he went door to door. The town says most of them turned him away. And he kept going.

You do not keep going for forgiveness. Forgiveness stops at the first slammed door. You keep going for a census.

“Hal returned to Rushville because he believed there was a remaining Manhunter. Hal’s attempts to make amends allowed him to visit remaining households looking for clues. Kerry killed Hal because he was getting close to discovering Noah.” @JamesMannion-xx3mb

Four sentences. He lands the hunt, he lands the hand, and he lands them in the same house.

So I was half right Monday, and you were the other half. Hal was making amends, but amends was also the cover. Both are true, and the second one is the one that got him killed.

The Correction I Take, and the Answer I Asked For

We opened on an argument I am not conceding. This one I concede.

Two weeks ago in the Fake Hal Files, I told you the popular theory, the Halogram going solid, needed a rule the show had never given us. I said you would be inventing a mechanism to save the theory.

“The show gave a mechanism for a solid Halogram. In episode 1, John places his hand on the shoulder of the Halogram, and it read as solid and tangible.” @boourns7541

322 likes, under my own video, telling me the rule was in the pilot. And Vermont Mike backed it with the detail that makes it a writer’s choice and not an accident. John does not touch people. John did not like Hal. And John puts a hand on that shoulder when Hal points at the taco stand.

I have not gone back and rerun the pilot for that frame. Two of you say the hand lands and it reads solid. I am taking your word until I watch it again, and if it holds, then the door I closed on that theory two weeks ago is open, and you opened it. Whether a solid Halogram bleeds is still a different question, and Vermont Mike says so himself. But I said the show never established it, and that is not the same thing as saying it never explained it. I overstated. You caught it.

And then the one that got me, because it is a straight answer to something I asked. Last week I ended the Files asking you for the frame. Not the theory, the shot. The moment where, if something walked out of that motel that is not Hal Jordan, you can see it happen.

“At 12:40 in episode 5 Hal takes a a knife and takes a chip out of his ring and activates “Century Protocol ”. That chip becomes a physical construct unlike the hologram that John saw in episode 1.” @DavidMitchellII

Seven likes. A timestamp. 12:40, Episode 5. I asked for a moment and I got a clock reading. Whether he is right about what that chip becomes is an argument. That he answered the question the way I asked it is not. That is the format working exactly the way it is supposed to.

And one more for the room, because a lot of you took the funeral the wrong way. Louis Colli: nobody was at that funeral because nobody knew he was dead. The coroner gave them until Monday before word got out. Carol only knew because the sheriff called her. Three people came because three people were told.

The Arm

One thing I owe you before I close the file, because I am asking you to do work.

Two of you, one on Friday’s video before Episode 6 even aired, and one on Monday’s with a single like, said the same thing from different directions. Kodex Kat: the trailer Hal has the mark on his arm that the machine left on John. And J333: the dead Hal on the autopsy table does not have that mark, because John would have seen it.

I have not checked the autopsy scene for that arm. I am telling you that straight instead of pretending.

If the man on the table is clean and the man on the trailer floor is marked, then this room did not need Gunn’s six words and did not need a promo. You had the answer to the question everybody else is asking, in a frame, a week before they thought to ask it.

The Landing

I opened this file with the world asking one question, is Hal Jordan dead, and this room not asking it. That was never a gap. That was a lead.

You already had that argument. You had it two weeks ago with dates and a ring rule and a hand checked ten years too late. So when the promo dropped and the world caught up, you were already down the hall, working the murder.

A suit that fit without a tape measure. A shot from the front that nobody fought. A punch a man asked for. A door to door search that never stopped at no. A rule I said the show never gave you, found in the pilot. And 1,300 of you at the top of my own comment section telling me I heard a line wrong, which I did not, and I will take that fight every week.

The internet asked whether there is a body. You asked who made it one, and you have better evidence than they do.

Everybody else is asking if Hal Jordan is dead. You are asking who killed him, and you are the only ones with receipts.

One piece of housekeeping I owe you. Monday I put Episode 6 on the Know-It-All Index at seven and a half, and I told you your number was going next to mine. I do not have it. The Episode 6 ballot did not open when I said it would, and that is on me, not on you. So there is no Nation number for Episode 6 this week, and I am not going to make one up. If you are a member, score Episode 6 on your ballot and put your argument in the box, because two of the best reads on this channel in the last month came off that ballot and not out of the comments.

CrazyManwich, Showdown At Noon, Big E, Sheija, Alex Navas, K Luv, Lite N Brite, Nietzsche For Speedy, Joseph G, Jack DNH, Bob Names Bob, Eric De La Rede, Orin Pax, James Mannion, Boourns, Vermont Mike, David Mitchell, Egunther, Kodex Kat, J333, Louis Colli, and every one of you on the wall today. Thank you. You corrected me once, you argued with me once, and I am better for both.

Here is the homework, and it is one frame. Hal Jordan’s right arm, two shots: the autopsy table in Episode 6, and the trailer floor. Tell me the timestamp on the autopsy where you can see the arm, and tell me whether the mark is there. Not the theory, the arm. Because if it is not there, you already answered the question the whole world is asking, and you did it before the world asked. Episode 7 is Sunday night and I am back Monday with it. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.