Recap: 'Green Lantern: The Animated Series' - Dark Matter - Series Finale

Aya, now possessing the Anti-Monitor’s time-traveling conduit, sets her final plan into motion above the Green Lantern home planet of Oa. Her end goal is to travel back to the creation of the universe and recreate it without any organic life or emotion. As the Green Lanterns ready for a massive assault against Aya’s Manhunter armada, Hal takes one last look at Aya’s destruction across the galaxy and notices a pattern: she only destroyed uninhabited areas. During the attack, Hal believes he can convince Aya to call stop her universe-shattering decision if he can get close to her. Once close enough, he reveals that he is aware of Aya’s methods. Aya decides to take Hal prisoner and let him witness the end of all organic life as she opens the portal in time.

As the war between Manhunters and Green Lanterns continues, Razer is fully convinced that Aya must be destroyed and believes he should be the one to do it seeing as how his Red Lantern powers would be more effective. Kilowog and Guy Gardner help him reach the portal via a cannon construct. As Aya begins to manipulate the creation of the universe, Hal finally reveals to Aya that she is in fact an organic being and that her plans would only eliminate herself. Just as she states that she doesn’t care about her death, Razer moves in for the kill. He hesitates for a moment and Aya strikes. Shocked into disbelief at nearly killing Razer, Hal finally convinces her that an inorganic being wouldn’t have that kind of emotion.

Finally seeing the error of her ways, Aya retracts her revisions to the big bang, transports Hal and Razer to safety and destroys the portal. The final problem that remains is the Manhunters. It turns out Aya copied her personality into every Manhunter and that any one of them could easily redo what Aya did herself. The only way to stop them all is to upload a virus that’ll erase all copies including Aya herself. Razer doesn’t accept this answer, but Aya has already uploaded the virus before he can argue and her essence disappears from reality. As the Green Lanterns celebrate their success in defending Oa, Razer decides to set off on a quest across the galaxy in hopes that Aya’s essence may still linger. Hal and Kilowog offer their thanks as he departs. And just as he leaves, a Blue Lantern ring follows.

For a finale, this certainly delivered on all the right notes. The relationship between Aya and Razer reaches it’s logical and tragic conclusion, yet it was so satisfying to see it play out with all its drama. If it hadn’t had the proper build-up throughout the series, it would appear sappy and melodramatic, but its deserving given the series character development. The action was just as entertaining as it featured one of the largest action sequences yet with multiple Green Lanterns taking on an army. Characters like Tomar Re, Ch’p and Guy Gardner are finally given some impressive moments in combat. I still enjoyed the space battle in the mid-season finale a little more, but it’s a close call with how many awesome moments there were in this one.

Sadly, this is the last episode of "Green Lantern: The Animated Series" as it appears that a second season is not in the cards. That being said, the ending was very satisfying and leaves the show on a fantastic note. It would be nice to see another season given the pitch-perfect writing and character dynamics. There may not be another Green Lantern cartoon for a few years, but I’m perfectly satisfied if this is the only one we get. It’s easily one of the best DC Comics cartoons since "Justice League Unlimited" and one of the strongest action cartoons I’ve seen in a while. The team behind this series has put a multitude of heart and soul into this project and I hope they can at least transfer their process into a similar program. If you’re not sure about this show because of either the iffy-nature of CGI cartoons or your lack of Green Lantern knowledge, I strongly recommend you view it as soon as possible. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with how fast the characters grow on you. Not to mention it’s neat to see some more adventurous science fiction on television.