‘Lanterns’ Team Breaks Down Finale’s Emotional Gamble, Hal Jordan’s Ultimate Fate and John Stewart’s Future

[This story contains major spoilers for the Lanterns season one finale, “Dirt and Stars.“]

For a Lanterns season one finale that ends with John Stewart taking flight as his own brand of Green Lantern, it’s a rightfully grounded affair until then.

There is no otherworldly threat for the sake of obligatory spectacle, a welcome change of pace from the superhero genre’s oft-reused playbook. Instead, it remains focused on the ever-evolving relationship between Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John (Aaron Pierre).

“There was never a version of the finale that was more action-oriented,” Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy told moderator Mallory Rubin of The Ringer during the finale press conference, which featured the creative brain trust alongside stars Pierre and Chandler. “If we landed it emotionally with [Hal and John], we would’ve done our job. [Action for action’s sake] would’ve been distraction and incident instead of emotion.”

Structurally, co-creator Damon Lindelof considers episode five’s “Battle of Rushville” to be this series’ version of the CGI slugfest and sky-beam invasion we’ve seen time and time again.

“If we had to make a two-hour Lanterns movie, you would have to have a bombastic third-act action set piece — and then two or three minutes of coda,” Lindelof said. “We got to do that [coda] over the course of [the last] three episodes.”

Co-creator Tom King, who originally pitched the series’ earthy, True Detective-like spin on Green Lantern lore, added: “One of our sticking points from day one was to avoid clichés like they’re the plague. They make it boring and give you that superhero exhaustion we’ve seen a thousand think pieces about. So it’s not what you expect, and that’s entirely what this show has been.”

Getting into the weeds of plot, the finale begins with an addendum to episode five, as Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) arrives at Rushville’s demolished motel to find a defeated Hal Jordan still lying in the rubble following his confrontations with John and Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan). He has already accepted that he’ll be sent to prison for reckless endangerment, allowing the Guardians of the Universe to carry out their long-standing plan to permanently replace him as Earth’s Green Lantern.

The narrative then jumps forward to an earlier point in 2026 to track the burgeoning romance between Hal and Kerry. Hal’s decade’s worth of prison letters clearly had a profound effect on her, because she makes sure to pick him up after his 10-year sentence with a six-pack of Schlitz in hand. But Hal’s return to Rushville with Kerry is met with the coldest of welcomes, including ongoing acts of vandalism against his rental. After all, his selfish desire to retain his Lantern status not only got locals killed, but presumably also brought an end to the 30 years of good health and prosperity Zoe had provided in exchange for the townsfolk protecting her Manhunter identity.

During a hostile dinner date, Zoe stands up and tries to appeal to the fellow patrons’ better angels in regard to Hal. She points out that he’s trying to make amends every day by being of service to the community in any way he can. That plea falls on deaf ears, as Hal’s rental home — a different one from the one John later stays at — is eventually set ablaze by arsonists. Hal immediately grabs his extraterrestrial flower pet, Earl, and heads for an upstairs exit, but the staircase collapses, leaving the fates of Hal and Earl up in the air.

Hal suddenly wakes up on the floor of a slaughterhouse that now houses Zoe’s leftover Manhunter technology, which heals and regenerates damage done to still-living tissue. Her grandson, Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard), then steps forward to reveal himself as a Manhunter. He rehabilitated Hal’s charred body just as Zoe did for John following the burning car accident that Hal engineered. Noah asks Hal to keep the exchange secret, since his mother, Kerry, is still under the impression that he does not know his true nature as a Manhunter.

If you’re like me, then you probably wondered whether Noah also had to re-skin Earl following the house fire. Fortunately, Rubin read my very specific question aloud to the panel for clarity. Apparently, many other journalists had submitted a similar query about their concern for Earl.

“That’s an excellent question that I’ve never considered. Someone went deeper than we did, and we thought we went deep,” Mundy said mid-laugh. “I don’t think Earl needed to be re-skinned. I don’t think Earl goes down that easily.”

Lindelof continued, “I think Earl is pretty resilient. The botanical creatures of the galaxy can grow their own skin, I would imagine. Earl probably has the thickest skin of anybody on the show.”

After the slaughterhouse, the episode cuts to Antaan’s (Paul Ben-Victor) home planet, which Zoe had annihilated prior to her Rushville arrival in 1986. The scene resumes episode seven’s cliffhanger involving Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), John and the holographic version of Hal, dubbed “Halogram.” The disgraced former Green Lantern had been recapping the same Hal-related events we’d just seen visualized so that John can continue piecing together the puzzle surrounding his mentor’s murder.

It was Noah who broke Sinestro out of his previous Oa prison so that he could forge the teen a ring-charging lantern while imprisoned on Antaan’s planet. After Noah saved his life and revealed himself, Hal still couldn’t resist surveilling the young Manhunter. He then discovered that Zoe had left him a portal to the aforementioned planet that had caused her so much guilt and anguish. Hal stepped through it to find Sinestro inside his newest island prison, and the two caught each other up to speed on the circumstances that led them there. It was the last time Sinestro saw his former protégé alive.

Sinestro posits to John that Noah killed Hal for not honoring their agreement to leave him alone, and while John deduces that Noah wants a ring and a lantern to kill the Guardians who ordered John to assassinate his grandmother, he isn’t fully satisfied with that rationale for killing Hal. He then departs with Halogram for Rushville, where Noah’s boot awaits him. In the process, Noah seizes the ring and lantern from John, acquiring everything he needs to go after the Guardians.

After giving him a beating, Noah has John drive him to his final high school football game. He wants to know why John killed his grandmother, but John reveals that she wanted that outcome. Her death would drive away all of the outside agitators and leave Noah’s secret identity in peace. Noah then tearfully takes the blame for killing Hal, fearing his mom would find out about his Manhunter activities from Hal. As Sinestro had also theorized, Noah admits to wrestling with his synthetic nature versus his human nurture. John relates to him by sharing how he’s dealt with overcoming his own unique programming.

Noah proceeds to weigh his two paths. There’s one where he plays college football at the University of Nebraska and gets married. Then he’s tempted with another where he maximizes his abilities to achieve fame, political power and military capabilities. However, he chooses neither. He relinquishes the ring and lantern, and asks John to euthanize him after he finishes playing his last game. Conflicted, John seeks Halogram’s counsel, but he’s not responding.

John then approaches Kerry at the game about Noah’s secret, prompting her to finally spill her guts after all this time. Hal had also confronted her at the football field about Noah’s true nature, forcing her to recount how, upon making her bargain with Zoe in episode five’s 2007 flashback, Zoe’s alien tech gave her far more than a new pinky finger. She walked away as the expectant mother of a baby Manhunter, believing she could love him enough to combat his innately dangerous wiring.

Hal blindsides her with the revelation that Noah does in fact know he’s a Manhunter and that he’s planning what we now know to be a revenge mission against the Guardians. Fearing for their safety, Hal says they must get out of Dodge before trouble comes, but Kerry doesn’t want to accept that her Rushville life is over — so much so that she draws her weapon in a panic and shoots Hal as he says, “Goddamnit, I love you.” Kerry immediately regrets the impulsive decision.

John can’t understand why she’d call him to investigate Hal’s murder if she’s the one who did it. She explains that what she really wanted was for him to assess whether Noah is as monstrous as the rest of his kind. John determines that Noah has fought off his intrinsic qualities because he sacrificed the ring and covered for his mom out of love. Kerry is then alarmed when John announces that he’s not going to kill Noah like he requested. He wants to believe this kid can fight the good fight against his worst self, but he knows deep down the jury is still out.

Kerry offers to turn herself in for Hal’s murder, but John refuses to honor her request out of deference to what Hal would’ve wanted. The last we see of the broken Macon family is them briefly reunited to celebrate Noah’s victory and his commitment to the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

John makes his way into town to signal Guy Gardner. Guy shows up to see Hal’s ring on John’s finger and protests that John removed it from Hal’s corpse after guilting Guy into stealing it from the Guardians. John clarifies that he needed it to solve the mystery of Hal’s heroic death. Guy takes further issue with John’s “unsanctioned” lantern, and John then informs Guy that he’ll be taking on earthbound Lantern responsibilities from this point forward. He proclaims himself to be a solo act who operates without a higher command calling his shots.

Guy stresses that the Guardians are going to send an army to deal with this matter, but John relays a coded message basically telling them to leave him alone. It’s likely a reminder that he did their dirty work by delivering Zoe’s crystallized heart, and that, as their first choice to replace Hal, he’s earned some grace. Guy flies off with his tail between his legs, insisting that their business isn’t settled.

At long last, Halogram reappears after Guy exits, admitting he’s been listening to everything that’s transpired since they parted ways after deserting Sinestro. (Notably, he didn’t gloat that he was right about Kerry being his real self’s killer.) Backup Hal first rattles John by pointing out the risky roll of the dice he’s taking with Noah. He then gives him some final reassurance that he’s going to be a better Lantern than he ever was and that it’s finally time to pair himself with the ring. John has been hesitating all episode because Sinestro confirmed that Halogram will cease to be once John syncs the ring with the new lantern. Halogram then spells out the theme of the season by saying, “Don’t be afraid to be afraid.”

Before they part ways, Halogram has one more joke up his sleeve. He lies to John and pretends that he glitched during the part of Kerry’s story in which she quoted Hal’s last words as she shot him to death. So John repeats those words, “I love you,” and Halogram milks the moment with, “And I love you too, Junior,” before winking goodbye. It’s a punchline, but an emotionally resonant and valid one, even if Halogram didn’t personally share as much history with John as his real counterpart did.

“It was painfully exposed. It was a purely honest, open moment, and it was a joyous thing to be able to do on screen,” Chandler recalled. “It was easy to do with Aaron, because, although I really don’t like him very much, I knew I was getting paid.”

As Chandler just showed, he and Pierre constantly ribbed each other throughout the filming and promotion of the show. But certain scenes, like the final goodbye, stopped them in their tracks because of the weight of the moment.

“Kyle believes he made me cry on that day, but I think I made him cry,” Pierre said. “We’ll have to let the episode air and see what the verdict is.”

In the end, John takes the leap to become his own Lantern, one who doesn’t answer to overlords of any kind. He even rewrites the Green Lantern oath to account for his newfound embrace of fear. Oddly enough, that advice didn’t just come from Hal. Sinestro also informed John’s decision to use fear to his advantage, unlike the traditional Green Lantern modus operandi. The lantern that John acquired from Sinestro is even infused with fear-based elements from Antaan’s planet. Last but not least, John also restores relations with his parents, allowing his mother, Bernadette, to exhale after years of estrangement.

Unlike the other major story points discussed so far, John’s revised oath was not decided on until the writers were breaking the finale in the room. Will purists object to John rewriting the oath in such a significant way? Mundy remembered the writers being “crazily nervous” about the choice until writer Justin Britt-Gibson put things into perspective by saying, “We’re not rewriting it; we’re remixing it.”

When you look at all the hierarchies John has served — his demanding parents, the Guardians, the Marines, the Green Lantern Corps — Lindelof stated that he has to finally exist on his own terms. “We were definitely nervous and scared about doing it, but we started to say, ‘If we’re not afraid of doing an idea, then we probably shouldn’t do it,’”he added.

Lindelof continued: “It just felt right, and we understood that it’s probably going to be the thing that divides the fandom, et cetera.”

King then followed Lindelof by explaining why the Green Lantern oath doesn’t technically apply to John. “John is not a hundred percent a Green Lantern anymore. He has an unsanctioned lantern that has a bit of yellow and a bit of fear in it,” King said. “So he’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern — just like a Yellow Lantern or an Orange Lantern says something different. John is this utterly unique creation that he chose for himself. So getting his own unique oath seemed to line up very much with the lore and where we’re going from here.”

King believes such creative license ultimately honors the Green Lantern authors that preceded the Lanterns team. “None of them said, ‘I just want to copy the person before me.’ So to honor that legacy and creativity, you have to push the ball a little farther,” King said.

Certain corners of the internet did not react well to Hal Jordan, historically the most popular Green Lantern, being murdered in the series premiere. Personally, I never sweated the story choice because Halogram seemed like a permanently clever way of keeping Chandler employed in the DCU going forward. But now that Hal’s backup consciousness has been overwritten with John’s, many Hal Jordan fans will likely cling to Sinestro’s offer back on Antaan’s planet to bring him back to life “for real.” Still, it was likely a desperate gambit from a manipulative alien who would do or say anything to free himself from his newest prison.

Another question of mine made the cut at the press conference regarding what alternate routes and destinations were considered. “I don’t think there was ever really another ending,” Mundy said in response. He did recall writing some unfilmed material that enabled John to catch Bernadette up to speed on Hal, but then Lindelof chimed in to make clear what everyone wanted to know. There was never a resurrection in store for Hal, something a number of fans felt was signed, sealed and delivered based on the early 2000s comic Green Lantern: Rebirth.

“The ending of the pilot is that Hal Jordan is dead, and in the very early days, we knew that we didn’t want it to be a fake-out,” Lindelof said. “In order for all of the emotional progression to feel real and earned and lived, we were sticking to that, and there wasn’t going to be a rug-pull.”

As for other potential candidates to kill Hal, Mundy nominated Kerry during the early stages, and she stuck from then on. The more important issue was portraying Kerry’s wrongful act without the audience losing sympathy for her and her precarious situation as a loving mother to a Manhunter. “We wrestled early with the idea of not wanting her to feel duplicitous. Was there a way for her to love Hal and also kill him?” Lindelof said. “And as three married men [co-writing this show], we were like, ‘Absolutely! 1,000 percent.’ The show started to become less of a whodunit and more of a why-done-it.”

Mundy’s season-two writers room has been underway for several months now. He told THR during the August press junket that he’d soon be going in to pitch season two to DC Studios brass James Gunn and Peter Safran. But as of the evening of Oct. 4, no official green light has been announced, nor did the finale press event address the future. That said, a recent report that the series averages 19 million overall viewers per episode bodes well in this era where even renewed shows are no longer safe. Time will also tell how Skydance’s impending acquisition of Warner Bros. Television, HBO and DC Studios affects matters.

Perhaps the most impactful line of the series thus far was Hal’s final line in his self-written eulogy, which John read aloud at his funeral: “I hope I mattered.” As co-writer of that sixth episode, Lindelof adds further context that gets to the heart of what Lanterns season one hoped to accomplish. “What I think Hal is saying is, ‘I hope I mattered to you.’ And that’s transmitting directly to John.”

Hal wasn’t intending to satisfy vanity or ego.

“It’s not, ‘I hope I mattered because I saved the world from a giant fucking alien starfish. It’s not, ‘I want there to be statues built of me. I need my name to be on an arch or monument,’” Lindelof explained from Hal’s perspective. “It’s just, ‘I hope I’m remembered and that I had a significant role in your life.’”

Lindelof concludes with a fitting sentiment: “I hope that the audience feels like the show mattered and that Hal mattered to them as well.”

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Lanterns season one is now streaming in full on HBO Max.