Despite the big-finale feel of its fifth episode, DC Studios’ HBO Max series Lanterns still has three episodes in the hopper. So the streamer dropped a midseason trailer to remind folks of the shocking premiere twist the True Detective-flavored superhero show still has to unravel.
In its premiere, Lanterns set the pace, establishing that the show takes place in 2016 and 2026. In 2016, we followed Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan as they navigated their tumultuous mentor-mentee relationship while searching for a Manhunter hiding in a rural Nebraska town. Flashing forward to 2026, we discover…
Hal Jordan’s dead body. Evidently, he’d been shot in the head. We also learn that Stewart never usurps his mentor by taking his Lantern ring by force. That’s a helluva cliffhanger to leave folks hanging for five episodes. Now that the Manhunter arc is in the history books, the show’s swinging its—let’s call it fridged—murder-mystery plot thread in earnest by getting to the burning question on everyone’s mind: Who killed Hal Jordan?
In the mid-season trailer, we see Hal seemingly stay in Rushville, Nebraska, after Stewart took his ring and returned it to the Guardians. However, they’re far from being buddy-buddy. Likewise, Rushville hasn’t taken kindly to either Lantern in both 2016 and 2026, adding to the list of suspects who could’ve killed Jordan. Things apparently get so bad that Sinestro and Guy Gardner get involved as the devil and angel on Stewart’s broad shoulders during the whole snafu—the former for the chaos and the latter for the bad optics.
Diving into fan theory territory, one theory is that Jordan might not actually be dead. Evidence supporting this is twofold: the anxiety over whether Zoe Macon was, in fact, the last Manhunter on Earth, and the show showing Jordan’s ability to create a construct using the ring. While the second fan theory has some holes, comic book fans will likely be typing away, debunking it; the show’s fifth episode does give some credence to the idea that more is going on than meets the eye. Namely, before Rushville became a warzone, Zoe Macon had a curious conversation with her grandson about the war on the horizon and how to stay strong. We see her grandson in the trailer and learn in the premiere that he makes it onto a football team that we see playing a game in the trailer, so perhaps the kiddo has a role to play in the show’s murder mystery. His shooting Jordan point-blank in the head as an act of revenge would make a lot of sense for his role in killing Zoe. But, for our two cents, we think it’d be way more effective if Hal were actually dead, so it doesn’t cut the show’s tension and stakes from underneath it.
Either way, we have complete confidence the show will keep wowing fans, no matter how it decides to unspool its murder mystery. And we look forward to hearing how Pierre’s British accent peeks through his stoic bravado as he brings his mentor’s killer to justice.
New episodes of Lanterns are streaming every Sunday on HBO Max.
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