Lantern Finale: Where John Stewart and Hal Jordan Ended Up

(This story contains major spoilers for the Lanterns season one finale, “Dirt and Stars.”)

For a Lanterns The first season finale ending with John Stewart taking off as his own brand of Green Lantern, it’s a legitimate affair so far.

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

“There has never been a more action-oriented version of the finale,” Lanterns Showrunner Chris Mundy told moderator Mallory Rubin The ringtone during the final press conference, which featured the creative brain trust alongside stars Pierre and Chandler. “If we had had emotional contact with (Hal and John), we would have done our job. (Action for the sake of action) would have been a distraction and an incident instead of an emotion.”

Structurally, co-creator Damon Lindelof views episode five’s “Battle of Rushville” as this series’ version of the CGI brawl and skybeam invasion we’ve seen time and time again.

“If we had to take a two-hour trip Lanterns movie, you’d have to have a bombastic action set piece in the third act – then two or three minutes of coda,” Lindelof said. “We have to do that (coda) over the (last) three episodes.”

Co-creator Tom King, who initially introduced the earthy side, True Detective-like a version of the Green Lantern story, added: “One of our sticking points from day one was avoiding clichés like they were the plague. They make things boring and give you that superhero burnout that we’ve seen thousands of thoughts on. So it’s not what you expect, and that’s very much what this series has been.”

Getting into plot details, the finale begins with an addendum to episode five, as Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) arrives at the demolished Rushville motel to find a defeated Hal Jordan still lying in the rubble following his confrontations with John and Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan). He has already agreed to 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 shifts to an earlier point in 2026 to follow the budding romance between Hal and Kerry. Hal’s ten years of prison letters have clearly had a profound effect on her, as 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 continued acts of vandalism against his rental. After all, her selfish desire to maintain her status as a Lantern not only killed residents, but also likely ended the 30 years of good health and prosperity that Zoe had provided in exchange for her Manhunter identity being protected by the townspeople.

At a hostile dinner party, Zoe stands up and attempts to appeal to the other patrons’ better angels when it comes to Hal. She emphasizes that he tries to make amends every day by serving the community in any way he can. This plea falls on deaf ears, as Hal’s rental house – a different house from the one where John will later stay – is ultimately set on fire by arsonists. Hal immediately grabs his alien pet, Earl, and heads for an exit upstairs, but the staircase collapses, leaving Hal and Earl’s fate hanging.

Hal suddenly wakes up on the floor of a slaughterhouse which now houses Zoe’s Manhunter technology, which heals and regenerates damage done to Zoe. still alive fabric. His grandson, Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard), then steps forward to reveal himself as a manhunter. He rehabilitated Hal’s charred body, just like Zoe did for John after Hal’s fiery car crash. Noah asks Hal to keep the exchange a secret, since his mother, Kerry, still feels like he doesn’t know his true nature as a manhunter.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably wondered if Noah also had to give Earl a makeover after the house burned down. Fortunately, Rubin read my very specific question aloud to the panel for clarity. Apparently, many other journalists had submitted a similar question regarding their concern for Earl.

“That’s a great question that I never thought of. Someone went further than us, and we thought we went further,” Mundy said with a laugh. “I don’t think Earl needs a makeover. I don’t think Earl goes down that easily.”

Lindelof continued: “I think Earl is pretty resilient. Botanical creatures in the galaxy can grow their own skin, I guess. Earl probably has the thickest skin of anyone on the show.”

After the slaughterhouse, the episode shifts to the home planet of Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor), which Zoe had wiped out before her arrival in Rushville in 1986. The scene picks up from the cliffhanger from episode seven involving Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), John and the holographic version of Hal, nicknamed “Halogram”. The disgraced former Green Lantern had recapitulated the same Hal-related events we had just seen visualized so that John could continue to piece together the puzzle surrounding his mentor’s murder.

It was Noah who broke Sinestro out of his previous prison on Oa so that he could forge the teenager a ring-charged lantern during his imprisonment on the planet of Antaan. After Noah saved his life and revealed himself, Hal still couldn’t help but keep an eye on the young Manhunter. He then discovered that Zoe had left him a portal to the aforementioned planet that had caused him so much guilt and anguish. Hal crossed it to find Sinestro inside his new island prison, and the two caught up 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 although John deduces that Noah wants a ring and a lantern to kill the Guardians who ordered John to murder his grandmother, he is not entirely satisfied with this justification for killing Hal. He then leaves with Halogram for Rushville, where Noah’s boot awaits him. In the process, Noah seizes John’s ring and lantern, acquiring everything he needs to pursue the Guardians.

After beating him, Noah asks John to drive him to his last high school football game. He wants to know why John killed his grandmother, but John reveals that she wanted that outcome. His death would drive away all outside agitators and leave Noah’s secret identity alone. Noah then tearfully takes responsibility for Hal’s murder, fearing that his mother will discover his Manhunter activities from Hal. As Sinestro had also theorized, Noah admits to struggling with his synthetic nature and his human upbringing. John identifies with him by sharing how he was able to overcome his own unique programming.

Noah continues to weigh his two paths. There’s one where he plays college football at the University of Nebraska and gets married. Then he is tempted by another where he maximizes his abilities to achieve glory, political power and military capabilities. However, he chooses neither. He abandons the ring and the lantern and asks John to euthanize him after he finishes playing his last match. Conflicted, John asks Halogram for advice, but he does not respond.

John then approaches Kerry at the game about Noah’s secret, prompting her to finally lash out after all this time. Hal had also confronted her on the football field about Noah’s true nature, forcing her to recount how, after making a deal with Zoe in the 2007 episode five flashback, Zoe’s alien technology had given him much more than a new pinky finger. She left as the expectant mother of a baby Manhunter, believing she could love him enough to combat his inherently dangerous wiring.

Hal catches her off guard with the revelation that Noah actually knows he’s a manhunter and is planning what we now know is a revenge mission against the Guardians. Fearing for their safety, Hal says they need to leave Dodge before trouble arrives, but Kerry is unwilling to accept that her life in Rushville is over – so much so that she draws her gun in a panic and shoots Hal as he says, “Damn, I love you.” Kerry immediately regrets this impulsive decision.

John doesn’t understand why she would call him to investigate Hal’s murder if she was 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 species. John determines that Noah fought his intrinsic qualities because he sacrificed the ring and covered his mother out of love. Kerry is then alarmed when John announces that he is not going to kill Noah as he asked. He wants to believe that this kid can fight the good fight against his worst self, but he knows deep down that the jury is still out.

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

John goes to town to report Guy Gardner. Guy shows up to see Hal’s ring…