SPOILER ALERT! This article contains details from HBO’s penultimate episode Lanterns.
HBO Lanterns gave audiences, and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), a much deeper understanding of Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) in the DC series’ penultimate episode Sunday night.
The episode opens with a flashback to 1975, when Hal gets in trouble with his baseball coach for refusing to hand the ball to his teammates. Sound familiar? In the present day, John successfully exhumed Hal’s body and retrieved the decommissioned power ring, awakening the Halogram to gain his assistance in opening the storage unit’s safe. It works and they soon discover that the vault contains a dark matter manhole to another planet.
Despite all the conflict Hal has caused John so far, even in his death, the partners in intergalactic crime reunite.
“We used to describe ourselves as these characters, as two dogs who lived in the same house, who at home maybe fought and tore each other apart, but when they maybe went for a walk and another dog came into the equation, bam, they were a unit, and there was nothing you could do to disrupt or destroy that unity,” Pierre said. “They become dangerous when they are together. The dynamic is unbreakable, and as soon as they are alone, they tear each other apart.”
On the other side of the dark matter gaze, the two men find themselves on a deserted planet that already seems completely destroyed. John soon deduces that this is Anton’s (Paul Ben-Victor) planet, the one that was systematically wiped out by the Manhunter.
The decade of memories and context missing from the Halogram creates even more frustration for John, who had returned to Rushville in the first place because his mother told him that Hal was ready to apologize for everything he had done. He was dead by the time John arrived, and this version of him wouldn’t even know what to apologize for. Not to mention they have more pressing problems. When John is affected by the same gas that caused Anton’s people to commit suicide, the halogram is the only thing that saves him.
“I think his understanding of who Hal is definitely evolves over the course of the series,” Pierre told Deadline. “It’s almost like throughout these episodes John is putting together a puzzle, but the puzzle is made up of 1,000 pieces, and sometimes pieces of that puzzle form before others, and he thinks he’s figured out exactly who Hal is, and then he formulates another part of the puzzle, and it conflicts with what he thought he figured out, and it’s an ongoing thing.”
The piece of the puzzle that sets up this episode recalls Hal’s childhood. Not only does this 1975 flashback illustrate Hal’s complicated relationship with his father, but it also reveals a history of mental health issues when Hal reveals that his father committed suicide. Since he was a test pilot, no one has batted an eyelid. Among the things he left behind was a note telling Hal he would be better off without him – and a lifetime of trauma for his son. It was a cycle that had repeated itself for generations in Hal’s family: the legacy of the Jordan boys.
“I’m not fearless because I’m brave. I’m not afraid because I’m broken,” the Halogram tells John.
The “heartfelt moment,” as Chandler calls it, reframes Hal almost entirely. This follows another moment earlier in the episode, when Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) tells John that Hal once described his intern as someone’s favorite football team: impossible to play against but extremely infuriating to stay loyal to.
“This isn’t information that someone just adds. This is a detailed storyline that also aims to manipulate the audience’s emotions and bring them even closer to the whole story,” Chandler said. “That’s another great thing about this whole show is that there are these fence posts along the way, and they’re pretty detailed. You don’t miss them in the scripts, and you can build around those elements as an actor as well.”
At the end of the episode, Hal and John face another enemy: Sinestro. It turns out that this is the planet he’s been hiding on all along.
As for how John’s revelations about Hal might impact the finale, Pierre remains coy about what exactly lies ahead, telling us, “I won’t reveal the ending, but once we get very close to the end, at least he has this immense respect and appreciation for Hal, and at least I think even Hal knows he can trust John with his life, and John knows he can trust him with his.”
“You don’t always have to love each other for that to be a truth, and I think that’s something this show explores. But interestingly, in talking about that element of love, I think there’s a very sincere respect and mutual brotherly love between them,” Pierre continued. “I think a truth that John understood at a certain point in the series (is that he) will never know Hal completely, but what he can do is at least understand who Hal is fundamentally. He may never understand all the nuances of who this individual is, but he can discover who this man is deep down. And once that curiosity was satisfied, I think he was very at peace with everything that they had both experienced – the highs, the lows, the in between, the moments that felt like purgatory I think he just finds peace with that, because he knows who this individual is deep down, regardless of the decoration or the nuances around him.
Lanterns ends next Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.
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