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‘Lanterns’ Best Team-Up Officially Rewrites HBO’s Detective Sci-Fi for the Better
Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 7.
As Lanterns continues to pick up speed, the penultimate installment of the season is right on the cusp of discovering who killed Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and why. John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) is still on the case, aided by his trusty “Halogram,” with Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) seemingly unbothered by the death of his predecessor. It took seven episodes, but Lanterns finally delivers a glimpse of something most fans wanted from the beginning: two Green Lantern icons cooperating with one another to achieve a shared goal.
‘Lanterns’ Episode 7 Reveals the Truth About Hal Jordan’s Childhood
This penultimate episode begins in 1975 when a young Hal Jordan is being ridiculed by his coach because he wouldn’t give up the ball during a game. Martin, his father, comes in and his son tells him that he fought his whole team for the ball — because, of course, he did. But rather than ridicule his son, Martin commends the boy before getting into a fight with the coach, and before long, father and son are at a nearby airstrip sporting matching bruises. Martin gives his son a key attached to a chain, telling the boy that he will either succeed or fail in life. The key opens his safe, which contains things that will stay only between them.
Back in 2026, John tells the Halogram that Hal — whose body they’re standing over — was killed, and now John needs Hal’s voice to open the hidden safe that he and Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) found. But John is also a little distracted, calling his brother to wire some more money to Rushville so that he can pay off the waitress, Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler). Things get more complicated for John when he takes the Halogram to the safe, as the ring’s backup of Hal’s consciousness refuses to proceed without speaking to the authorities, meaning Kerry. John refuses, telling him about Kerry and Hal’s relationship, which only leads the Halogram to put his foot down harder.
On the way to the sheriff’s department, John tries to shut the Halogram up by removing the ring from his finger, but the program remains. Halogram is quite impressed by the feat, revealing to John that none of the other Green Lanterns have been able to do that — in case you forgot the whole bird thing from earlier in the series, John can do things on autopilot that other Lanterns at their full power ring strength seemingly cannot. (This occurs eventually in the comics too, but not this early in his Lantern career.) Upon making it to Kerry’s office, a notice on the front door says that everyone is at the “hat ceremony” at the high school — where Kerry’s son Noah (Shea Pritchard) will seemingly pick his college trajectory. While there, the Halogram sees the Green Lantern beacon and the names scribbled on it, wondering why John (and seemingly everyone else) hates Hal so much.
‘Lanterns’ Episode 7 Further Explores Hal Jordan’s Secrets
At the hat ceremony, John is confronted once more by Maggie, who continues to hold his time in Rushville the night of Hal’s death over him. While he assures her that the money is on the way, he parts with his watch in the meantime. As the ceremony commences, John watches from the sidelines as Noah reveals that he’s not making a decision today — at least not until he wins the big football game. Billy (Jason Ritter) confronts John in the gym, but Kerry gets between them, meeting John in the science lab. Of course, when she gets there, she’s blindsided by the Halogram. When the program asks who killed him, she claims that they don’t know. He then asks what Hal thought about John before his death, and the sheriff replies that for Hal, watching John succeed was like watching his favorite football team — which feels like a complete 180 from what we saw from Hal before.
After leaving Kerry, the Halogram tells John that he believes she killed Hal. John thinks the backup is being paranoid, but the AI insists on going to the vault now without the sheriff, wasting no more time. So, that’s exactly what they do. Once it’s open, they find only a backpack and a grocery bag — curious for a man who was once a Green Lantern. Inside the backpack is a gun, and inside the bag is a portal, not unlike the ones the Guardians used when recruiting John. The Halogram opens the door, which leads to another planet. After finding a safe location to place the portal (somewhere away from the storage unit), the Halogram and John go through it.
A giant structure hangs overhead, almost like a floating city of some kind, which is something John’s never seen before — but since the only way to figure out why Hal had this portal in the first place is to further explore this strange new world, that’s exactly what this unlikely pair does. In very Great Gatsby-like fashion, John eyes a green light far off in the distance, and as he nears it, he discovers an alien skull — and not just one. Halogram reveals that the world has been long abandoned and is now a graveyard. John recalls that when Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) abducted him, he showed him the Manhunter’s destruction of this world.
Walking to the edge of an enormous lake of some kind, John and Halogram hop in a boat and row toward the light. After a heart-to-heart about why John met with Hal the night he died, the would-be Green Lantern banishes the AI backup for the time being. But it isn’t long before he begins to hallucinate, seeing intense images of his father and countless apples bobbing in the water. John even sees his younger self, who reminds him that he never wanted to be a Lantern in the first place. On the brink of insanity, he eventually falls into the water and nearly drowns before the Halogram pulls him out. So, what’s the deal? Well, John believes that the gas the Manhunters used to eradicate everyone on this world is still in the air and the rain, messing with his mind.
After John recovers, the Halogram tells him that Hal’s father killed himself. While traditional interpretations of Hal’s mythos reveal that Martin Jordan died in a test-flight accident, that’s not what happened here in the DC Universe. So, when young Hal opened his father’s safe, it was full of cash, old photos, and a suicide note. He discovered that this pain persisted between generations, from his grandfather to his father to now him. “I’m not fearless because I’m brave,” Halogram tells John. “I’m fearless because I’m broken.” Although the pair wonder if Hal actually killed himself, that question will have to be answered in the next episode.
As the two arrive at the structure, a man holds a knife to Halogram’s throat. Of course, since he’s essentially a power ring construct, he disappears and fakes out the attacker, giving John just enough of an edge to overcome the mysterious alien infiltrator. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), who presumes that he has finally met John Stewart. With only one episode left, there are still plenty of questions left to be answered. How did Hal actually die? How did Sinestro escape? Why can John do things other Lanterns can’t? Is Noah actually a Manhunter? Does Kerry, once again, know more than she’s saying? Could Hal come back from the dead? Hopefully, Lanterns will be able to stick the landing and tie up every loose end neatly.
The finale of Lanterns premieres next Sunday on HBo and HBO Max.
- Release Date
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August 16, 2026
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Alik Sakharov, James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Patel
- Writers
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Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson
- Halogram is inarguably the better version of Hal, so it’s great to get him for an entire episode.
- John being forced to come to terms with the entire trajectory of his life is much more interesting now than earlier in the series.
- The show finally embraces the alien aspect of Green Lantern lore.
- It feels like there’s still a lot of ground to cover before the season is over.
- Kerry is obviously hiding something again and it feels like the show has played this exact card before.
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