When we last left Lanterns, it was 2016, and it was a hot mess. Rushville was partially destroyed as everyone’s favorite citizen and Manhunter in hiding, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan), was killed by John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), who gave her crystallized heart to the Guardian Lianna (Laura Linney). Then, instead of becoming the Green Lantern, he took a new path, leaving the ring on the bar. Now we pick up the pieces of wreckage that the Lanterns created from the lives they destroyed. Warning: Spoilers ahead for Lanterns Episode 6.
Episode 6 of Lanterns brings the story back to Rushville, but this time, everything has changed. It’s 2026, and 10 years have passed; John Stewart has built an entirely new life for himself, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) has spent a decade behind bars, and the Green Lantern name isn’t exactly something the people of Rushville want to hear again.
But when John gets a call telling him that Hal has been murdered (back to Episode 1), he is pulled right back into the town and a past he thought he had escaped. What begins as a trip to bury his former partner quickly becomes something much bigger, especially when John realizes Hal may have been working on something before his death.
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Unhappy reunions all around
In 2026, John is an architect who has reconnected with his brother Marcus (Noah Gibson-Slates) and formed the Stewart Brothers. Their company specializes in security, and John is pitching an ambitious new project: Shelters capable of protecting entire populations in the event of an attack.
It’s going well (and includes a small nod to Starro from The Suicide Squad), but with just one major hurdle. John needs to convince top brass to get the military behind the project. If he can do that, the board is ready to move forward.
Unfortunately, John’s family life isn’t going quite as smoothly. His mother, Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones), keeps calling, despite their strained relationship. She eventually tells him that Hal wants to apologize and reveals that she and Hal became friends after he was sent to prison. According to Bernadette, Hal needed someone after being locked up.
That brings John back to Rushville, where he meets Hal at the cafe. And it quickly becomes clear that Bernadette wasn’t exactly honest about why Hal wanted to see him.
Hal has spent 10 years in prison after taking the fall for what happened in Rushville. John reminds him that people died, but Hal isn’t willing to let John pretend he walked away without blood on his hands either. “There is more than one killer at this table. You realize that, don’t you?” Hal asks him.
Hal admits that he was scared, and John responds by punching him. And that turns out to be the last time John sees him alive.
Who killed Hal Jordan?
Back home, John gets a call from Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) with some shocking news: Hal is dead. His frozen body has been found at the stadium, but his Green Lantern ring is nowhere to be found. Kerry admits that practically everyone in Rushville hated Hal, so she called the one person she thought might actually care.
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John wants to know why Hal ever returned to Rushville in the first place. “He came back for me,” Kerry tells him.
Kerry is now divorced, and she reveals that she and Hal eventually began a relationship. When Hal returned to town, he was determined to make amends for what happened. He knocked on doors every day and tried to help the people whose lives had been destroyed. Eventually, that persistence won Kerry over.
She gives John the key to Hal’s place, where he finds Earl still waiting for his owner. Meanwhile, Marcus keeps calling about their big Friday meeting, reminding John that everything they have built depends on it.
John, however, isn’t going anywhere yet.
At the autopsy, he learns Hal was killed by a single gunshot to the head. Whoever pulled the trigger was standing close to him, looking him directly in the face, and Hal apparently didn’t even try to fight back.
“Press loves it when a has-been gets murdered,” Kerry says.
Among Hal’s belongings, they discover a key to a storage facility. Getting inside the vault requires a message from Hal’s phone, and Kerry tries using a very Hal-like message about wanting to call her “Buttercup.” It doesn’t work.
For now, whatever Hal was hiding remains locked away.
The past returns with a vengeance
John’s return also forces him to confront just how much, and how badly, Rushville has changed.
His father is living in a care facility and becoming increasingly agitated, while the Green Lantern mantle has passed to Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion). And Guy has apparently turned superheroism into a business. The former athletic director is now cashing in on the brand, right down to selling merchandise in supermarkets.
John activates the Green Lantern beacon to summon him, which immediately enrages the people of Rushville.
Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) has become particularly bitter. He makes it clear that “the Green Lantern” isn’t welcome there and threatens John. When the crowd tries to shut down the beacon, John fights them off, taking on everyone necessary to keep the signal going.
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TV Insider talked to Jason Ritter about Billy’s turn to the dark side and the human cost in a superhero story. “I think often in comic books will have Superman, or whoever else, fighting the bad guy, and buildings are getting destroyed in the meantime, and then they move on to the next big battle story. So I think there’s a little bit of the human cost of the fight that happens in 2016, how it affected the whole town, and family members’ abilities as well,” said Ritter. “I think he’s one of the ones who is carrying around a lot of resentment and anger toward the Green Lanterns, and especially Hal. And the fact that Hal and his ex-wife have begun dating at this time doesn’t help his attitude toward them at all.”
Later, John has dinner with Kerry and her teenage son, Noah. John explains what he does now, while Noah reveals that he wants to go into politics. The evening doesn’t exactly end warmly, though. Kerry gets a call about what happened with Billy and has John thrown in jail.
That’s where Guy Gardner finally shows up.
Guy reveals that he first met Hal in jail and admits the Green Lantern brand took a serious hit after what happened in Rushville. When John tells him Hal was shot in the head, Guy makes it clear he isn’t there to solve a murder.
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John only wants one thing from him: Hal should be buried as a Green Lantern, wearing the uniform and his ring. Guy initially refuses to hand over the ring until John reminds him exactly why he has it. “Everything you have is because I didn’t take it,” he tells Guy.
Guy may be a jerk, but he does at least bail John out. He also brings some potentially very bad news from space. Someone has broken Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) out of Spacekaban — essentially space Azkaban.
John makes one huge discovery after Hal’s funeral
John’s problems aren’t limited to Rushville. His entire family is falling apart back home. His mother is frantic, his father is causing chaos at the care facility, and Marcus is desperately trying to keep their business deal alive. John even has to call his other brother, Aaron, and threaten to stop paying for his album if he doesn’t step up and help with their father.
Back at Hal’s place, John gets another reminder that Rushville hasn’t forgotten what happened.
Meg (Hannah Christine Shetler), the waitress from the cafe, is waiting for him. She knows John punched Hal before his death and wants to know why he didn’t tell Kerry. More importantly, she wants reparations for the damage John and Hal caused 10 years earlier.
Then John realizes who she is: Meg was the 9-year-old girl crying in the rubble of the motel after her father died.
Noah later arrives with a suit for John to wear to Hal’s funeral. John apologizes for hitting Billy, but Noah isn’t exactly upset about it. As far as he’s concerned, Billy probably deserved it.
At the funeral, Guy makes good on his promise. Hal is buried in his Green Lantern uniform with a dead ring. Carol Ferris (Ami Mackenzie) — the longtime love interest of the comic book Hal and the ex of this version — appears and asks John to deliver the eulogy Hal wrote for himself. “It demands a certain amount of bravado I don’t think I can sell.” So, we were warned.
Naturally, Hal had expected a much bigger turnout when he wrote it. The eulogy is essentially a joke aimed at the enormous crowd of dignitaries and “upset fans” he apparently imagined would be mourning him.
But John isn’t ready to leave Hal buried just yet. After everyone is gone, he digs up the grave.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Marcus calls and puts the top brass for the military contract on the phone, but John is distracted and gets hung up on. The deal they’ve spent years building collapses, leaving Marcus furious. “You’ve been stuck in Rushville for 10 years,” Marcus tells him. “I pray it doesn’t kill you like the way it killed Hal.”
John has already made his choice. He takes Hal’s ring and uses it to call up the Sentry. And when he looks at Hal’s grave, all the Sentry can manage is: “God dammit.”
Lanterns, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO Max