I Think Lanterns Kept One Card Hidden All Season, and It Wasn't the Killer

Lanterns played most of its mystery face up, but I think it kept one card off the table all season: the conception of the sheriff's son. Three of the four big reveals, the sheriff, the kid and the wife, were readable on screen before the show said them out loud, and the fourth that people argued about was face up too.

Before Sunday, 695 of you named a killer, and 353 said Kerry Kane. That's no landslide. That's a coin flip. Half of you looked at the sheriff and said no way, and half looked at the same sheriff and said that's her. One of you said it on September 7th, the day after episode 4, calling your shot that the sheriff Kerry Kane shoots Hal Jordan. Four episodes early, zero likes, nobody noticed. I've called this a face up mystery all season, so the question I've been carrying since Monday is whether I was right or whether the show played fast and loose.

A face up mystery means the answer was on screen in Episodes 5 and 6

I want to be exact about the claim before I grade it. A face up mystery is one where the answer is on screen before the reveal, in a form a careful viewer can read. Not a vibe. A clue, something you can actually point at. So let's point.

In episode 5, Kerry Kane empties a clip into Hal and the ring stops every round. The show spent an entire scene telling you she'll shoot him and only the ring saves him. In episode 6, Hal's in the bleachers. No ring, no struggle, sitting down, with his guard off for the only person he'd sit down for. One reader put it together on September 21st, two episodes before the show said it: she emptied a clip on Hal, he protected himself with the ring, and years later, with no ring and no sign of struggle, "She definitely killed him without a doubt."

Look at what that reader did there. He didn't guess. He put episode 5 next to episode 6 and read them as one sentence. That's the whole method. That's what face up means.

The kid as a Manhunter and the rancher's wife as the suspect were both readable early

It's not just the murder. 650 of you took a position on what the kid was, and 613 said Manhunter. That's 94 percent. You can call it a twist, but I call it checking to see if we're asleep at the wheel.

The rancher's wife was harder. 118 of you made a call before episode 4, and only 21 had her. The same reader again, on August 24th after episode 2, and he gave the reason: Screenwriting 101 says we've already met the suspect, and he knew who it was, the rancher's wife. He added that she's quite intuitive for a trophy wife and happens to be around John at some crucial points in his journey. Screenwriting 101 indeed. He reads the show the way I read the show, and he beat me to it.

Hal Jordan staying dead was face up too, and I got it wrong

So three of the four big cards were on the table: the sheriff, the kid, the wife. The fourth is that Hal stays dead. 342 of you took a position on that, and only 28 said dead and staying dead. That's nine in 10 of you who took a side saying he was coming back.

I was with those nine. I said it two weeks ago. I told you Hal was coming back. He didn't. The people who wrote it said bringing him back would have been cheap, and after Sunday, I believe that. So was that card face up? Yes. And I think this is the part that stings. The show never once told you Hal was coming back. We told each other. Every clue pointed at a dead man, and nine in 10 of us decided the clues were lying because we wanted them to be. That reader's not in that 28 either, by the way. So nobody's perfect.

The hidden card was the kid's conception

Here's the card I think they actually hid, and it isn't one everybody's arguing about. Kerry Kane's ex husband had nothing to do with the kid. We learned that in the finale, in a line: the miracle baby, the kid was made. Some of you asked that question back in the first half of the season, and I said what I'd say to anybody. If the show doesn't give you information, you can't suddenly assume all kinds of things. It's just in poor taste.

I stand by that as a way to watch television, but it means the show kept a card off the table and then played it in the last hand. There's nothing face up about that. A reveal with no setup is a different kind of lighting, and I think it's the one place the season broke its own contract with you. James Gunn has said this links to Peacemaker, the finale of that show, and to the bigger thing this whole slate is building toward. I don't know how I feel about that yet, and I'm not going to pretend that I do.

So face up, three cards of four. The fourth, I think, was sitting up the dealer's sleeve. And that sleeve has a history. I put it on your reading list back in August, the week this show premiered: Millennium 1 through 8, January and February 1988, by Englehart and Staton. Manhunters, sleeper agents embedded in ordinary human lives for decades. Neighbors and family, and nobody noticed. The show didn't invent that card. It just dealt it late.

My five reads for season 2, revisited after the finale

Last Friday I put five reads on the record about what that writers' room means for season 2. After this finale, that changes a bit, so let's lay them out again with the finale on the table.

One: it's John's show. The finale doubled down. He takes neither offer and both objects. He walks away from the Corps and from Sinestro, and he keeps the ring and the lantern. The last image of the season is John alone, deciding. Whatever season 2 is, it starts from that frame.

Two: the universe is going to get bigger. The finale didn't go there. The Guardians stayed in the corners and the sky stayed small. That read is still waiting on a season 2 to answer it.

John's tainted ring could put him on the road to Parallax

Three: Sinestro gets a point of view. Half right, and I think the half that's right is going to be bigger than the read. There's no yellow ring. I would have bet money on an actual yellow ring, and I'd have lost. But look at what we got instead. John's ring is tainted now, tainted by fear, tainted by yellow. Forget whether we get a season 2 for a second. That one detail introduces an entire other series of events.

The precedent? The yellow impurity goes back to the very first Hal Jordan story, Showcase 22 in 1959. What it means comes from Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver in Green Lantern: Rebirth in 2004: the impurity is Parallax, fear living in the battery. A ring tainted by yellow is the road to Parallax, period. Now, mind you, a Hollywood writer might be borrowing a comic book device to seed something in his story, and that could be Tom King all day. Marvel does that for a living, so I'm not holding anybody prisoner to it.

As for Sinestro himself, I said yesterday that there's every possibility he swims that lake of fear to get off that little island, because he's going to be that desperate, and that breaks him. He's already a villain, but a manageable one. He goes from Hannibal Lecter to the Red Skull. Lecter is evil by nature, plotting, manipulative. The Red Skull wanted cosmic power to reshape reality. I think that's the level when he comes out of that lake: far worse and much more evil than he went in.

Somebody in charge, and a Hal copy who can't lie

Four: somebody in charge isn't clean. Nothing in the finale moved it, so that stays open.

Five: Hal doesn't stay gone the way you think. This is the one I got half wrong, so I want to be careful with it. The old Hal is gone. The copy stayed. The copy, who I've said basically can't lie, because why would he need to, handed John his father's line and then handed John the choice. Nobody in that room was hired to write the old Hal, and the finale agrees. That read holds, and I think it holds in the direction someone else called it, not the direction I did.

So the finale didn't grade the five reads. It raised the stakes on three of them: John alone with a tainted ring, and a desperate man on that planet. That's the season 2 room's problem, and I'll take the five reads to that autopsy if we get one.

How I scored 24,072 comments from 9,516 of you

I read 24,072 comments, every top level comment and every reply across all 16 of my Lanterns breakdowns, from 9,516 of you. I think the how is the point. A call only counts if it came before the episode that revealed the answer. One stance per person per claim, wherever you stood last, because changing your mind as the evidence comes in is following the evidence. That's not cheating.

Calling the hard thing is worth more than calling the easy thing. Calling it earlier is worth more than calling it late. Citing something on screen is worth more than a hunch, and a miss is going to cost you. Likes count for nothing. Three of the top five receipts this whole season have zero likes. And one rule above all: good faith only. If you were right about the show and wrong about how you talk to people in this room, you're not on this list. I'm not punishing anybody. It's just not what this community is.

The called shot: one comment had the finale a week early

The best single prediction of the season said Hal burns in a burning house, either trying to save someone or on purpose. He's badly injured, then healed with the Manhunter tech like John. He finds out the kid is a Manhunter and can't keep quiet about it, so Kerry Kane kills him in the stands, and Hal understands and is ultimately okay with it. The Sinestro storyline is just to set up season 2, and Hal is going to stay dead.

One comment, September 28th, the morning after episode 7. Six calls, six right, zero likes. That's the finale, a week early, in a paragraph: the fire, the healing, the kid, the sheriff, the Sinestro setup, Hal staying dead, even the Abin Sur rhyme. One swing, a thousand miles. But I'd rather have 100 consistent home runs than one that went a thousand miles. So the big one isn't for one comment. It's for the record.

My best detective of the season went four for four

Best detective means you solved the murder and called at least four different things before the show revealed them, across at least three separate comments. Third place is Who Wants It 983: 27 comments across 13 of the 16 discussions, every single week. Four out of six called, and the two misses came because he kept arguing with himself in public, which is exactly what I want this room to do.

Second place goes to a reader with 13 comments. On August 31st, after episode 3, he wrote that the Guardians wouldn't be able to control John and that's why Guy gets the ring, five episodes early. On September 22nd: the kid's a Manhunter, but he didn't kill Hal. Kerry Kane did, employing the same tactic the rancher's wife used on John to manipulate Hal and later John. The line after it is, I think, the best sentence anybody wrote about this show all season: "the key to the magic trick is controlling where you look so you don't see what the magic doesn't want you to see." The kid is what the show wants you to see, while it actively diverts suspicion from Kerry Kane. That's a producer sentence.

First is the reader I've been quoting all along. Four calls, four right: the rancher's wife on August 24th with a screenwriting argument two episodes before the show, Kerry Kane on September 21st with four pieces of on screen evidence, and the kid on the 25th with a theory of how the machine works that turned out to be way closer than mine. Zero likes on any of it. Nine comments, every one reasoning out loud in good faith from what was on screen. He also noted that Hal told John not to tell anyone where he'd gone because Hal knew he'd probably die that night without a fight, because he was going to die for love. To that reader: you did what I do, with no audience and nobody liking it.

The most liked right call, and the finale scores

The call this community backed, the most liked right call of the season with 484 likes, came on September 21st, the same day as my top detective, with the same evidence. That reader said they didn't trust Kerry Kane either and thought she probably knows exactly what her son is, that if Hal found out, Kerry Kane would do anything to protect him, and that she shot at Hal point blank in episode 5 for that exact reason. Every name on this wall is going somewhere permanent, a page rather than a comment that gets buried in six weeks.

One more number, from the members, who scored the finale on their own ballot: 8.5. My index for the finale was eight, with fan at 10 and producer at six. The room came in half a point above me, and I don't see their number until after I've given mine.

Three of the four big cards were on the table from the start, and this room read them. Half of you had the killer, nine in 10 had the kid, 21 had the wife before the show did, and one of you had the whole finale a week out. The card they hid was the kid's conception, the one place the show asked you to accept a reveal it never set up. The card I got wrong wasn't hidden at all. It was face up the whole time. I just wanted it to be another one. The show gets graded, and so do I. A mystery is only face up if somebody reads it, and 353 of you did.

The next show I'm covering arrives Wednesday the 14th on Disney Plus, with my full review Thursday the 15th and the next file the following Monday. Ten weeks from now, somebody in this room is going to call that show's finale a week early with zero likes. So, not the theory but the clue: what's the thing on screen you'd point at in its first episode?