Lanterns Penultimate Episode Breakdown: The Jordan Family Secret, a Fear Planet and the Yellow Lantern Corps

This penultimate episode of Lanterns is where the show finally becomes a true Green Lantern show, and it does it by dropping a reveal about Hal Jordan's family that I think is going to make Hal Jordan fans absolutely furious. John Stewart gets the ring, a mentor in Hal, and a trip to a planet of fear that I am fairly certain is setting up the yellow lantern corps.

There is only one episode left, and I am nervous. I think it's going to be really good, but I haven't seen it; you are now caught up to where I was with screeners, and there is so much to wrap up in a single episode. I also want to ask why a season two hasn't been announced. Is it because they don't want to reveal that Kyle Chandler will return, or are they still deciding? The US ratings have been better than some other comic book shows, as some of you have pointed out, but not quite as good as maybe we were expecting based on the online chatter. Agatha All Along got a lot of online chatter and that didn't get a renewal, so you never know. It's got to have a season two, though. This has been a big show for us, and I hope that HBO and DC reward this faith from the fans with a second season.

John Stewart finally lives the Green Lantern dream, but none of it is real

It took a while, but that makes it all the more satisfying for us and for John Stewart, who finally sees his dream realised. He's doing Green Lantern type things, he's in control of the ring, and he finally has a true mentor and partner in Hal Jordan.

Surely, though, it's bittersweet, because none of these things are real. The ring is decommissioned, and that's not Hal, that's a hologram, although a pretty good one. Maybe, just maybe, by the end of this season the dream will become real. Or perhaps this is a nightmare.

The fear gas planet may be rewriting how the yellow lantern corps works

Welcome to a planet of fear, or at least one that's being turned into a planet of fear. This is revealed to be the planet whose destruction by the Manhunter John was forced to experience, which is why John recognises it. Here we learn that the Manhunter's method of destruction was fear gas. I doubt it's related, but as a Batman fan I was like, fear gas, you say? Where's Scarecrow?

The fear gas not only made the planet's people kill each other and themselves, it's still there, just as gas in real life can remain. It's in the water and therefore also the rain. Sure enough, John Stewart has a Scarecrow style hallucination, but that is not usual for the yellow lantern corps, also known as the Sinestro Corps. I have not been a Green Lantern fan until now, but from the few stories I have read and the research I did for this episode, the yellow lanterns get their power from fear, and they choose recruits who can instill fear in others: aggressive people with those personality traits. The ring makes you a bit more of a bully, but it's the ring bearer who creates the fear the corps feeds off. They don't have the power to create hallucinations. So this is new, and I like it. I think it works very well.

John's bond with the ring lets the Hal hologram hear his thoughts

The fear planet creates a hallucination of John's father, which in turn elicits a shocking confession from the hologram. This game changing interaction happens because of John's special connection to a Green Lantern ring, established with his ability to create the living bird and keep it going even when he's not wearing the ring. It turns out he has a similar situation with the hologram. It's not an on and off switch but something more fluid: the hologram materialises if John is just thinking about Hal, sometimes totally involuntarily, which leads to funny moments of John singing to get Hal off his mind.

Even when John can't see the hologram, it seems to still be on, seeing and hearing whatever happens around him, and it can also see what John is thinking or maybe even hallucinating. I don't know how it's lasting so long on 5 percent. The rules for the ring's battery charge are all over the place, but I'll allow it because this is so fascinating.

I think what drives the hologram to tell John Hal's secret is that they both have complicated, painful relationships with their fathers. That duality, from a writing perspective, is the only reason I can think of for John to hallucinate his father and not his mother, whom John clearly holds responsible for his situation in life. If this was a true fear hallucination, I think he would have seen his mother. This is where the writers show the tricks up their sleeve a little too much, needing a father to father correlation.

The Jordan boys' legacy is a reveal I don't think was worth it

This is Hal's darkest secret, buried so deep that the hologram uses it to test whether he and the sheriff really were that close. She just says, "Yeah, you talked to me about your dad," and never confirms exactly what was told to her. It's just assumed, which I think could be interesting. Or maybe she does know, and maybe it makes her feel a little less guilty, because the men in the Jordan family, we learn, have a history of taking their own lives. Hal Jordan's father intentionally crashed his plane as a test pilot, and his father before him intentionally crashed his plane during the war.

This is the change I've alluded to over the course of my coverage; I've been waiting for this shoe to drop. If you're familiar at all with Tom King's work, this isn't your first rodeo. I want to be respectful of Tom King, even though I don't feel he is being very respectful to Green Lantern fans. I do wonder if something happened in his personal life. I looked for an interview explaining this thread through his work but could not find one. He has developed a pattern of characters taking or trying to take their own lives: Hal Jordan, although that one was from an alternate universe, Bruce Wayne, Mister Miracle, and I believe most recently in the comics, Wonder Woman. Even in this very episode with John, and of course the Jordan boys.

Does it add to the mystery? Yes, because it raises the question of whether Hal was murdered at all, or was fulfilling the legacy of the men in his family. He did leave a key to a safe with a secret for John, just as his father and grandfather left something behind for their sons, and I love that Hal clearly sees John as a son. But there is no note for John, no explanation like that, so I don't think it's the same thing. It's a very delicate subject, but what a complicated thing to leave such a note for young children to read. In some ways it makes the legacy seem like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Is that worth the cost to the character of Hal Jordan overall? I would say it is not. I don't think it's enough of a gain to the story to do this to the character, and unfortunately it's another case of a comic book creator's personal fixation being forced onto beloved characters. Editors, where are you? Say no.

Is that furnace island forging a yellow lantern central battery?

I didn't catch this the first time through, but now it seems so obvious, and I hope I'm right because it would be so great. Is that island in the middle of the lake with the giant furnace a yellow lantern corps central battery being forged? It has a green light, maybe yellow in points, coming out of the top, and in the comics, as I've said before, the Parallax entity has been hiding inside the Green Lantern central battery. When they go inside the furnace, that looks yellow to me.

And who's there but Sinestro, who in the comics is the founder of the yellow lantern corps, which is named after him. So why is he acting like a prisoner who wants off that island? Is it an act to throw John and the hologram off his true intent? Or is someone else putting the pieces together, and Sinestro doesn't realise he's being recruited? That would seem very out of character, but we'll see. I also wonder what the recruiting question would be for the yellow lantern corps, since for a Green Lantern it was, are you afraid?

Suspects: the Guardian, Noah and the sheriff

In the comics the yellow lantern corps has no Guardians, but maybe on this show the Guardian has gone rogue. Maybe she's the Parallax fear parasite in disguise, or she's being infected and manipulated by it, and maybe the parasite is manipulating multiple pieces on the board. Or maybe it's our suspected baby Manhunter, Noah, finishing his grandmother's work. She unleashed the fear gas on the planet in the first place. Why fear gas, out of any method of destruction? Was it her idea, or was she being manipulated or in a partnership?

The predictions I feel most confident in are that we're getting the yellow lantern corps and that Noah is a baby Manhunter. I'm not sure of Sinestro's role or who broke him out of prison. Is he a partner or a pawn? Maybe it was Hal, or Noah, or the Guardian. And what about that "hot, possibly evil sheriff," as the hologram puts it? Everybody's a suspect, as the hologram says. Once you've been murdered, you're allowed a little paranoia.

Just last week I said the sheriff volunteering to be a suspect, and John dismissing it so quickly, was suspicious from the writers' perspective. How much does she know about her son? Does she know he's part Manhunter and support his agenda? She couldn't bring herself to kill Hal to protect Noah's grandmother, but her own son is different, if Hal figured it out, or figured out a yellow lantern corps was being made. He had been making trips to that planet, and as the hologram says, maybe the vault is trying to keep something in. Who else but the sheriff could get close enough to shoot Hal point blank, maybe while he was so crushed and defeated that he might let her?

The sheriff and hologram scene is the poetic heart of the episode

That scene between the sheriff and the hologram is so poetic. Two people at different ends of a relationship, the hologram from before it started and the sheriff after it ended, look at each other across the divide that was their courtship. The hologram refused to help John until he could see the person who made him fall in love, something he thought he would never be able to do.

There is amazing acting from both Kyle Chandler and Kelly Macdonald. We see love in her eyes, as John does, but the hologram says he sees guilt, and looking back at the performance, guilt might be in there. Kelly Macdonald walks that fine line beautifully, and remember, Hal's gut was always right. He might be annoying and difficult to work with, but don't dismiss Hal.

Why Noah wants the whole town on that football field

This is too many times to be a coincidence. The first massacre happened on that football field, and that's where Hal was killed and his body found. What finally made me suspicious was Noah cancelling the hat ceremony, even though the whole town showed up, because he wants to hold it at the big game on that field. Why do you want everyone there? Could a town so angry and afraid become the energy source the fear planet needs to become fully operational? Or maybe they're recruiting everybody as yellow lanterns, although a lot of these townsfolk seem kind of stupid. Would you give Noah's dad a yellow lantern ring? He is a bit of a bully, although John wasn't very afraid of him.

Then there's the waitress from the cafe. Some of you pointed out she looks like a Green Lantern character from the comics, but I'm thinking she might be on the yellow lantern side. Maybe she's Noah's girlfriend. I think she's adding pressure to Noah as the clock ticks down, and perhaps distracting him from the main mission so the yellow lantern corps can be born.

Lanterns could be a mystery box as rewarding as Agatha All Along

The whole writing team is very talented. The showrunners, Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, and yes, even Tom King, not only know their comic books, Lindelof and King in particular, but understand the expectations of the fandom. That caught Jac Schaeffer off guard with WandaVision, which was very good but didn't tie together as many of us had hoped. She learned those lessons and did a slam dunk with Agatha All Along. I'm starting to believe a good mystery box is really important to these series succeeding, and I think Lanterns is an incredible one. I would put it up there with Agatha, whose finale was remarkable, and I can only hope this finale is as rewarding.

The young Hal hologram shows who Hal really was

This episode we learned a lot about Hal, young and old. The hologram material is like a twisted version of It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol, with the hologram looking back at a life he didn't get to lead because he was turned off in the ring. "I was in prison. I was in love." Great line, because the delivery makes being in love seem even less likely for Hal than being in prison. When challenged, the younger hologram gets as difficult as the older Hal became, so it's the same guy. But he's more open now that his real self has been murdered.

He says Hal would never kill, which is why he feels something is wrong about the memorial. I'd ask about accidental manslaughter, but I'm curious what that line means next week. John never admits he killed the Manhunter, even though the hologram correctly guesses they were in a relationship, because Hal knew Manhunters are manipulative and seductive. So Hal knew something about Manhunters even before he went to Sinestro about the heart crystallising, and never shared it with John. That was par for the course when he was alive.

"Ask me if I'm afraid" is John Stewart's rallying cry

Here John finally gets the mentor and partner he dreamed of. The hologram praises his abilities, apologises, and I thought it was really powerful when John replied that he didn't want his sorry, he wanted Hal's. The hologram shares important information, lets John practise with the portable black hole after showing him, and teaches him new ways to use the ring, like projecting him up to that floating city.

I really liked John turning to the hologram before the black hole and saying, "Ask me if I'm afraid." I think he did it for two reasons. First, he was afraid, but a Green Lantern isn't about not being afraid; it's about overcoming fear with willpower. It's almost like a baptism, asking to be inducted back into the corps. Second, I think for the first time he truly feels like a Green Lantern, going to a planet in space, wearing the ring, with Hal at his side. It's almost a rallying cry, and I think that's beautiful.

A low budget planet that turns out to be exactly right

The first time through I thought this alien planet looked low budget, but the second time I felt it was exactly the planet this story needs. You can feel the fear looking at it. I still see a white or green Martian skull in that alien skull, although I don't think it is, or they would have mentioned it, and Mars may be too close to be off the radar.

As John walks, he's following the path Hal must have taken, walking it as Hal wanted when he no longer could, to finish what Hal started or what Hal didn't mean to start. The shot of the hologram and John getting out of the boat in the darkness was beautiful to me, like a metaphor for their relationship being reborn out of the water. I think this mission has been able to tear down the walls between them, and John calls the hologram Hal for the first time after hearing about the Jordan family legacy.

The baseball may be the seed of fear planted in Hal Jordan

The young Hal scenes show he wouldn't give up the pitcher's mound, just as he later refused to give up the ring. He seems to have worn his father's jacket all this time, which is why it's a little too big for him even as an adult, a really nice touch. Is that the car Hal destroyed in episode one? There's a nice Easter egg that they're in Coast City, Hal's home in the comics. The father and son on the airfield is beautiful, even though Tom King eventually taints it. Hal's father tells him to throw the baseball away because holding on would be exhausting, but at the end we see Hal went back for it after the funeral.

My theory is that this is the moment a seed of fear is planted in Hal Jordan, and the small round baseball works as that seed. Hal decided not to let it go, keeping it deep inside, and it would lead him to fight John, another person trying to take him off the mound. Holding on so tightly to fear fed by pain, anger, regret and misunderstanding would make him the perfect vessel for the Parallax fear parasite, especially since it was hidden, buried deep like Parallax inside the central battery. It's as if someone snuck a seed of fear into the corps, the way Hal sneaks out after the funeral. As the only human Green Lantern, from a planet the Guardians wanted nothing to do with, he's isolated and in a perfect setup to birth the yellow lantern corps.

Then the Guardian lit the match by creating someone who'd come to replace Hal on the mound. Was that her plan all along, or is she being manipulated? Maybe she never intended for John to become a lantern, only to push Hal further and help that seed grow. These are complex predictions, but I have faith. If Hal is headed for Parallax, I believe John is the only one who can save him, not just as his partner but as his de facto son. The hologram says "great arm, kid" when John punches out Sinestro, just as Hal's father said it to young Hal when he threw away that baseball. Coincidence? I think not.

Before the finale, what are your theories, and how do you feel about the reveal of the Jordan boys' legacy?