Lanterns Finale Reveals Who Really Killed Hal Jordan, and Sinestro May Have Hinted at Parallax for Season 2

The Lanterns season finale has arrived, and it finally tells us who killed Hal Jordan: despite Noah taking the fall, it was his mother. We also learn what is really going on with Noah, how John Stewart will fit into future DC projects, and I think I caught a big hint about how Sinestro, Hal Jordan and Parallax could all return for season 2.

My predictions for the finale were very off. Still, I think what I pitched for the finale could happen in season 2, maybe. I will get to that, and to my Parallax theory, further down.

Hal takes the blame for Rushville before John turns down the ring

We open on the aftermath of the Rushville incident, where the Manhunter destroyed the town and killed a lot of people, all to protect herself from Hal. We pick up with John and Noah's mother in the street. This time, instead of following John to the bar like in episode 5, where he meets with the Guardian, we follow her to the motel where she finds Hal.

Hal takes responsibility. He predicts he will be jailed for reckless endangerment and that the Guardians will be glad to have him out of their hair. Remember, when Hal says this, he thinks John is about to become Green Lantern. He has no idea that John is about to hand the ring and the lantern back to the Guardians and turn down the job.

Ten years later, Hal Jordan is burned alive and saved by a Manhunter

We then jump forward 10 years to the present day, 2026, and see Noah's mother picking Hal up from prison. They have obviously grown close over the years despite him being locked away. I assume she visited him and they talked on the phone. They go out to dinner, and it is clear the whole town loathes Hal. They blame him not only for what happened in Rushville but also for killing the Manhunter, the woman who was basically the town's god.

That hatred grows until some of the townspeople attack Hal's house. They burn it to the ground with him inside, and he burns alive, just as John did when Hal left him in that car. And like John, Hal is rescued by a Manhunter and given new skin.

Here is something I don't remember the episode touching on at all. Noah saved Hal, but he must also have saved the one Hal had with him when he was trying to get out of the house. They fall, Hal gets burned, and I am assuming the one he had with him did too. So I guess Noah not only pulled them from the house but also used Manhunter tech to fix them. We know they are still alive after Hal dies, because in a previous episode we saw John feeding them.

Noah is a Manhunter, and he and his mother are keeping the same secret

Hal wakes up in the Hector Hammond slaughterhouse, where a lot of Manhunter tech is located. That tech, or at least the technology needed to make all those weapons, was provided by the Manhunter. And we learn that Noah is a Manhunter himself. When the Manhunter grew back his mother's finger, something happened, and it resulted in her becoming pregnant.

Now Noah has saved Hal and reveals to him that he is a Manhunter, but he doesn't want Hal to tell his mom. Little does Noah know that she already knows, but she thinks he doesn't know. So they are both keeping the same secret from each other. I really love that. That's good writing.

Sinestro forges Noah a lantern streaked with fear

After Hal finds out the truth, he starts following Noah and finds a portal left behind by the Manhunter. It leads to the planet of one of the worlds she destroyed. I loved the line from Sinestro where he says the Manhunter had that portal for the same reason John keeps going back to Rushville: the guilt they still have attached to that place.

We then hear from Sinestro, though we don't see it, that Hal went through the portal and found Sinestro, who had been broken out of his prison by Noah. I really wish we had seen it, and that is one of my main criticisms of this episode in a lot of places. The show doesn't go into how Noah found and traveled to the planet where Sinestro was held, and it doesn't show Noah freeing him. I think seeing that would have made the episode feel a little more grand.

Noah freed Sinestro because he wanted Sinestro to forge a lantern for him, and Sinestro did. It is a lantern with yellow streaks in it, the same stuff that is in the water and air on that planet: fear itself, which the Manhunter used to destroy the planet. Sinestro says fear is the most powerful force in the universe and that fearlessness equals extinction. That is a jab at the Green Lanterns, who ask whether you are afraid and expect you to say no. I think this is cool because it connects back to the comics and the Sinestro Corps, whose yellow represents the power of fear.

Sinestro may be lying, but he is clearly set up for season 2

We get a lot of exposition from Sinestro, and I think we need to keep in mind who our narrator is. This is a guy who, in the same breath, tried to flip the hologram on John and then flip John on the hologram. He is manipulative. He is a liar. So one reason the show may not be showing us everything Sinestro describes could be that it isn't all true. We do see Hal find the portal in the slaughterhouse and enter it, but we don't see Hal and Sinestro meet and have the conversation Sinestro says they had. He could be lying about all of it.

I think it is pretty safe to say Sinestro will be back for season 2. This season perfectly set him up as the villain of that season instead of having him ride the bench like he did here, which is totally fine. It might even be better, because at the end we see John lock the portal back up, leaving Sinestro stranded on that planet begging for help. Whenever Sinestro does get out, he is going to be angry.

Sinestro's resurrection line could open the door to Parallax

Sinestro tells the hologram he knows a way to use a ring to bring Hal back to life for real. The hologram doesn't take the bait, tells him he talks too much, and the show never really returns to it. I think that is a line many may brush over. Sinestro just said he could resurrect Hal with a ring, and I think that is the show planting the seed for it to happen. Could he be lying? Of course. But if Sinestro does think he could use a ring and his yellow lantern to resurrect Hal, that could open the door to a Hal Jordan resurrected using the power of fear.

That in turn could open the door to Parallax, the entity of fear itself, which was first introduced in the comics as Hal Jordan. Long story short, in the comics Hal gets angry at the Guardians and decides to take matters into his own hands. He wants to resurrect loved ones and rebuild the city, so he taps into the power core of Oa and ascends from it, declaring himself Parallax. We later find out, in a sort of semi retcon, that Hal was actually being possessed by an entity called Parallax.

So I think we may see Sinestro resurrect Hal in season 2 using his fear power, with Hal becoming a foe for a while until John is able to separate Hal from Parallax. They do separate in the comics and become two different beings. Then maybe John could place the consciousness of the hologram, which could still be lingering in the depths of his ring, into the resurrected body, which may still hold a little of Hal's consciousness too. The hologram is a duplicate of Hal's consciousness, but one that has had his own experiences, so combining those two could give us the revived Hal Jordan once he is separated from Parallax. That is a huge theory, and I don't know. It is just what came to me when I heard Sinestro float the idea.

John Stewart and Noah are both fighting their programming

Noah apparently has a conscience, and he is very divided between the half of him that is human and the half that is a Manhunter. There is a brilliant scene in the car between John and Noah where John acknowledges what I have been saying all season: in many ways, John is a Manhunter. He was programmed to be a certain way from a very young age, practically from infancy. That is why the Guardians liked him so much. They saw in him the opportunity for a perfect hybrid between a human and a Manhunter, one who would be easy to control.

Then you have Noah, a literal hybrid of a Manhunter and a human, who is also struggling to break free of his programming. Sitting next to him is a John who has finally broken through his own trauma and his own coding, broken rank, and become who he wants to be. I think the fact that John managed that is part of why he has hope Noah can do the same. I really liked all of that.

Noah's mother killed Hal Jordan, and the scene did not work for me

Despite Noah taking the fall, it wasn't him. It was his mother, and Noah somehow knows it and is covering for her. That mirrors how they were both keeping the Manhunter secret from each other. They are both trying to protect each other: she killed Hal to protect Noah, and Noah is taking the fall to protect her.

I don't love it. I get that she is a desperate mother willing to do anything to protect her son. I would kill for my kid, too. What I don't like is how sloppily I think the scene was done. Hal wasn't saying they needed to turn Noah over to the Guardians or that he was a great danger to be dealt with. He wasn't suggesting Noah be killed or imprisoned. He said they needed to go off world somewhere more isolated, essentially helping hide Noah from people who might kill or imprison him while also getting him away from anyone he could hurt.

What was Hal's plan after that? I don't know what he was thinking, and maybe he hadn't thought that far ahead. He may just have been thinking he had to get Noah out before he hurt more people, because Hal does carry that guilt for Rushville. Maybe that lack of a plan is the whole point, and she knew this wasn't going to end well for Noah. But the idea that she would draw her gun, turn around and shoot the man she loves, her partner of seemingly a decade, point blank in the head because he was raising his voice and saying they needed to go into hiding just didn't work for me.

It isn't that I have a problem with her being the killer. I think that is a great twist. It was performed well. It just didn't feel earned, and I keep coming back to the blocking. It didn't feel called for or natural, and it made me not like her, after I had loved her all season. If it had felt like a heat of the moment thing where she panicked and didn't think she had a choice, that would work, and I do think that is what they were going for. It just lacked the panic it was trying to convey. I also wasn't crazy about how nonchalant John was about it.

The Hal Jordan murder mystery may not be fully closed

I am still not fully convinced. I think it is possible, however unlikely, that we could learn Noah wasn't covering for his mom, that he did actually kill Hal, and that John's assumption that it was her was wrong, with her simply running with it and taking the fall. The murder mystery door could be reopened, especially if they resurrect Hal. Hal could even reveal who actually killed him. Maybe they will do that. I don't know.

John Stewart becomes an unsanctioned Green Lantern for Earth only

The season wraps up with John becoming an unsanctioned Green Lantern, a lantern for Earth and Earth only. He tells Guy Gardner that the stars are his and he will handle the dirt, and Guy doesn't take it too kindly. I love Nathan Fillion in this role. He fits seamlessly in Superman and in a show like Lanterns with a completely different tone, and I think it is really cool that Guy can pop up throughout the whole DCU.

One moment has me stumped. John tells Guy about the Guardians: "Please tell them and use these exact words that if they search their hearts, I know they'll find it within themselves to let me be." It is a callback to the hologram's code earlier in the season about there being hail in Rushville, Nebraska, and a reference to the crystallized hearts of Manhunters. But what point is John making? Is he threatening to rip their hearts out like he did to the Manhunter? Or is he reminding them he did them a favor by taking out the Manhunter and bringing them that heart, that he earned this, so leave him alone? That one went over my head a little.

Then there is the ending: the hologram saying goodbye, telling John not to be afraid to be afraid, and the wink. It was great. I loved it, and I cannot wait for season 2.

The finale grew on me the second time through

The first time through, I wasn't crazy about the finale. The second time, I enjoyed it much more, I think because my expectations were tamed. I no longer had my list of things that should happen; I knew what would happen and could just enjoy it. In my finale predictions, I wanted Hal and Sinestro working together like back in the day, then their big fallout and fight, giving us a final act fight set in the past, since the show tells its story nonlinearly. That way the present day story wouldn't need a big fight if it didn't call for one.

We didn't get that, and that is okay. A lot of people are going to be mad about the lack of action. I am not calling for a big Marvel movie third act fight that the whole budget goes toward, but a little Green Lantern ring action might have been nice. I am torn, because nothing in the present day story called for it. A flashback to the fight between Hal and Sinestro, especially alongside Hal actually meeting Sinestro on that planet, could have gotten around that. With Sinestro likely the villain of season 2, and the show likely continuing its nonlinear storytelling, maybe we will get that flashback and his origin next season.

As for John Stewart, the next time we will see him is in Man of Tomorrow, and I can't wait. I am sure Guy Gardner will be there too and not be pleased that John is. We could even see them bicker over whose jurisdiction Brainiac falls into. Lanterns is a great show, and I loved it. Not a perfect finale, but a pretty good one.

So what did John mean with that message to the Guardians: was it a threat, or a reminder that he earned the right to be left alone?