Lanterns Trailer Hints Hal Jordan Could Become Parallax, and There May Be Two of Him

A new mid-season trailer for Lanterns just dropped, covering the final three episodes of the season, and there is a lot to unpack. There is a manhunter-style circle marking on Hal's arm, and there appear to be two Hal Jordans running around, and I am not talking about the hologram we already saw. We are finally getting answers about what happened to Hal Jordan after the incident that destroyed the town, John Stewart reunites with Hal in 2026 after years apart with neither of them being Green Lantern, Guy Gardner shows up, and there is more Sinestro. There are also a couple of shots I think could be teasing something much bigger with ramifications for the wider DCU.

John Stewart Returns to the Town in 2026 to Find Hal Estranged and Blamed for the Manhunter's Destruction

The trailer opens in 2026 with John returning to the town and meeting Hal at the diner, and this is huge because up until now we have not really known what Hal's life looked like in the ten years between the incident and his death. Apparently the two have been estranged after everything that happened with the Manhunter and her destruction of the town, along with all the lives lost.

Apparently Hal took the fall for what happened and was locked up. I am not entirely sure what he needed to take the fall for, since he did not kill anyone. People could reasonably be mad at him for being reckless and for being the target of the Manhunter's attack, since her goal was to force him to use his ring, drain its power, and remove him as a threat to her. But I am genuinely not sure what legal justification put Hal in prison, and I would be interested to hear what he was actually charged with.

Hal's Prison Sentence Raises Questions I Can't Answer

After prison, Hal is released, and there is a shot of what looks like someone picking him up. We also get shots of Hal inside a house as it gets burned down around him. Given how nonlinear this show tells its story, I am assuming that scene happens sometime after his release and before his body is found in the bleachers.

It is clear the town hates him, not only because they blame him for the death and destruction from that day, but because they blame him for the death of their savior, the Manhunter, the being who made the town prosper and never have to deal with illness. With her gone, I am sure the town has fallen apart.

Guy Gardner's Jailhouse Meeting With John Stewart and the Green Lantern Signal

A scene released a few weeks back showed Guy Gardner's Green Lantern visiting John Stewart in jail, but that scene has not actually appeared in the show yet. I am guessing John might get framed for Hal's death and arrested, though there is also a shot of him getting into a fight, so maybe that is what lands him behind bars.

In the trailer we see a spotlight outside emitting Green Lantern energy, and later it shines a Green Lantern signal into the sky like Batman's bat signal. It appears John used that signal to summon the new Green Lantern, Guy Gardner. We also hear Guy talk about reaching out to Hal after getting his ring for advice, and Hal telling him to climb a rope, which gets a joke about Guy being a gym teacher.

Young Hal's Baseball Flashback and Sinestro's Return

There are flashback shots of a young Hal Jordan talking to his father while clenching a baseball, with his dad telling him, "Can't hold on to it forever," which reads as commentary on Hal's later trouble letting go of the ring. We also see young Hal attending his father's funeral.

Sinestro also returns in this trailer, though I cannot quite place where he is in the scene. He looks rough and is talking to John, so maybe he is still in his cell on the prison planet and has learned of Hal's death. Sinestro is essentially the Joker to Hal Jordan's Batman, but these two were close at one point, and I am assuming John goes to Sinestro looking for answers in his investigation of Hal's murder, mirroring how Hal went to Sinestro earlier in the series for answers on Manhunters.

The Comic Book Origin of Parallax, From Emerald Twilight to Zero Hour

To understand where this could be going, it helps to know the comics. In the comics, much like what happens to the town in this show, Hal's hometown of Coast City gets completely destroyed, killing millions, and Hal is devastated. He uses his ring to temporarily recreate Coast City and the people who died, including versions of his family and friends, which honestly sounds a lot like WandaVision now that I think about it. The Guardians order him back to Oa to surrender his ring, and Hal decides the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps have failed him, so if they will not give him the power to fix what happened, he will take it himself.

Hal travels to Oa and fights his way through the Corps, defeating lantern after lantern and absorbing their power. The Guardians release Sinestro to stop him, and Hal defeats Sinestro and apparently kills him. Hal then reaches the central power battery and, instead of simply taking a ring, absorbs the battery's enormous energy into himself, emerging to declare, "I am Parallax."

Originally Parallax was not a separate monster possessing Hal, which is the more modern understanding after the retcon. Before that, Parallax was Hal Jordan himself, a man who snapped after Coast City's destruction and transformed into a cosmic being. His motivation matters here because Hal does not think he is the villain. He believes that with enough power he can fix everything that has gone wrong and be a savior, which leads directly into the Zero Hour crisis, where Parallax Hal decides rebuilding Coast City is not enough and sets out to rewrite the entire timeline, reasoning that the universe is broken and he is powerful enough to fix it. Other heroes eventually stop him, and Hal later redeems himself, most notably sacrificing himself in Final Night to reignite Earth's sun.

How Green Lantern Rebirth Retconned Hal Into Parallax's Victim

Years later, DC reframed all of this. The retcon says Hal did not become Parallax, he was possessed by Parallax. In Geoff Johns' Green Lantern: Rebirth, we learn Parallax is an ancient cosmic entity representing fear, represented by the color yellow, while green represents, in my opinion, not necessarily a lack of fear but bravery, though that is a discussion for another time. Green Lanterns embody bravery, while yellow lanterns and Parallax represent fear itself, which lines up with Sinestro's line in this trailer: "Fear can be the most powerful force in the universe."

The Guardians had imprisoned Parallax inside the central battery, which is why old Green Lantern rings had that famous yellow weakness, the old joke that Green Lantern's greatest enemy is the color yellow. Parallax's presence within the core contaminated the green energy with a yellow impurity. The retcon reveals Parallax had been influencing Hal before he ever took the battery's power. After Coast City was destroyed, Hal was emotionally wrecked and vulnerable, and Parallax exploited his grief and fear, gradually corrupting him. When Hal entered the central power battery, he did not merely absorb its energy, he absorbed Parallax itself, all part of Parallax's plan to free itself.

So when Hal emerged saying "I am Parallax," the retcon gave that line a much more literal meaning: Parallax had taken over. Eventually, in Green Lantern: Rebirth, Hal's soul is separated from Parallax, Hal returns to his life, and the heroes fight the actual Parallax entity.

Why This History Makes Me Think Sinestro Is Manipulating Hal Toward Becoming Parallax

I bring up all that comic history because it tracks with what this show is doing with Hal's story, with him feeling replaced and mistreated by the Guardians, unappreciated, and carrying enormous grief over what happened to the town. I think the show is priming us not only for Sinestro to emerge with a yellow ring, but for a reveal that Sinestro has had some kind of master plan to manipulate Hal into being consumed by fear and becoming Parallax, just like Parallax did in the comics.

This could all be aimed at freeing Parallax and also freeing Sinestro from his prison so the two of them can destroy the Guardians. Given everything Hal has been through, his grief and the Guardians' disrespect toward him, plus his time in prison, it is easy to see how he could slowly be manipulated into that kind of fear-driven collapse.

Two Hal Jordans: A Clone Twist Tied to Hector Hammond's Manhunter Tech

Before wrapping up, there is the matter of the two Hals. We see Hal wake up in what looks like the same high-tech slaughterhouse belonging to Hector Hammond, and he has the same circle mark on his arm that was left on John Stewart after Manhunter technology cured him. It stands to reason that even with the Manhunter dead, Hammond likely still has access to that Manhunter tech.

There is a shot of a man walking in wearing boots, jeans, and a jacket that looks very Hal, while the Hal we know is wearing clothes that are not his own, almost as if he had been undressed and those clothes handed to this other Hal. That makes me think the Hal on the floor is looking up at a clone of himself, and we should expect these two to interact, which might explain that earlier subtitle error crediting a Hal Jordan line as "clone Hal" in episode five, since later in the series the show does properly label one of them that way in the subtitles.

I could see this clone Hal being the one found dead in the bleachers, especially since the show already introduced the idea of two Hal Jordans through the hologram, which could have been a primer for this exact scenario. We could even get a version where this clone Hal is the one who becomes Parallax. As for how Sinestro and Hammond might be connected, I honestly do not know, unless Sinestro was already working with the Manhunter and the Manhunters before her death, tying him to Hammond through some shared goal involving Parallax, with Hammond and Sinestro effectively acting as its servants. I am not deeply steeped in Green Lantern lore and had to do a lot of research to refresh myself before this show, but I am loving what this is building toward.

What do you think is really going on with the two Hals and Sinestro's endgame?