Lanterns Episode One Ends With Hal Jordan Dead, and I'm Stumped on Who Did It

The premiere is loaded with comic book references, and I want to go through them all, along with how the episode sets up the rest of the season.

How Hal Jordan First Revealed Himself, and What Young John Stewart Saw on TV

The episode opens in 1996 with a young John Stewart watching a 60 Minutes segment where Hal Jordan reveals his identity as Green Lantern, while his brothers panic that their father is about to come home. Hal explains he first revealed himself ten years earlier by stopping a meteor from destroying a town called Victoria Falls, and tells the world he was an Air Force veteran and test pilot following in his father's footsteps, whose dad died during a test flight when Hal was young.

Hal's costume here looks to me like it is inspired by the suit he wore in the alternate universe Earth One storyline, where he is an astronaut in the near future and bases his Green Lantern look on his space suit, which fits nicely with the idea that a human Green Lantern is basically an extreme version of an astronaut. The meteor story also reads to me as a nod to Hal Jordan's actual first appearance in 1959's Showcase issue 22, where he stopped a missile from hitting his home in Coast City, becoming a beacon for the people below.

Hal also explains that the only question he was asked for the job was whether he was afraid, and he said no, because after losing a parent that young there was not really anything left to fear. That idea of fear gets juxtaposed straight away with the Stewart kids, who are terrified of their very much alive father coming home, except for John, who does not shut off the television until the last possible second. I think that is an early sign of how fearless he already is.

John Stewart's Father and the William Tell Apple Test That Opens the Series

When John's father walks in, he immediately knows John was watching the Hal Jordan segment and asks if he is going to tell him his real name. John lies and says "Hal or something," which does not track for me since the kid was basically about to climb into the television. John's dad is shown to be a Marine, which is a real departure from the comics, where his father is barely mentioned and he is mostly raised by his mother, who along with his sister died when John was young.

There are versions of John's comic book origin where his father is present and is a civil rights activist who is harsh on him, though the show credits list this character as John Stewart Senior rather than using a first name, which I think is a deliberate choice. His father then takes him outside, sets an apple on his head, and shoots it off, playing directly on the William Tell legend. There are bullet holes running up the wall behind him in a vertical line, with the last one stopping right at John's height, suggesting this has happened for years, almost like a twisted version of marking a child's height on a door frame.

His father asks if he is afraid, John says "No, sir," and does not even flinch as the apple is shot away, after which his dad tussles his hair and suggests getting a burger like it was a proud family moment. I also noticed his father seems to know a lot about how Green Lanterns work, specifically that fearlessness is the one requirement for the job, even though he never watched that 60 Minutes segment. That detail is what sent me down a theory path about who he might actually be.

My Theory: Could John Stewart Senior Have Been the Green Lantern Who Never Was

My theory is that John Stewart Senior might once have been a potential recruit for the Lanterns himself, but something, possibly the loss of his wife, prevented him from ever getting his ring, and that loss created a fear in him of losing his remaining children. That would explain why he is training young John from such an early age to never show fear, so that John might one day take the place in the Corps that should have been his father's.

I even wonder if he could be playing a version of John Stewart's earliest comic appearance from the 1970s, where John was chosen off the streets by the Guardians as a replacement for Guy Gardner in Green Lantern issue 87 and trained under Hal before eventually being welcomed into the Corps properly. It was not until 1984's Green Lantern issue 182 that John Stewart returned as an official Corps member, taking over after Hal quit in the previous issue. My idea is that John Stewart Senior could be that original recruit who never made it, while the John we follow in the show is the John Stewart who eventually gets the job for real.

Hal and John's Rocky Training Partnership in 2016, and a Deep-Cut Alien Planet Reference

We then jump to a grown John in 2016, which by DCU timeline math would be nine years before Guy Gardner shows up in Superman in 2025. Hal picks John up late and hungover, blasting Boogie Shoes by KC and the Sunshine Band, clearly trying to provoke him, but John refuses to react, which tells me a lot about how in control of his emotions he already is. It is a nice role reversal of the classic mismatched buddy cop dynamic, with the older Hal as the impulsive one and the younger John as the more mature partner.

Hal explains his disappearance was because he was off on a distant planet celebrating after stopping a civil war there, which is a reference to 1982's Green Lantern issue 156 by Mike Barr and Gil Kane, where Hal helps end a war between shapeshifting insects called the Fireoids and another alien race by getting delegates from both sides to sit down together. It is an extremely niche reference since it is the only issue to feature that planet, but I appreciated that they used it.

John is frustrated rather than impressed, pointing out they have been training for two months and he still has not won the ring, and Hal calls the Guardians "nothing but a substitute teacher" despite John pointing out they already chose him. Hal then tosses John the ring and jumps out of the moving car as it goes off a cliff, forcing John to learn to use it just to survive, which plays off the same pattern of life or death training we already saw with his father.

Hal's Backup Consciousness Sends John to Rushville, Nebraska

Walking down the road afterward, John calls his father to vent about Hal trying to kill him, and his dad tells him Hal is just testing him and he needs to breathe and stay cool, which confirms his father is still actively involved in his training. His dad also mentions that Hal and the other Lanterns are allowed to have tantrums but they are not, which I think could be hinting at his own experience and also touches on ideas of inequality that this show, coming from Damon Lindelof, who made Watchmen, might be building toward.

The ring then materializes a younger looking version of Hal, a backup of his consciousness combined with the ring's sentience, who panics and asks if John is dead. This backup reveals Lanterns are required to upload weekly, but the real Hal has not done so in ten years, and seems surprised John does not already know basic things like how to fly. In the comics this kind of projection is called an energy twin, though it works differently there since the real body stays motionless while the twin travels, which is not the case here since Hal is very much awake and enjoying himself at a taco stand.

The backup gives John a cryptic message pointing him to Rushville, Nebraska, and Rushville becomes central to both the 2016 and 2026 timelines. John has to travel there the long way through airport security while Hal can simply fly, and when he finally arrives at a crime scene on the local high school football field, Hal reveals he was testing whether John could find his own way there, which felt like a slightly excessive lesson to me.

The Town Sheriff and the Football Field Crime Scene

At the scene we meet the town sheriff, who is clearly not a fan of Hal and insists Lanterns are only authorized to deal with extraterrestrial crimes, not a regular Earth shooting. Hal is convinced the victims are alien because nobody around seems to know who they are and no one is claiming the bodies. I noticed she says she "can't do this again," which could just mean dealing with Hal, but could also hint this is not her first encounter with a Lantern.

Hal has John survey the scene as a training exercise, and John correctly works out that a game winning field goal caused fans to storm the field, leading to four members of the visiting team being shot in the chaos. Hal, despite acting like a bad cop up to this point, has actually already been watching the surviving suspect the whole time, letting the chain of command play out through John and the sheriff before the suspect bolts and John chases him down using his military training.

I could not find a strong comic counterpart for Kari, but I think she may be based on Rose Harding, a character from the 1990 Green Lantern run who had a brief relationship with an older Hal quite a few years after he first got his ring. That run's author was arrested and imprisoned for serious offenses in 2018, which is presumably why DC has largely erased that storyline, so I do not know how much of it the show will actually adapt, even though I think the casting resemblance is clearly intentional.

Bar Night: The Jukebox Trick, Abin Sur's Origin Story, and Zoe Makin

With the suspect in custody, Hal takes John out for a celebratory drink and uses his ring to conjure a twenty dollar bill for the jukebox, which reminded me of an old Green Lantern issue where a criminal named Bill Braggit briefly wielded Hal's ring and used it to create fake money before living off it after getting out of prison in 1969's Green Lantern issue 67. Hal plays A Brand New Key by Melanie on repeat, and it becomes clear later that he is doing this deliberately to start a bar fight.

John asks how Hal actually got his ring, and Hal tells an extended version of his origin story, saying he was woken by a green bubble that asked if he was afraid, flown to a dying alien named Abin Sur who was "pink, bald, bleeding all over," and given the ring along with the words naming him successor to protect Sector 2814. This lines up closely with Hal's actual 1959 origin in Showcase issue 22, though I suspect Hal is not being entirely truthful about everything else, including his claim that Earth was never even meant to have a Lantern and that his own selection was just a fluke, which is why he has been quietly watching Rushville ever since.

While this is going on, a woman at the bar starts asking John pointed questions, like whether he is going to say yes to becoming a Lantern, how many trainees Hal has had, and why they picked him, before John tells her Earth can only have one Green Lantern and he is being trained in case something happens to Hal. That struck me as a pretty reckless thing to tell a stranger, and it later turns out she is Zoe Makin, wife of the story's apparent villain, which makes those bar questions look a lot less innocent in hindsight.

The Makin Family Compound and My Black Hand Theory

Hal gets deliberately arrested in the bar fight so he can be locked up with the alien suspect, and John is fully on board if it means Hal takes a beating. After the sheriff locks him in a broom closet, mustache lawyer Billy Makin gets Hal out on bail and invites him to dinner at what turns out to be a full compound with an armed militia and training grounds, run by his father William Makin, a former Marine sniper who claims to be working for a mysterious employer he cannot legally name.

William Makin calls Hal's ring "a weapon of mass destruction" and argues Earth is like land taken from natives unaware ships were coming, insisting aliens are actively planning to colonize the planet and that the man in the sheriff's jail cell is part of an advance team. There have been rumors that William Makin could actually be William Hand from the comics, the classic villain known as Black Hand, who became obsessed with draining the power of Green Lantern rings after being experimented on by aliens, and I think that origin lines up with what little we know about Makin's wealth and obsession with the Lanterns so far.

If Makin is playing a version of Black Hand, my guess is he is after the rings themselves and sees them as a threat rather than being impressed by their power, which could be why Hal's ring is missing from his body at the end of the episode. Combined with Zoe Makin's very targeted questions to John at the bar, I think she may be playing a bigger game here too, and if she passed along what John told her, the Makins would know that taking out Hal would leave Earth's only backup Lantern untrained.

The Interrogation Scene and the Harry Potter Test

Back at the station, the sheriff calls the suspect a random truck driver named Wellen Sanders, and says his X-rays show human organs, but Hal and John are not convinced, noting there are fourteen known species with the technology to pass as human. During interrogation Hal quizzes the suspect on Nebraska football trivia, which he passes easily, but he is completely stumped when asked the name of Harry Potter's school, revealing that whoever these aliens are, they study hard for their specific cover roles but neglect basic human pop culture.

The sheriff tells John she does not understand how he can work with someone he does not respect, arguing Hal is not fearless but lonely, and I noticed her reflection hovers directly over the suspect in the two way mirror while John's does not appear at all, which made me wonder if she herself could secretly be one of these aliens, hiding out and playing sheriff on Earth rather than being involved in whatever the Makins are planning.

The suspect eventually drops the act, correctly describing Barack Obama like a Wikipedia entry, and reveals he has a biometric neutron device woven into his skeleton that he could trigger just by thinking about it. He also knows Hal's ring needs recharging every twenty four hours and that Hal has been in town forty eight hours, which tells me whoever sent him has dealt with Lanterns before. Provoked by the suspect reciting the Green Lantern oath, Hal slams him against the wall, and the suspect only laughs and says he is here for vengeance before Hal contains him in a bubble.

Jumping to 2026: Hal Jordan Found Dead

The episode then jumps ten years to 2026, where an older John, now sporting a goatee that nods to his look in the animated Justice League series, drives into Rushville to meet the sheriff again. He passes what looks like the Makin ranch, now destroyed, and she mentions that Noah, the Makins' son John once taught to throw a football, is now the team's quarterback, though there is no mention of Billy or William Makin at all.

They arrive at the football field to find Hal sitting in the stands, frozen solid and dead, with his ring gone. The show deliberately obscures whether John now has the ring himself by covering his hand with Hal's as he checks the body, which leaves us with a double mystery of who killed Hal and what John's current status in the Corps actually is, especially given the episode already established Earth can only support one Green Lantern at a time.

Hal has died in the comics before, most notably after being possessed by the fear entity Parallax in the 1990s and sacrificing himself to reignite the sun, which was a much more dramatic exit than this. That tells me this is a new death for the show rather than an adaptation of an existing storyline, and I am genuinely stumped on who is responsible right now.

My Overall Verdict on Lanterns Episode One

I went in a little on the fence about this premiere and struggled with the pacing at points, not fully hooked by the central mystery until that final scene, which is what got me properly intrigued for next week. Aaron Pierre is fantastic as John Stewart, and I love the dynamic he has with Hal Jordan, that mix of contempt and respect that seems to be what the whole show is built around.

I also love the True Detective vibes running through the episode, which the show has been open about being an influence, apparently even what was in the original pitch, and it helps push the cop angle of the Green Lanterns in a way that separates this from something like Superman or Supergirl. That said, something about the episode felt a bit drab to me for a premiere that is supposed to grab you for the next eight weeks, and I understand why the show has been criticized for how dull it looks, since the only green I really noticed was a food basket at the taco stand.

I am hoping it opens up visually as the season goes, and I found some elements a little boring, though it is still early days so I do not want to be too harsh. The show is clearly pulling from lots of different Green Lantern comics rather than adapting one specific run, and I am still not fully won over on the DCU as a whole, but I am interested to see where this goes.

So who do you think actually killed Hal Jordan, and is the sheriff secretly an alien herself?