Lanterns Midseason Trailer Reveals a Hal Jordan Clone and Deepens the DCU's Batman Connections

The Trailer's Diner Scene Confirms Hal Jordan Went to Prison After the Battle of Rushville

The new trailer for the final three episodes of Lanterns dropped Thursday morning, and it opens with Hal Jordan and John Stewart sitting in a diner booth sometime after 2016. Hal tells John, "I took the fall for what we did," and John shoots back, "You didn't take the fall. You fell. And people got killed." That exchange tells me Hal went to prison for some amount of time after the Battle of Rushville, because law enforcement decided someone needed to be held responsible for that mass casualty event.

This murder mystery still reminds me of who shot Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, where everyone in town is a suspect, and I think we should start looking at the kid. The trailer specifically shows what looks like a high school football star making a play, and I'm pretty sure that is Noah Makin. One line in the trailer puts it bluntly: "There's more than one killer at this table."

A Missing Broken Nose Hints the Diner Scene Might Not Be Where I First Placed It

There is an inconsistency in these diner booth shots that I cannot ignore: Hal Jordan does not have a broken nose here, even though he definitely had one when they filmed the scene. That makes me think they might have scrubbed something out of the trailer. It has me wondering whether this diner conversation actually takes place right before Hal's murder, or apparent murder, in 2026, rather than earlier.

I also assume Sheriff Kerry was wrong when she assumed that whoever broke Hal's nose also shot him, which might explain a confused "What?" reaction we see in the trailer.

The Slaughterhouse Scene Hints at How Hal Jordan Might Have Been Reprinted

The reason all of this is so confusing to even try to analyze is one insane new shot in the trailer. We see Hal Jordan lying on the floor wearing medical scrubs, just like John Stewart wore in episode 5, with a patch of skin missing from his inner arm, exactly like the patch removed from John Stewart's arm when Manhunter Zoe used a piece of his skin in episode 5 to reprint his entire body. This Hal, if we're going to call him a clone, is lying on the floor of the Apex Inc. slaughterhouse room from episode 4, a room filled with Manhunter technology built to humanely store, slaughter, and process meat.

I think this answers the clone Hal mystery. Rather than being a physical hologram scraped off his ring, it looks like someone is continuing to use Manhunter medical respawn technology to 3D print an entire new body for Hal. "I mean, hey, maybe that's what they do with cows," and to reduce the carbon footprint, Apex Inc. could just be cloning and reprinting the same cow for meat production over and over. I also think John Stewart being a vegan is going to come back around in some way.

Either way, I feel safe saying now that there are multiple Hal Jordans, and the one who is dead on the bleachers could just be one of these physical duplicates. The open question is who walked into that slaughterhouse room wearing those boots. Could it be another Hal Jordan? Could it be Will Makin Jr., or Noah Makin when he's older? Maybe Hal gets reprinted after his death in 2026, or maybe this scene actually happened in 2016, right after he was severely wounded in the motel.

I think HBO is showing us this scene for two reasons. First, they want to keep the hope alive that there's more to whether or not Hal Jordan is forever dead in the DCU. Second, they just want all of us to keep twisting our brains with theories about what actually happened to him.

Episode 7's Flashbacks and the Sinestro Boat Scenes Point Toward a Parallax Plot

The midseason trailer also shows footage I think belongs in episode 7, Hal Jordan's flashback episode. That includes him saluting at his father's funeral, and a moment that looks like his father chatting with him after a baseball game, with a line like "Can't hold on to it forever."

There are also more shots of John Stewart paddling a boat out to a cyberpunk energy refinery station island. Past trailers showed John alone in that boat, but now we see what looks like a hologram, or whatever this version of Hal is, sitting with him. There seem to be several shots of John talking to Sinestro at this location, with Sinestro saying lines like "Fear can be the most powerful force in the universe."

This raises the question of whether Sinestro is in exile at this location after the prison we saw him in before couldn't hold him. "I mean, anytime you send a Napoleon to an Elba, he's going to come back." What stands out to me is that John Stewart shouts, "What are you doing here?" at Sinestro, and my theory is that there's a villainous plot forming to invoke Parallax.

Episode 6's Lantern Signal Is Another Reminder That Batman Exists in the DCU

Episode 6 will show John Stewart activating a Lantern signal in Rushville to summon Guy Gardner. To me, that is just another huge reminder that a Batman does exist in this universe. We've already seen a DC detective show, and detective comics got their name in the first place because Batman is the world's greatest detective.

More and more, this season looks like it's going to end by setting up the Gotham City we'll see in the Clayface film, which arrives just two weeks after the Lanterns finale. I think we're going to get a lot more insight into when we'll finally see a DCU Batman film, and an actual release date, after Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson's alternate universe The Batman Part Two arrives in February 2028.

What Was Already Established About the DCU's Gotham City Before Lanterns and Clayface

James Gunn and Peter Safran have maintained that this Gotham City is a separate universe from the Gotham City in Matt Reeves' The Batman films and the HBO Penguin series. We first saw this Gotham in animated form in the Creature Commandos flashback episode, where Dr. Phosphorus was arrested by Batman, still our only official sighting of the DCU's Batman. Gunn has indicated that animated design could change by the time we see him in live action, but specifically said that is not meant to be Robert Pattinson.

Based on the timeline of Dr. Phosphorus's arrest, this Batman must have been active for at least the past ten years in Gotham City. The 2025 Superman movie established that Gotham City is within driving distance of Metropolis, that Metropolis is in the state of Delaware, and that Gotham City is in Southern New Jersey.

Peacemaker season 2, which James Gunn has said is DCU canon, established the villain White Rabbit, Jade Hudson, in this continuity. Rejected from Maxwell Lord's Justice Gang, Chris Smith hates the Batman of this universe and talks about him often, though most of that talking happened in season 1. I assume the same feelings carry into season 2 and beyond. Peacemaker season 2 also established that Leota Adebayo and her partner Keaya both live in Gotham City.

Sheriff Kerry Kane's Backstory Ties Lanterns Into the Kane Family and Batwoman

This first season of Lanterns has taught us a lot more about this Gotham City. Sheriff Kerry Kane of Rushville was actually a runaway from Gotham, the daughter of a father who was involved with an organized crime family. That father snitched, which led the crime boss to put a hit out on the whole family. We know her name was Kerry Kane in Gotham because Hal Jordan said in episode 4 that he looked her up and found public records proving she was the Manhunter.

Kerry's last name being Kane, as of episode 5, suggests she might be connected to the Kane family, maybe even a relative of Bruce Wayne himself. Bruce Wayne's mother Martha's maiden name was Kane. Martha's brother Jacob Kane married Gabby, and they had twin daughters, Beth Kane and Kate Kane. Kate Kane is Batwoman.

Kerry also called someone on the phone in Gotham City, saying, "Tell Barbara I said hey," which suggests she was in contact with someone connected to Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Police Commissioner Jim Gordon and Batgirl. Combined with reporting that the DCU Batman movie, The Brave and the Bold, either is or was at some point going to be a team up between Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin, this suggests the Batman we'll see in the DCU is part of a full Bat family, or at least has characters in this world who will one day join it.

Lanterns Confirms Gotham's South Jersey Geography and Its Crime Families

Lanterns further confirms Gotham City's South Jersey geography. Kerry Kane changed her license plate to a Delaware plate while fleeing Gotham, suggesting she passed through Metropolis on her way out west to Nebraska. This Gotham City has a bat signal, which I'd assume it would have anyway, but in Lanterns episode six we see that Green Lantern Guy Gardner sets up a lantern signal in Rushville, suggesting he probably ripped that idea off from the DCU's Batman.

Crime families obviously exist in this Gotham City. We don't yet know which family was threatening Kerry Kane and her father, but I have to assume it was either the Falcones, the Maronis, the Bertinellis, maybe the Sionis, or someone else entirely, including possibly Killer Croc. Killer Croc might exist in this Gotham because the subtitles for Lanterns episode 5 identified a goon as "Croc coat," which could just be a nod to a crocodile skin coat, or could be a name for a whole gang of Killer Croc's goons. Maybe Kerry Kane thought that if she could escape the Gotham City sewer network, she could escape his reach too.

Black Mask also exists in this Gotham City. Lanterns episode 3 showed an ad for Janice Cosmetics, the company belonging to Roman Sionis, also known as Black Mask.

This Gotham City Sits on a Larger DCU Map With Its Own History

Gotham City exists on a DC Universe map alongside other fictional DCU locations, including Metropolis, Coast City (the home city made to look like Los Angeles in Lanterns), Midway City (where it seems the Stewart family lived), Central City, Bloodhaven, Star City, Jarhanpur, Bravia, and Corto Maltese.

This Gotham City also exists in a history that includes a President Barack Obama and a President George W. Bush before him, along with the Harry Potter movies, Pope Benedict XVI, the 1996 movie Set It Off, and Nebraska Cornhuskers football. From those presidents, we can assume there's also a Washington D.C. in this universe, though we don't yet know for sure if there's a New York City, a Los Angeles, a Chicago, or a Detroit. James Gunn has indicated there's room for both fictional and real world cities in this universe.

A DCU Writer Confirms a Hidden Year Zero Moment, and My Harambe Theory

In an interview, Lanterns writer Vanessa Benton Kelly confirmed that the show's writers, along with Tom King, James Gunn, and Peter Safran, had a lot of conversations about what is and isn't DCU canon. She confirmed that, similar to the 2008 I Am Iron Man moment that Marvel Studios treats as its year zero, the moment that firmly established the MCU's fictional timeline as separate from our own, the DCU has a similar linchpin historical event that has not yet been revealed. Asked whether there had been conversations about when that moment was, she said, "Absolutely," adding that those conversations came up even while discussing plans for the upcoming Superman film.

My own feeling is that this linchpin moment is going to be sometime during or after 2016, and hear me out on this. I think James Gunn might have a twisted enough sense of humor to make the DCU's historical nexus the same moment many of us joke put us on our darkest timeline, the death of Harambe in May 2016, which online conspiracy theorists have said could have impacted things like the Cubs winning the World Series and the 2016 election. "I know, I know, this is very, very stupid."

When asked about the recurring references to super smart apes that Gunn keeps putting into the DCU, he noted that DC Comics history is just weirdly stacked with smart apes. I have to believe that the upcoming People vs. Gorilla Grodd, starring Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet following the trial of Flash villain Gorilla Grodd, played by Jimmy Tatro in an actual gorilla suit, will include some jokey reference to Harambe in 2016, and maybe we'll find out he's still alive in the DCU, making it a kind of alternate Planet of the Apes timeline from there forward. I know this is a very dumb theory, but I'll challenge anyone to come up with a better one.

Clayface's Trailers and Set Photos Reveal a Fuller Gotham City

Lanterns will end two weeks before Clayface hits theaters, and that will be the first time we really see the full DCU Gotham City in live action. From the Clayface trailers, we can already work out more details. Matt Hagen will be a popular actor who splits his time between Gotham City and Coast City, and the most recent trailer even shows a Hollywood Trade article about Coast City. We also know this Gotham has a Narrows, seen from a shot of a ferry, and a few different angles of Gotham's Amusement Mile.

Set photos of a Gotham City subway map from Clayface give a fuller layout of the city and all the familiar locations you'd expect in any version of Gotham: Wayne Manor, which is a bit odd to see on a subway map, Kane Memorial Bridge and Kane Estate (maybe the same Kane family Kerry Kane could be part of), Arkham Asylum, Ace Chemical, the Iceberg Lounge (suggesting this DCU has its own Penguin), Wayne Industries and Wayne Tower, the Gotham Gazette offices, and Blackgate Penitentiary.

Why I Don't Think the DCU's Gotham Will Get a Court of Owls Storyline

I'm pretty sure the DCU's Gotham City does not have a Court of Owls in it, at least not yet. I think that group is going to factor into The Batman Part Two instead. Photos from Matt Reeves' set for that film included a protester sign reading "Court of Fowls," and production is reportedly shooting in London's Freemasons Hall, whose interiors look like an Eyes Wide Shut style congregation room that fits a group like the Court of Owls.

The finale of the Penguin series also laid on the evidence pretty thick, showing owl shapes lining the back of a courtroom. Since the Court of Owls already seems set to play such a big role in The Batman Part Two, I just don't think James Gunn's plans for the DCU's Gotham and his Batman will do the same thing. They're not a rogues gallery group that has to appear in every version of Gotham, and I think Gunn will want to keep his Gotham focused on different villains and different threats.

My Prediction for When We'll Actually See a DCU Batman Movie

At this point, the soonest we're going to see a DCU Batman movie is 2029. I think we might see sightings of Batman before that in other DCU projects, but not his own movie until then. That's because The Batman Part Two was pushed to February 18, 2028, and James Gunn has firmly said he does not want to release more than one Batman movie per year.

So here's my bold prediction: I'm betting DC Studios sets the release of the DCU Batman movie for June 22, 2029, and just calls it Batman. That would be the exact 40th anniversary of the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film, the movie whose success proved that superhero cinema was here to stay. "I know that's the distant future, but I'm telling you, someone at DC Studios and Warner Brothers has that date circled on their calendars. Believe me."

So who do you think walked into that slaughterhouse room: another Hal Jordan, an older Noah Makin, or someone else entirely?