Lanterns Was Originally Built in a Different Episode Order, and It Would Have Changed How We See Hal and John

The season of Lanterns we got wasn't always supposed to unfold this way. The episodes were rearranged before the season premiered, and that changed what we learned about some of the show's biggest secrets and when we learned it.

When we interviewed one of the people behind the episode Outcast, she revealed that her episode was originally supposed to be episode 5. And if you got the screeners from HBO, some of those episodes were even delivered in their original arrangement. So what was the original order of Lanterns, and what does it tell us about the story this season was originally trying to tell?

Lanterns' original order shuffled the middle of the season

The aired season runs in the order we all know. But going by how the episodes were originally arranged, the lineup would have run the aired episodes as 1, 2, 4, 6, 3, 7, 5 and then 8. Yeah, that's a lot out of order.

Episodes 1 and 2 were pretty straightforward chronologically. In the pilot, we jump between 2016 and 2026. Hal Jordan brings John Stewart, his new trainee, into an investigation happening in Rushville, and they eventually discover a mysterious alien people called the Manhunters, who aren't human and could very well cause a lot of chaos and destruction. By the end of the episode, we've landed firmly in 2026, and Hal is dead. Crazy pilot.

Episode 2 continues the investigation into the Manhunters. John is trying to learn what it actually means to be a Green Lantern, while Hal is still determined to solve the case. John heads to LA, where he runs into a group there, while Hal goes to visit his former mentor, Sinestro, who, you know, killed a Guardian.

The original episode 3 would have let Hal reveal John's secret

This is where the original order differs from our final lineup. Instead of going into John's origin story, we would have jumped to what aired as episode 4, beginning in 2016 with Sinestro talking with Hal about the Manhunters. It's revealed that Hal knows John is there to replace him. So the big secret John has been keeping would have been revealed by Hal, instead of by the Guardian during John's flashback.

In that episode, Hal and John continue their investigation into the Manhunter and the benefactor, until John is visited by the Guardian at the motel, urging him to take the ring so they can replace Hal. In the original order, we would not have known who she is, and would have just had to assume she's as important as she is now.

John and Hal are ambushed by another team, and we learn a lot more about the benefactor. To that team, the benefactor is essentially a savior, someone they believe they owe a great debt to. Eventually, Hal figures out who the Manhunter is and, more importantly, that John knew. The episode ends with the Manhunter seemingly dead and Hal jumping out of the car once again, leaving John behind. John crashes into an electric pole and is essentially left for dead.

Bad Optics as episode 4 would have shown the Rushville aftermath without context

The original episode 4 would have been Bad Optics, which is now episode 6, and honestly, this is where the original order gets really wild. Suddenly we jump from 2016 to 2026 again. The last thing we saw was Hal essentially abandoning John after discovering who the Manhunter was, and now, 10 years later, John is an architect working alongside his brother. He seems to have built an entirely new life for himself.

John briefly tells the board he's pitching to about an attack that changed everything, and we can assume he's talking about what happened in Rushville after the reveal of who the Manhunter is. He believed he was on the right path following the Guardians, only to see everything he cared for get blasted or pulled away. But in this lineup we haven't seen the destruction of Rushville yet. The episode that shows it wouldn't come until episode 7. So Bad Optics would be almost entirely aftermath without context.

The same applies to John's family. Throughout the season, John repeatedly ignores his family's phone calls. In the aired order, we already know why, because Outcast is episode 3. In the original order, we'd have seen him avoid his family without knowing why until episode 5. The original structure was deliberately withholding a lot of information, spending the first six episodes telling us about the consequences of the Rushville disaster without showing it until the penultimate episode. That's a very different way to tell the story.

Hal's ties to John's family would have landed without explanation

In Bad Optics, we learn that John currently lives in Midway, which isn't that important. What's important, and what annoys me, is that it gives us more information we don't have the context to understand yet. For example, we learn that Hal is speaking with John's mom during this episode. They're cool now. But we wouldn't know that John's family resents Hal, or why. So we'd see John having this extreme emotional reaction to Hal without understanding where it comes from.

John rushes back to Rushville to confront Hal at the diner, where Hal accuses John of breaking his mother's heart. Then we learn that whatever happened in Rushville put Hal in prison for 10 years. I hate the suspense, but maybe that's what they wanted from us, because in this lineup we still wouldn't have witnessed the event that destroyed Rushville or the relationship between Hal and John. All we'd have are fragments of the aftermath.

We also learn the new Green Lantern isn't John or Hal. It's Guy Gardner. And according to Hal, John turned down the ring because he was afraid. That hits very differently when we haven't seen this kid spend his entire life being prepared to become a Green Lantern. We'd be told John rejected a destiny we've never seen him pursue.

From there, the episode cuts back to the pilot's scene of Hal's dead body, and follows John through the immediate aftermath of Hal's death. We meet the coroner, who has her own grudge against the Lanterns, and John discovers Hal's secret vault at his garage. After John is arrested for fighting a local man and his goons, Guy retrieves Hal's ring for the funeral, and we learn Sinestro has escaped. Meanwhile, the woman at the diner threatens to reveal that John broke Hal's nose unless John pays for the damage he caused her family back in 2016. The episode ends with John digging up Hal's body, taking his ring, and using Hal's hologram to start figuring out the truth.

Outcast as episode 5 would have finally explained John's resentment

Then we would have moved into Outcast, John's origin story, as episode 5. This is where we finally would have learned where the resentment toward Hal comes from. It stems all the way back to John's father, who was offered the Green Lantern ring but failed the test. The encounter left him with basically PTSD. The Guardian came to Earth to apologize, and during that conversation she offered the idea that John could potentially be groomed into becoming a Lantern, as long as he isn't afraid when the Guardians come calling.

John's family took that idea and kind of ran with it. Throughout his childhood, he's basically abused and ostracized to make sure he's never afraid, conditioning him for the moment the Guardians come back. That brought a divide with his brothers, which is why he's constantly fighting with them and not answering the phone. We also see where John's own resentment toward Hal begins: John was dishonorably discharged after Hal intervened during one of his missions.

Eventually John gives up on becoming a Lantern, goes to art school and finds something that makes him happy. Then the Guardians find him. He passes their test, and the Guardian agrees to make him a Green Lantern on the understanding that he will eventually replace Hal. John goes home to find Hal already talking to his parents, turning on the charm and acting almost boyish and harmless. The second they're alone, that charm disappears, and Hal tells John in no uncertain terms that he is never getting his ring. Suddenly all those strange little pieces about John's resentment start to make sense.

Hal's origin in episode 6 was, I think, in the worst position

The original lineup would then have had back to back origin stories, with episode 6 being Hal's, which I think is in the worst position out of all the episodes in the original lineup. As a boy, Hal has a loving relationship with his father. They play baseball together, and his father gives him the key to his safe, but later dies in a plane crash.

I think this opening sequence is really important, because it establishes two sides of Hal, his childhood self and the man he becomes, and how deeply determination is ingrained in him. If the baseball represents the ring, then Hal was never going to just let it go. In his mind, letting go doesn't just mean losing the ring. It means losing a core part of himself and that connection to who he was before everything changed.

Back in 2026, John tells Hal's hologram he needs help investigating the murder. Inside Hal's vault, they find a wormhole leading to a destroyed planet seemingly connected to the same Manhunter, Zoe. As John crosses a lake toward a beam of light, he experiences hallucinations triggered by the rain, and the hologram reveals that Hal's father and grandfather both died by suicide, with a history of mental illness in the family. That throws us into another mystery: could Hal's death have been a suicide? Then John reaches the island, and the man there is Sinestro.

Lights Out would have picked up a cliffhanger from three episodes earlier

Then we'd finally jump to Lights Out, the destruction of Rushville, which is now episode 5, thank God, but was originally episode 7. It picks up after John survives the car accident from the original episode 3. So we'd be picking up at least three episodes later. Who would have remembered what happened three episodes ago?

The episode fills us in on the sheriff, who was on the run before being intercepted and saved by Zoe, who is now confirmed as the Manhunter. The town prepares for battle, and we get an ominous scene with Zoe. Zoe sees John's car engulfed in flames and saves him using the skin grafting machine, only to put him in debt to her too. Then everything falls apart. Anton's group kills Megan, Zoe launches a laser strike all over Rushville, Hal tries to stop her and Anton, and the motel is destroyed. John kills Zoe and ends up with Hal's ring, but decides to leave it with the Guardian, declining to become the Green Lantern.

The finale stayed the same from the original lineup to now. We get the answer to who killed Hal and how the show can continue without him, though it comes with the reveal that another character is also a Manhunter. But as far as we know, John Stewart is now Earth's Green Lantern.

The original order turned two mysteries into many

Big picture, there are really two major mysteries driving this season: who is the Manhunter, and who killed Hal Jordan? But the original order made it so many mysteries. Who is John Stewart? Why does he hate Hal so much? Why does he refuse the ring? What happened in Rushville? Why does Maggie hate him? Why doesn't he want to talk to his family? Honestly, the original order would have driven me a little crazy, because the show keeps giving us the aftermath of events without showing us the events themselves.

I think that's what makes the original order so weird, because we'd be seeing John before we even know John. We're asked to judge him and his relationship with Hal before we have any context. It felt like the team behind Lanterns originally wanted a bit of confusion around John's emotional triggers. Our brains naturally fill in the blanks, and it becomes easy to read him as a former Marine just struggling with an egotistical mentor. With the rest of the story, those moments feel less like John simply being angry at Hal and more like Hal unknowingly hitting wounds that were there long before they met.

Maggie, the Guardian and Hal would all read differently

We get a similar thing with Maggie. In the original order, we meet adult Maggie first, and she's blackmailing John, so she seems like just another person making their lives harder. We haven't seen what happened to young Maggie, or how responsible John and Hal are perceived to be for what happened to her and Rushville. It's easy to wonder what her problem is and why she's targeting him. Once we see young Maggie's story, the relationship gets recontextualized, and the blackmail feels like the consequence of something much bigger.

I also think the original order makes everyone feel like an unreliable narrator, not because they're lying, but because we don't have enough information to know how much to trust them. In the final lineup, we meet the Guardian in episode 3. In the original, we wouldn't have met her until episode 5, then briefly again in episode 7. We don't know whether we can fully trust Hal, or John either. Something about John feels more trustworthy, but that doesn't mean he knows everything.

Then there's Hal. It's easy to see him as egotistical and overconfident, and there are moments where he's kind of on a power trip. Then Hal's origin comes right after John's. John's story is about someone pushed so aggressively toward becoming a Green Lantern that he rejected the mantle. Hal's is about someone so attached to that identity he can't let it go. In the original order, with his origin right before Lights Out, young Hal picking that ball back up almost felt like a tragedy, a symbol of his desperate need to hold on to the ring even if it destroys him. In the order we got, it feels like he's making a choice to keep going, finding the will to live. "It's the same scene. It's the same ball, but it's just completely different meanings."

Why I prefer the new order of Lanterns

That's really what restructuring those episodes did for Lanterns. It changed what the information means once we finally have it. The final version is much more centered around John, his trauma, the Rushville disaster and then investigating the aftermath.

All in all, I really like this new order. It makes more sense, and it keeps the suspense without relying on the audience being confused about what's actually going on. It also lets us see the consequences firsthand and make our own judgments about these characters. Shout out to whoever had the idea to restructure the season, because I think it made Lanterns a much more impactful show, a much better show. The original lineup, I don't really understand it. It was very confusing, and I would have felt a different way about Hal and John.

Which episode order do you think would have worked better?