Lanterns Episode 6 Confirms Batman and the Phantom Zone, But Who Really Killed Hal Jordan?

Lanterns episode 6 confirms Batman exists in the DCU, brings back Carol Ferris, and confirms the Phantom Zone is real in this universe. But buried in all of that, this episode also drops a huge clue about who actually killed Hal Jordan, and I do not think most people caught it.

The episode opens in 2026 in Midway City, the fictional DC Universe city in Northern Michigan that is home to the Stewart family, which we first recognized from the Midway City Panthers graffiti back in episode 3. For the opening shot, they used a real shot of downtown Detroit as seen from the Detroit River, but erased some of the taller skyscrapers, the same trick used on the downtown Los Angeles skyline for Coast City in episode 1.

Midway City's Detroit Disguise Raises a Bigger Question About the DCU Map

Seeing two well known American skylines altered like this makes me wonder if the DCU is not going to have fictional versions of Detroit and Los Angeles the same way it has fictional versions of New York and Chicago, something James Gunn once suggested he would do alongside invented cities like Metropolis, Gotham, Midway City, and Coast City. I am going off a shot in a recent Clayface trailer that established actor Matt Hagen blowing up in Coast City, not Los Angeles, where Hollywood actually is.

That would be a little odd, because it would suggest the Harry Potter films had their premieres in Coast City, and maybe even the 1996 movie Set It Off, referenced back in episode 4, was a heist movie set in Coast City rather than Los Angeles. I think I am only overthinking this because this whole episode, and this opening scene especially, keeps making us think hard about the exact borders of canon in the DCU.

John's $30 Billion Panic Room Pitch Exposes How Cities Handle Superhero Threats

In 2026, John Stewart pitches the Midway City comptroller to reallocate federal funds toward an architecture project with his brother Marcus. John says the city received 30 billion dollars in federal funds to buy guns, and while the comptroller notes all approvals have to run through the military, this tells us cities are far more likely to be targeted by these threats than the states around them, giving super cities like Metropolis and Gotham outsized political weight. It stands out that Midway City got that money despite no known attacks, while Rushville, Nebraska, which actually was attacked, was left to decay.

John says, "We all saw what happened in Metropolis, right? But our city doesn't have a Superman." That is a reference to Lex Luthor's axolotl kaiju stomping around Metropolis the previous year, or maybe the bigger calamity of the pocket dimension tearing the city in half. He continues that their response to "whatever giant starfish comes sliding out of the ocean next" is firepower, a nod to Starro from James Gunn's 2021 movie The Suicide Squad.

That film has an uncertain canon status, since Gunn made it before running DC Studios and it uses characters from the 2016 Suicide Squad, which belongs to Zack Snyder's DCEU. Gunn has said everything in Peacemaker season 2 is DCU canon but has called his memory of the 2021 movie imperfect. I think this line from John is just a reference to Starro and what happened in Corto Maltese, not a firm adoption of that entire 2021 cast as DCU canon.

John's pitch is a subterranean panic room structure the size of a football field that can hold 20,000 people, and with 30 billion dollars he says he can build 40 of them, 800,000 people total, about 20 percent of Midway City's population of 4 million. He calls this "40 arks." But the real Metropolis disaster was a city-wide fissure that would have torn apart underground structures too, so I am rooting for John, but this is an ineffective proposal for the threats these DCU cities actually face. He later admits to Carrie it is really just a precautionary measure sold to the super rich.

A Dishonorable Discharge and Bernadette's Lie Set Up the Cafe Scene

When the comptroller brings up John's history as a Green Lantern candidate, John says, "I'm a Marine, sir." I like that he uses present tense even though his discharge was dishonorable, since Marines typically stay in present tense after service. The episode is full of shots of missed calls on John's phone, including calls from his mother Bernadette and from Comfort Cove, the elderly care home where his father lives. John now calls his mother Bernadette instead of mom, which reads as a serious sign of disrespect following his refusal of the ring in episode 5.

Bernadette reveals she spoke with Hal Jordan while he was in prison and a few times since he got out, and she lied to get John to go see him, claiming Hal wanted to apologize. Since this turns out to be the last conversation John and Hal have while Hal is alive, I am left wondering what Bernadette's actual angle was, and whether Hal already knew he was going to die and wanted one last sit down with John.

The Last Cafe Scene With Hal Jordan Hides a Major Clue in His Hand

Back at the Rushville cafe, John sits with Hal, and I noticed how carefully the camera keeps Hal's hand hidden, positioned behind the coffee cup or his own arm. There is one brief moment where his hand pulls away from the cup and something catches the moonlight. It is not the Green Lantern ring, since Guy Gardner later confirms that ring was decommissioned and locked up on Oa, but something is on Hal's hand in this scene, and I think it is what John checks on the corpse later, whether that is a different kind of ring or just skin worn down from years of wearing a ring.

Hal's voice says he took the fall and did the time, and that should make them square, while John says Hal messed up and got people killed. I find it to be a serious miscarriage of justice for Hal to do years in prison for a mass casualty event that would have been confirmed to be caused by an extraterrestrial Manhunter and other aliens trying to kill him, even if I understand why the town of Rushville held him responsible. The alternative was everyone in Rushville dying in a nuclear blast, so I think the authorities just needed someone to blame once the casualties were tallied and Zoe was dead. That gives us a nice parallel, Hal scapegoated for this while John was scapegoated for the international incident of the Gray Wolf.

Then Hal delivers what might be the most important line of the episode: "Don't tell anyone you were here, please. Nobody." I think Hal says this because he already knows he is going to be murdered that night, and John just left a mark on his face that could implicate him. I also noticed that every time Hal explicitly brings up fear on this show, there is a flash of yellow in frame, and here it is potted sunflowers positioned right behind John's head, just as it starts to snow outside on a night that never seems to snow that heavily again in any other shot of 2026 Rushville. Something about the weather that night feels significant beyond aesthetics.

Carrie's Guilt, Earl the Plant, and Rushville's Ugly Reception for Hal

John drives back to Rushville after getting the call, and as he brushes snow from Hal's hand, a tear trickles down his nose, seemingly regretting how nasty their final conversation was. Carrie assumes whoever broke Hal's nose is the one who shot him, and John knows that is not true, though I think Carrie may know it too. Carrie admits Hal came back for her, explaining that after she and Billy divorced, Hal's charm offensive eventually won her over, starting with letters from prison, then him moving to Rushville and going door to door offering to mow lawns and make amends, only for the town to slam doors in his face.

I have to ask whether Hal was really just offering chores to win the town over, or whether he was actually trying to interrogate everyone left in Rushville to see if any of them gave him that gut instinct of a Manhunter left behind. John stays in the rundown house Hal rented, entering through the back because Hal rigged a shotgun booby trap on the front door, and inside he finds Earl, Hal's carnivorous plant from episode 2, still alive, which raises the question of who fed Earl while Hal was in prison.

At the cafe, Carrie questions Maggie about who was with Hal the night before, and Maggie covers for John, saying Hal was alone, then gives John a wink that is going to cost him. I had put Carrie as my top suspect after episode 5, and this episode keeps addressing suspicions right as we form them, which makes me wonder if the show is giving us permission to move on, except John's line to her, "You're too real to fake cry," is met with a look on Carrie's face that suggests there is still something about Noah she is not disclosing.

The Autopsy, Hal's Storage Locker, and the Vault That Needs His Voice

Carrie deputizes John so he can join her for the autopsy, performing a Catholic sign of the cross on herself first, which makes me think the Kane family might have ties to a Gotham City crime family. At the morgue, medical examiner Elizabeth "Bitsy" Kinsey, the same Bitsy mentioned back in 2007 in episode 5, explains Hal was killed point blank with a 9mm, someone standing directly in front of him, no signs of resistance, meaning Hal must have anticipated getting shot the moment he was in that diner.

Bitsy swabbed Hal's broken nose and sent it to the FBI for outside DNA, with results expected in four months, but agrees to delay filing the death certificate so the press does not descend on the town right away. Among Hal's personal effects, John finds a storage locker key with a bird pendant keychain, which must have been a clue left specifically for him, since it resembles the bird he once conjured. Hal called the locker the "Fortress of Storage," a play on Superman's Fortress of Solitude, though I am not sure the timelines actually let Hal and Superman ever cross paths.

Inside the locker is a cube that asks Hal to verify his identity by voice. They try faking it with a recording of Hal from Carrie's phone, calling her "Buttercup" after the Foundations song Build Me Up Buttercup, but the vault is not fooled and warns them not to try again. This is the moment John realizes he needs Hal's old ring, so he can conjure the hologram and use its voice to open the box.

Guy Gardner's Endorsement Deals and an Unnecessary Bar Fight

At a market, John sees a Guy Gardner sponsored electro punch drink using the Green Lantern Corps logo, marked down to four for six dollars, which tells me superheroes in the DCU are commoditizing their brands the way The Boys leaned into and even the MCU has started to touch with Avengers branding. Outside sits Guy's joystick-shaped lantern signal, tagged with graffiti, working exactly like a bat signal, right by the cemetery where the town memorialized those who died in 2016.

Local men confront John, including Billy, and John needles him about "your boy Noah" before taking down all four men with no lantern ring, not even a ruffle on his clothes, which makes me think Manhunter Zoe printed him with a tougher new body given how he also walked through glass barefoot in episode 5. As his brother Marcus points out throughout the episode, despite all his progress, John never truly left Rushville mentally, and that is when people make their worst decisions.

At Carrie's dinner, Noah, now ten years older, says he wants to be a senator as a stepping stone to the presidency, and we learn he ran a letter writing campaign to FEMA that got the high school rebuilt. Carrie realizes John got into a fight before dinner and has him locked up, landing him behind bars taunted by the green glow of Guy's ring, the same way Hal was once incarcerated.

Jail Reveals Sinestro Escaped Spazaban, and Why Guy Got a New Ring

Guy is shocked to learn Hal was murdered but says he cannot help solve it because of "bad optics," worried about his endorsement deals. We learn the Guardians forged Guy a new ring while decommissioning Hal's, locking it away on Oa, which explains why Hal's ring differs from Guy's all green one. I think decommissioning is not common, and the Guardians pulled Hal's ring because of design flaws, like how he jailbroke it with his hologram, and picked a less effective lantern in Guy who would be more likely to stay in his lane.

John tells Guy, "Everything you have is because I didn't take it," mirroring how everything Hal got is because John Stewart Senior refused the call before him, one out of fear and one out of a wish not to become what the ring would turn him into. Guy then reveals that someone busted Sinestro out of what he calls Spazaban, a nickname riffing on Azkaban from Harry Potter, and that he suspected Hal, except Hal had an alibi being in prison on Earth. It is unclear exactly when that breakout happened relative to Hal's release. Marcus posts bail and gets John out.

Hal's Ring Still Holds a Charge, and John's Father Spirals at Comfort Cove

John's own phone died overnight, but Hal's ring keeps its five percent charge after ten years of being decommissioned. Among his voicemails is one from Comfort Cove saying his father's situation has gotten worse, that he shot out a window, echoing his father's struggles shooting out a TV in the late 1980s. John calls his oldest brother Aaron, the sibling most jealous of John's chosen status, and threatens to pull funding for Aaron's album if he does not go pick up their father.

Back at the house, Maggie greets John as "killer," a shift from calling him "chosen" earlier, and this time John pours her the coffee instead of the other way around, a callback to the Tweety Bird watch he once gave her. John admits he did not tell Carrie he was with Hal partly because Hal warned him not to and partly, as he puts it, "because I'm a black man in rural Nebraska," a line that gets an uncomfortable response before Maggie asks him for money she calculates at exactly 314,536.27 dollars in damages plus interest.

Carol Ferris Returns for Hal's Self-Written Eulogy Titled The Brightest Day

At the funeral, John meets Carol Ferris, played by Amy McKenzie, the prominent Hal Jordan love interest from the comics who was played by Blake Lively in the 2011 Green Lantern film and who becomes Star Sapphire in that mythology, though based on her limited role here I do not think this show is heading in the Star Sapphire direction. Carol implies things between her and Hal did not end well, noting the only friendship that stuck was the one on his finger, and it turns out Hal wrote his own eulogy, titled The Brightest Day, using part of the Green Lantern oath.

John reads it aloud, including Hal's line about his ring selecting "a brave son of a" to continue his fight, trailing into musing about whether there could ever be a female lantern, which reads like Hal just did not want to retype the page. The eulogy invokes "the blackest of nights" from the oath and ends with an apology, "Maybe it was just easier to fly than it was to stay on the ground. I hope I mattered."

John Digs Up Hal's Grave and the Hologram Confirms Its Own Death

Marcus calls with a colonel on the line who hangs up before John can pitch him, and Marcus tells him, "You've been stuck in Rushville for 10 years and you ain't leaving until you finish whatever the hell it is you and Hal Jordan started out there. I just pray it don't kill you like it killed him." In the final scene, John digs up Hal's grave using his truck headlights, snatches the ring, and gives it the same knock Hal gave it back in episode 2, and the 2006 era hologram appears, looks down at its own corpse, then back up at John, confirming the fear it first voiced to John back in episode 1, whether it is dead.

Theory: Hal Knew He Was Going to Die, and Noah May Be the Next Manhunter

I think Hal already had plans to meet whoever was going to shoot him in those football bleachers, which is why he warned John not to say he was there, not wanting to implicate him. As for who did it, I still think Sheriff Carrie is more involved than she is letting on, whether that means Noah shot Hal and she covered it up, or she shot him herself to protect her son or out of anger that Hal was investigating him.

On Noah as the next Manhunter, I think this is close to a foregone conclusion given how hard the show is telegraphing it, from Carrie mentioning the miracle the Manhunter gave her in episode 5, to Zoe telling young Noah to "see without being seen and remember everything she taught him," to Noah now having a fully sketched plan to become senator and then president. I suspect Hal actually returned to Rushville after prison to find a second Manhunter he believed was still in town, going door to door not for forgiveness but to look everyone in the face, and possibly even getting close to Carrie just to keep an eye on Noah.

I also noticed Noah's bomber jacket, jeans, and belt buckle appear to match the lower half of a body seen wearing medical scrubs in a slaughterhouse in last week's trailer, the same body missing a patch of skin from the arm that matches the patch missing from John's arm after Manhunter Zoe reprinted him in episode 5. That suggests some kind of Hal Jordan clone or reprint is coming in the final two episodes, and it is possible Hal killed his own reprint before breaking Sinestro out of Spazaban himself using a portal, which might explain why the storage locker needed his voice to open, since he wanted John connected to some living trace of him.

Where do you think this is heading, and who do you think actually pulled the trigger on Hal Jordan?