The penultimate episode of HBO’s Lanterns sees the core duo of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) reunite in the strangest way imaginable. Now that we’re squarely in the present day, the mystery has shifted from the secret identity of Manhunter to who killed the real Hal Jordan. To help with the investigation, John takes Hal’s Green Lantern ring at the end of episode 6 (after digging up the casket, of course) so he can manifest the Hal-ogram, a backup of Hal’s consciousness from 2006, stored within the ring.
Since this is the last episode before the finale, Lanterns delivers some pretty big moments, including a shocking cliffhanger at the end — and it also solves a mystery that didn’t really need to be solved at all.
Note: Major spoilers follow for Lanterns season 1, episode 7.
What is inside Hal Jordan’s vault?
Episode 6 revealed that Hal rented a storage unit in Rushville. Inside is a large alien vault similar to the one he used to store his lantern at his mansion. John and Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) aren’t able to open it since it requires that Hal identify himself aloud. A voicemail recording on Kerry’s phone can’t fool it, which is why John tricked Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) into having Hal buried with his uniform and ring — all so John could dig up the body and retrieve the ring.
The Hal-ogram agrees to open the vault, but only if John lets him meet Kerry first. Inside the vault they find very little: a bag packed with supplies, including a handgun and a canteen, along with one of the black spheres we’ve seen throughout the season that can create portals. John describes the supplies as “stuff for a hike.” But considering the flashbacks we see during this episode, the idea of a “Jordan boy” having some kind of safe he leaves behind after his death takes on a whole new meaning.
Episode 7 opens in 1975. A young Hal gets into trouble after refusing to surrender the ball during a baseball game, forcing a forfeit for his team. He’s sitting in a classroom clutching the ball when his father, Martin Jordan, arrives. Martin promptly gets into a fight with the coach while defending his son.
Afterward, Martin gives Hal a strange key. He explains that before Hal’s grandfather left to fly in a war, he placed money, keepsakes, and other private items inside a safe and gave Martin the key to this “failsafe.” Martin now passes his own key to Hal, describing it as part of the Jordan family legacy. The episode initially presents this like a tradition among military men preparing for the possibility that they might not return home.
Much later in the episode, however, Hal reveals the painful truth: Martin gave Hal the key several months before dying by suicide. Inside the safe, Hal found money, coins, photographs, and a note explaining that his father had lived with worsening pain and believed his family would be better off without him. Hal’s grandfather also died by suicide.
“It’s the same pain passed down generation to generation,” Hal says, explaining what Martin really meant by the “Jordan boys’ legacy.” Hal’s storage unit feels particularly grim given that extra context.
Because the Hal-ogram is wary of Kerry, he and John bring the portal to the old water tower in town and open it there, proceeding through it to an alien planet.
What alien planet do John and the Hal-ogram visit?
On the other side of the portal, John and the Hal-ogram find a flat desert littered with bones. An enormous abandoned city hangs in the sky, while a distant island and lighthouse appear to be the only structures still accessible from the ground. John experiences déjà vu because he has effectively been there before.
The episode never gives us the planet’s name, but John confirms that it’s the destroyed homeworld of Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor). Back in episode 2, when John is abducted by Antaan’s henchmen, they use some kind of alien device to inject John with the memories of the dying alien civilzation.
“We weren’t the only ones looking for a Manhunter,” John explains to the Hal-ogram. “I got grabbed by this guy Antaan. He told me he was the last of his kind. I didn’t believe him, so he injected me with his people’s experience, and I felt it. Like it happened to me.”
John remembers being inside a city as gas spread through it. Anyone who breathed the substance became so frightened that they attacked one another, killed themselves, or leaped to their deaths. At the time, John did not understand why so many people were falling.
“I just didn’t know the city was in the sky,” he says. “I didn’t understand why they were jumping. Now I know.”
The shapeshifting Manhunter took the form of Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) on Earth. Antaan revealed in episode 5, however, that before that they were in a romantic relationship and failed to conceive a child. (This would have been sometime before 1996, when Abin Sur crashed on Earth with the Manhunter and the Green Lantern ring found Hal.) Because Antaan blames the Manhunter for the genocide of his people — and because Zoe herself admitted to John that her programming compelled her to do it — we’re led to believe that she somehow orchestrated this gas.
Traces of that substance remain in the planet’s clouds and water. While John and the Hal-ogram cross the lake on what looks like a man-made boat, a storm causes John to hallucinate. He sees his abusive father and his younger self, both accusing him of being afraid. When John falls into the water, the Hal-ogram manifests and pulls him back on the boat, saving his life.
The greater mystery here is why Hal maintained a private portal to this planet. Was he investigating the destruction of Antaan’s people before the Rushville incident? Or did he begin sometime after he got out of jail? Whatever the explanation, John and the Hal-ogram are surprised when they get to the island and find Sinestro trapped there inside a building appears to be emitting the gas into the atmosphere.
How did Sinestro get to Antaan’s planet?
Back in episode 6, Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) told John that someone had broken Sinestro out of “Spacekaban” (Space Azkaban), the extraterrestrial prison where Hal visited him earlier in the series. Now we know that he ended up stranded on Antaan’s dead world. Since Hal had easy access to the portal, does that mean he’s responsible for breaking Sinestro out? If so, why?
Sinestro knew more than Hal about the Manhunters and the Guardians’ buried crimes in 2016, so it’s possible Hal did this so he could learn more about everything. But that doesn’t explain why Sinestro would grab someone who looked like Hal and hold them at knifepoint.
For now, episode 7 establishes a compelling chain of connections: Someone freed Sinestro, Hal maintained a secret route to his hiding place, and Hal was murdered by someone a few months after returning to Rushville. Sinestro may not have pulled the trigger, but he might know why Hal died.