HBO’s Lanterns has proven to be one of the best new additions to James Gunn’s DC Universe. The series brings together Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and drops them into a decade-hopping murder mystery set in a small rural town where nothing seems right. Series creators Tom King, Damon Lindelof, and Chris Mundy tastefully plucked subtle elements from Green Lanterns comic book mythology and imbued them into what feels like a grounded noir with True Detective vibes.
At the center of it all is a mysterious Manhunter. Not to be confused with the DC hero of the same name, the Manhunters are an army of artificial police created by the Guardians of the Universe long before the Green Lantern Corps. After going rogue, their mission of maintaining order violently devolved into a genocidal crusade. Lanterns shifts that history ever so slightly by turning the live-action Manhunters into synthetic shapeshifters capable of deep-cover infiltration, making the secret identity of the one hiding out in Rushville the core tension of the show.
Given Lanterns is a murder mystery wrapped in a superhero story, no one is above suspicion. Before the next episode airs, let’s take a look at some of the most compelling theories as to who might be the Manhunter, and what that might say about their ultimate goal in Lanterns.
8
Zoe Macon
While there are quite a few potential suspects, the most likely candidate feels like Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan). Fans have reason to be suspicious of her. From the moment she’s introduced, Zoe provokes a relationship with John Stewart and begins to insert her way into seemingly mundane moments. There’s something too convenient about her proximity to the Lantern investigation. It often feels like she’s keeping tabs on Hal Jordan, allowing her access to both of the show’s central Lanterns. If the Manhunter’s goal is to gain the trust of the heroes and undermine them from the inside, Zoe’s in a fairly perfect position to make that happen.
However, that perfection also makes her setup as the Manhunter a little too obvious, and there’s an even deeper DC theory to the character that makes her potential reveal considerably more interesting. Rather than being the Manhunter, Zoe could actually be Sinestro’s daughter, Soranik Natu, acting as an informant for her imprisoned father on Earth. Her relationship with John would still be steeped in deception, but it would tie her directly into the larger Green Lantern mythology without making her the ultimate antagonist. Perhaps that’s exactly the kind of misdirection Lanterns wants us to fall for, but Sinestro’s apparent interest in John is quite telling.
7
William Macon
If Lanterns aims to convince us that someone is the Manhunter, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt) might be the easiest sell. He leads an anti-alien militia, lives on an enormous compound that’s armed to the teeth, and owns alien-detection technology advanced enough to surprise even Hal Jordan. More importantly, William’s hatred of extraterrestrials feels almost too extreme. What better explanation than a Manhunter’s programming turning its obsession with eliminating threats into a human crusade?
One thing that doesn’t add up, though, is that Manhunters are often portrayed more as stealth operatives in the comics, yet William Macon is as loud as it gets. By aggressively recruiting and heavily arming a militia, he’s broadcasting his awareness of extraterrestrials to anyone who will listen. The more intriguing angle positions him as the DCU’s William Hand (Black Hand). Under this theory, Macon’s operation is just a front, and his mysterious financial benefactor is the actual Manhunter (which we’ll get to shortly). Macon ultimately might not be the mastermind, but he could very well be a mere pawn in a larger scheme.
6
William Macon’s Mysterious Benefactor
Sometimes the most suspicious character in a mystery is the person we haven’t actually met yet. William Macon repeatedly references a wealthy benefactor funding his compound and operations, providing the town advanced surveillance technology and likely other high-grade gadgets we haven’t seen yet. If Macon is being positioned as a red herring, his benefactor could be the real answer to everything.
While some suggest this benefactor character could be Lex Luthor, given his well-established interest in alien technology, the Manhunter theory adds a bit more weight behind the mystery. The theory posits that the Manhunter could be hiding somewhere on Macon’s property, while using his wealth, resources, and anti-alien obsession as camouflage. Macon thinks he’s preparing humanity for an alien invasion, but In reality, he may already be playing into the Manhunter’s hands. The theory makes the mysterious benefactor far scarier than a mere human with deep pockets.
5
Sheriff Kerry Kane
Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) has one of the strangest backstories in Lanterns. Coming from the mean streets of Gotham City, she should be a total fish-out-of-water character, but somehow seems right at home in rural Nebraska. Serving as sheriff of Rushville, she has incredible access to the town and several resources that could make it easier for her to blend in. Moving from Batman’s backyard to a small town like Rushville also gives Kane the perfect cover when trying to disappear into an unsuspecting community. The Manhunter theory takes that one step further. As an outsider, Kane could have arrived in town specifically to observe the people around her while quietly embedding herself in local law enforcement.
Others suggest Kerry’s connection to Gotham means something entirely different. She could actually be tied to Batman in some capacity or may even be related to Katherine Kane, aka Batwoman. Her suspicious history might be simply a DC deep cut rather than evidence of alien infiltration. The other major problem with this theory is that the show’s flash-forward to 2026 seems to suggest Kane is genuinely human, but Lanterns has already taught us not to trust everything we see.
4
Billy Macon
I’ll be the first to admit it: Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) is a wild curve ball, but he may be the best example of a character most easily hiding in plain sight. Not only is Billy the son of William Macon, but he’s also married to Sheriff Kane and serves as the town’s lawyer. Although he might appear aggressively ordinary on paper, if the Manhunter is looking for the perfect human identity to embody without any potential hiccups, that mundanity makes him almost invisible.
Taking Billy’s form would give the Manhunter access to nearly every important corner of Rushville. Through Kerry alone, the alien would have a direct connection to local law enforcement, plus his father already nets him significant manpower if ever needed, not to mention the aforementioned alien-detection technology. His job as an attorney also gives him a perfectly believable reason to know nearly everyone in town without seeming suspicious.
The problem is that Billy hasn’t been central enough to the story for the reveal to really devastate us. A Manhunter twist should ideally make viewers rethink a relationship we’ve become invested in, but Billy hasn’t had the same kind of build-up in the story yet. Unless Lanterns has deliberately kept him in the background, he may be a little too obvious a vessel for a twist this big.
3
Lianna
The latest reveal in episode 3 gives us another character who is suspicious almost entirely because Lanterns refuses to show us what she really looks like. The Guardian, otherwise known as Lianna (Laura Linney), visits John Stewart’s mother in order to “right the record” and fix any lingering issues caused by the Green Lantern selection process that have affected John’s father. To gain the mother’s trust, Lianna drops her human disguise and reveals her alien form, but the camera only shows the transformation from over her shoulder. While we’re supposed to believe she’s a Guardian, the decision to hide her face has inevitably fueled the theory that Lianna is actually a Manhunter.
It’s admittedly a bit of a stretch, especially because the episode clearly establishes her connection to the Guardians and uses her encounter with the Stewart family to explain John’s path toward becoming a Green Lantern. But Lanterns is a mystery box, and withholding the most important visual detail of a supposedly major alien reveal feels like the kind of thing fans are going to obsess over. Maybe it’s simply saving the full Guardian design for later into the series, or perhaps we’re looking at the Manhunter and haven’t been shown enough of her face to realize it yet.
2
The Entire Town of Rushville
This Manhunter theory is where everything goes from plausible detective work to full-blown science fiction nightmare. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers. What if there isn’t a single Manhunter hiding in Rushville, but the entire town was replaced with them?
The theory suggests that the Manhunter escaped Abin Sur’s ship 40 years ago, then spent decades learning how humans operate and developed the ability to duplicate itself. Rather than infiltrating the town as one person, it slowly replaced the people of Rushville until the entire community became a machine-run imitation of itself, kind of like season 4 of Westworld.
The biggest piece of evidence fans point to is the town’s bizarrely empty hospital, which is stocked with brand-new equipment despite apparently having very little use for it. In the right light, that starts to look less like a struggling rural hospital and more like a facility built for something that doesn’t actually need human medical care. It’s almost certainly the wildest theory on this list, but if Lanterns really wants to go cosmic horror with its Manhunter mystery, turning an entire rural American town into a nest of artificial beings would be one hell of a reveal.
1
Hal Jordan
There are actually two very different ways Hal Jordan could be connected to the Manhunter mystery. The first involves the show’s 2026 timeline, where Hal is found dead without his Power Ring. Given that Lanterns has already established that shapeshifting aliens can convincingly imitate humans, some fans suspect the corpse at the end of the very first episode isn’t Hal at all. It could be a Manhunter-created body double planted specifically for John Stewart to discover in the modern timeline. The missing ring only amplifies the theory’s plausibility.
The second theory is even more complicated: Hal isn’t a Manhunter, but he’s what the Manhunters are actually after. Fans have noticed that Hal’s routine consciousness backups mysteriously stopped in 2006, leading to speculation that he has been slowly infected by Parallax, the physical embodiment of fear. Under this theory, the Manhunters on Earth aren’t trying to destroy humanity at all, but are attempting to eliminate Hal before whatever is inside him takes over.
That would make Hal the ultimate red herring. He’s not the robot in disguise, but potentially the true antagonist of the series from the very start.