Episode 5 of HBO’s Lanterns “Lights Out” felt more like a season finale than a typical episode. And it is a finale because it puts the “alien hiding in Rushville” storyline to a close. We also learn why Hal Jordan is stripped of his ring and status as Sector 2814’s Green Lantern, as well as why John Stewart doesn’t have the ring in the show’s 2026 timeline. And man…the answers to those questions are a real doozy.
How did we get to this point?
In 2016, John and Hal are in pursuit of a dangerous alien criminal called the Manhunter, a synthetic being that is feared and despised by everyone across the universe. The Manhunter is hiding out in the small town of Rushville, Nebraska and they have 48 hours to find and capture the Manhunter. If they fail one of its victims, an alien called Antaan, will blow up the town killing anyone unlucky enough to be in close proximity to Western Nebraska.
On top of that, John and Hal are at odds with each other over their respective missions. Looking for information about the Manhunter, Hal visits his old friend and mentor Sinestro who quickly turns the conversation into laying out Hal’s suspicion of John. He knows that John and the Guardians are conspiring to replace him as the Green Lantern behind his back. This fear is so strong that Hal willingly takes Sinestro’s advice to inflate John’s confidence about becoming his successor while doing what he can to deny him.
Keep in mind that Lanterns have made it very clear that Hal doesn’t even like being a Green Lantern anymore! He’s so jaded he can barely bring himself to recite the oath when he charges the ring (which would explain why that ring is always low on power). And the show subtly implies that the combination of Sinestro’s betrayal along with the shady machinations of the Guardians broke Hal, leaving the arrogant cynical jackass he is today.
Meanwhile, John is struggling between his objective to take Hal’s ring and the sense that what he’s doing isn’t right. Lianna tells John the Guardians fear Hal is compromised and that John needs to take the ring from him instead of waiting for Hal, despite being chosen by the Guardians’ chosen successor. And because John’s life isn’t complicated enough as it is, he starts to fall for Zoe Macon, wife of Will Macon who has his own anti-anything-related-to-aliens militia.
Oh, and Zoe is the Manhunter John and Hal have been investigating this entire time.
In episode 4 “The Weenie,” Hal hears a partial recording of John’s conversation with Lianna, where his trainee calls him “old and tired” and that “asshole” is just keeping the ring warm for him. If you saw that conversation in full you can tell John only said those things to get Lianna off his back, that’s he’s under a ton of pressure from the Guardians and his parents to take Hal’s ring. But still, it’s not a good look.
What happens next?
After learning that John knew that Zoe is the Manhunter but hid it from him, the episode ends with Hal crashing their rental car into a telephone pole.
John is pinned in the wreckage, furious as he demands to be let out. But Hal won’t do it…not yet anyway. Hal needs John “off the game board,” he says, because he knows the Guardians want to replace him and he isn’t going to make that easy. His plan is to leave his trainee trapped in a mangled car, let Macon’s militia and Antaan’s alien squad tear each other apart as cover all while Hal hunts down Zoe himself and brings her back to Oa. He tells John flat out that he’s never going to replace him.
It’s an ugly moment that makes it clear that Hal is no longer abiding by the Green Lantern Oath. He’s consumed by his fear of losing his power and being replaced, which is causing him to betray his moral code.
Rushville goes to war
While a good chunk of Rushville taking up arms with the town under a mobilization alert, Hal meets with Antaan at the café to tell him the Manhunter has taken the form of William Macon, the militia leader married to Zoe. It’s a lie, and Antaan seems to sense that he’s being played. He makes it clear he’s skeptical because Manhunters are known to take a female form so they can seduce the most powerful male of a group.
But that doesn’t stop him and his gang from invading William’s compound where Antaan kills the guy by cutting his heart out to see if it will crystallize the way a Manhunter’s heart is supposed to. It doesn’t, which means Macon died for nothing and Antaan knows Hal set him up.
Meanwhile Hal tries to lure Zoe out into the open, only for her to set her killer satellites to rain fire on Rushville from orbit. Hal is caught off guard as he’s forced to burn through what little charge his ring has left just trying to keep people alive. He does manage to take Antaan out for good, catching his suicide bomb with a tornado construct. Which gives Zoe enough time to escape. No matter what choice Hal makes, he manages to make things worse.
A pissed off John cleans up Hal’s mess
Unknown to Hal, the crashed rental car explodes while John is inside. With his skin covered in third-degree burns, Zoe heals him but at a price. She wants to kill Hal, have John tell the Guardians that he died saving Rushville, so the ring will pass to John. John agrees to the deal because he has his own plan. He tracks Hal back to the motel where he immediately starts pounding the shit out of Hal.
“You don’t deserve this fucking ring,” John says.
“I don’t deserve it? It fucking chose me,” Hal spits outs.
Their fight is a brutal, one-sided brawl that’s clearly in John’s favor due to him being younger and a fit former Marine. But Hal refuses to back down or let John take his ring.
Their fight is interrupted when Zoe fires her satellite at the motel. Hal saves them both with his ring, only for John to leave Hal buried in rubble for Zoe to find him. This clues Hal into John’s real plan: use Hal as bait while he gets to the nearest billboard and shoots Zoe dead.
After he cuts out Zoe’s crystalized heart to give to the Guardians as proof, he finally takes Hal’s ring.
“Was it worth it? Huh?” Hal asks him.
John doesn’t answer him. He puts the ring on his finger and just walks away.
“Hey. They replaced me. They’ll replace you!” Hal says but he still doesn’t get a response.
Meeting with Lianna at the bar, John sets down a bag with Zoe’s heart like it’s evidence of a crime. He tells her he spent years imagining what it would feel like to finally wear it. Pride. Power. Instead, once it was actually on his finger, he just felt empty.
Hal betrayed everything he was supposed to stand for to hang onto that ring. He turned his back on his code, his oath, himself, and it broke him. John muses that Hal probably doesn’t even remember anymore why he wanted the job in the first place. And, after a second of hesitation, John admits he doesn’t want it either. He places the ring and the lantern on the bar and walks out.
So now we know why Guy Gardner is the Green Lantern instead of John, but getting to this point was kinda sad.
The man who’s supposedly so fearless that he’s practically a death seeker ultimately gave into his fears of losing the ring. And now Hal is truly left with nothing that matters in his life. “Don’t get hung up on the jewelry, Junior” Hal told John in the very first episode. If only Hal had taken his own advice.
New episodes of Lanterns air every Sunday night on HBO and HBO Max at 9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT.
