Here’s lanterns Just Quietly Made the Mystery of Hal Jordan’s Death Way More Interesting
The first episode of Lanterns dropped a bombshell on the larger DCU franchise, revealing that one of the most beloved superheroes in the franchise was dead. When the body of Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan was discovered at a football stadium in 2026, it set the stage for a really distinct mystery, one that sent fans into overdrive with enough anger to power a Red Lantern battery. All the episodes that followed, though, have been focused on what happened a decade before this climactic moment, keeping fans engaged with the mystery of the Manhunter and what happened between Hal, John, and the Green Lantern ring.
This week’s episode of the show, though, might have very quietly made the mystery of Hal Jordan’s death even more bizarre. As noted, even though fans know Jordan has seemingly died in the present day, the larger context of the show has been focused elsewhere, taking it off our minds as we mourn some. But in the most recent episode, Hal had a specific conversation with Sinestro, one where his mentor told him that he should kill John Stewart, a task that Jordan himself refused because he “isn’t evil,” implying that only someone with that alignment could carry out a murder.
Hal Jordan’s Comments on Murder Make His Own Death Stand Out
Hal’s conversation with Sinestro is one of the most unique moments in all of Lanterns, in part because it quickly becomes the series showing off its Manhunter influence (the Michael Mann film, not the alien they’re hunting for) but also because it reveals so much about their relationship. Even though Hal is the one who has put Sinestro behind bars on this unnamed Green Lantern prison planet, he still feels like something of a student to his old mentor.
The way that Chandler plays the scene is one of Jordan flipping back and forth between uncertainty about his current situation, but also placating his mentor to get what he wants out of him. It’s a fascinating scene from a pure performance perspective, but the way that it makes Hal’s own death distinct is the quiet part of it all.
By refusing Sinestro’s idea that Hal should kill John, citing that a cold-blooded murder would only be done by someone evil, it puts Hal’s own death into a new light. Who could be around who would be considered “evil” and also want to kill Hal Jordan? Immediately, the first possible answer to this is the entity they’ve been hunting all season, the Manhunter. But it also gives Lanterns the possibility to flip Hal’s specific point of view on its head by having someone who is absolutely not “evil” be the one who kills him.
Who Killed Hal Jordan?
As noted, Lanterns may have confirmed that Hal Jordan dies in Rushville in 2026, but the series has spent most of its real estate thus far focused on both the Manhunter mystery and the tug of war between Hal and John over who will still be Green Lantern when all is said and done. To that end, the list of suspects for who might have actually killed Jordan has not been explicitly defined. Perhaps it is the Manhunter; perhaps a jealous person with a grudge against Jordan did it (we know he’s not popular in Rushville, for example), but his death is confirmed too early in the show for it to be carried out by someone that we haven’t seen.
There is, of course, the twist that many DC fans are clinging to about Jordan’s death: that it’s all a fake-out and he’s not really dead. This largely feels like holding out hope rather than any actual storytelling stakes that the series itself has been setting up, and given Jordan’s comments this week, it’s starting to look even less likely.
That said, this week’s episode of Lanterns offers another dialogue exchange that might not seem like it has significance to Jordan’s death, but which could contextualize it even further. We know from the first episode that there are more than a dozen alien species out there that can replicate human bodies beyond detection, adding that to something Jordan and Stewart say this week might make his death a bigger fakeout than we realize.
As the two Lanterns try to suss out the Manhunter, Jordan notes that they’re known for assessing threats and manipulating them in order to get what they want. To that end, is it possible that Jordan isn’t dead, and in fact, the body found in Episode 1 is a fake created by the Manhunter in order to give Jordan a favor that puts him in their pocket? This might be a reach, but it certainly puts the idea of “evil” into perspective, especially with how Jordan’s death has been presented so far.
Lanterns is quietly putting all the pieces of its story in place with every passing week. Even though we know where it’s headed, thanks to Jordan’s death in the first episode, the big picture of the entire series has still not revealed itself just yet. We’re officially at the halfway point, and the fact that new theories are still popping up makes this one of the most exciting DC shows in years.
