Lanterns New Episode Trailer Teases a Battle for the Power Ring (And a Deadly DC Villain)
The best magic tricks work by making sure you’re looking exactly where the magician wants you to look. Lanterns spent its premiere doing something remarkably similar. For months, HBO sold its new Green Lantern series as a True Detective-style mystery, with Hal Jordan and John Stewart investigating four dead aliens in small-town America. Throughout most of the premiere, audiences were focused on the same mystery Hal was trying to solve. Even Hal’s demonstration of his power ring has a sleight of hand to it, casually using one of the most powerful weapons in the universe to open a cold one. Then the closing minutes completely change the trajectory of the show and the questions we had. We thought Hal was the detective, but he is, in fact, the mystery. Now that Lanterns has shown us how it intends to play the game, every new clue deserves another look. And our first glimpse at what’s still to come suggests the series may already be hiding some of its biggest answers in plain sight.
Following the season premiere, HBOMax released a new “On this season of Lanterns” trailer and there’s enough packed into the footage it’s worth watching more than once. If you haven’t watched the pilot: spoilers ahead. In the closing moments of the show’s first episode, John Stewart returns to Rushville in 2026 to find Hal Jordan dead from a gunshot wound and his Green Lantern ring missing. Suddenly the alien deaths in 2016 aren’t the show’s biggest central mystery after all. The trailer shows us that the first Green Lantern may be dead in 2026, but there’s still plenty of Jordan throughout the rest of the show’s timelines. We also get glimpses or John going Manhunter hunting, Laura Linney making her first appearance as a Guardian of Oa, and Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner dropping in for a visit. At one point, Hal Jordan walks into a packed town meeting and asks, “Were you talking about me?” Yes, Hal. The internet has been talking about you quite a bit, actually.
What Is Hiding in Rushville?
The new footage gives us a much clearer idea of what Hal and John uncover during their investigation. Hal drags one of the dead aliens through security at the football stadium where the mass shooting occurred and seemingly discovers that someone in Rushville has technology capable of detecting aliens. That leads to a bunker filled with weapons Hal says are too advanced to come from Earth. The most disturbing shot finds our Lanterns inside a secure white room with a drain in the floor and lasers that look like the alien-detecting tech built into the walls. When the system opens fire, Hal has to bubble them both for protection. Whatever this facility is, it certainly looks designed to identify aliens and make sure they don’t leave the room alive.
The trailer also really wants us looking for a Manhunter, with Stewart injected with a mysterious yellow liquid and given 48 hours to identify one. Comic readers will naturally think of the Lantern Corps precursor Manhunters, the Guardians’ robotic first attempt at policing the galaxy, but it’s also been the moniker of a vigilante that used equipment left behind by various heroes and villains to hunt criminals that escaped justice, which sounds awfully familiar given the alien-hunting arsenal in Rushville. We also get a glimpse of a strange alien transforming next to a woman holding a baby in front of what looks like the same garage John’s dad put bullet holes through in 2006. Paired with our first look at Laura Linney’s Guardian, it raises questions about just how long they’ve been watching John. The trailer keeps telling us to look for a Manhunter while showing us several things that could fit the description. There’s that magic act again.
Who Shot Hal Jordan?
Knowing Hal’s eventual fate makes almost every moment feel layered in suspense. We see John examining the uniform, powering up a ring, and discovering an alien skull in the desert. By the trailer’s end, Hal and John are having a knock-down, drag-out fight, with Stewart the last man standing holding a power battery while surrounded by armed locals. Hal says, “I don’t need a sidekick. And the only way you’re getting this ring is over my dead body.” Ten years later, Jordan is dead, and his ring is gone. We knew this show would be about John Stewart becoming a Green Lantern; now we know how he gets the ring is part of the mystery. Guy Gardner provides more of Hal’s past when he shows up, telling John from outside his jail cell, “First time I met Hal Jordan, he was in jail too,” before the two later meet beneath what amounts to a Green Lantern Signal.
Showrunner Damon Lindelof already proved how effectively he can use a disjointed timeline and a few well-placed distractions on shows like Watchmen and Lost, putting information directly in front of audiences before revealing why it mattered. Lanterns is pulling the same tricks with Hal and John, and the season-ahead trailer gives us plenty of reasons to watch both hands from here on out. We thought we were watching Hal solve a mystery, but now, like Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks or Lilly Kane in Veronica Mars, understanding the victim may be the key to solving it. We already know where Hal’s story ends, now the mystery we need to solve is who shot Hal Jordan? Besides Ryan Reynolds at the end of Deadpool 2, obviously.
