Major spoilers ahead for Lanterns episode 1
Lanterns, DC’s latest streaming superhero drama, is a mystery set in two different timelines—2016 and 2026. However, the story starts in 1996 when John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) is a child being trained by his father not to be afraid no matter the circumstances. It also has a gaping hole centered on 2006 and the hidden reason why Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) stopped backing up his consciousness.
That’s four time periods, all 10 years apart, culminating in 30 years of both their lives and Hal’s mysterious death that brings John back to Rushville, Nebraska where he worked his first case with his mentor. Across three decades, the HBO Max original will be filling in the gaps of why John is the first person to be recruited by the Guardians of the Universe, what happened to Hal in the mid-2000s, why aliens have set-up camp in Nebraska, and what led to Hal being found dead without his ring on the very bleachers he sat on in 2016.
But first, the premiere settles the audience into a tried and true cop drama with power struggles over jurisdiction, a local militia led by a man with his own agenda, and a suspect who literally blows the case wide open.
John Stewart Was Raised To Be A Superhero In ‘Lanterns’
Most superhero origin stories don’t begin with being trained from a young age to become what your planet needs in the face of unknowable danger. But that’s how John’s begins in Lanterns. It is 1996 and he is sneaking in a viewing of Hal Jordan’s 60 Minutes interview with his brothers against their father’s wishes. They are on the lookout for his headlights as John is engrossed in what Hal is saying.
John barely gets the TV off in time before his dad, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson), walks through the door. However, it doesn’t matter. They’ve been caught. John bares the responsibility and is led outside to face the consequences of their actions. His father places an apple on his head and draws his gun. John holds still as he fires, only moving once the apple has been split apart by the bullet.
It is clear this is not the first time John Sr. has shot at him, testing his resolve. In fact, the Marine is proud of his namesake. He’d asked his son if he was afraid, and John had responded, “No, sir,” proving it with scarily unflinching candor for anyone let alone a child.
From the short time the premiere spends with the father and son, it’s established that John’s path in life to becoming the Green Lantern was one carved by determination as fate swung the Guardians’ eyes to Earth with true interest for the first time in their existence thanks to Hal receiving Abin Sur’s ring.
Upon Hal’s demise, the ring is meant to go to John. It’s a curious transfer of power considering Lanterns aren’t preordained. The ring is supposed to choose its next wielder once its previous Lantern dies. Yet Hal’s will automatically go to John. That’s why he’s been told to train his successor, a task he executes terribly in 2016 as he works John’s last nerve and puts his life in danger with little to no instruction on how to use the ring.
Hal’s 2006 Consciousness Gives John A Message
John’s first lesson of the premiere comes with Hal throwing himself out of his moving vehicle after leaving behind his ring to see how John will handle the situation. The car speeds off the side of a cliff and is totaled. But John survives by conjuring bubble wrap to suppress the impact. He comes out unscathed but extremely annoyed.
As he walks to the taco stand Hal was telling him about, the ring brings forth Hal’s consciousness. He’s not the Hal that John knows. Cynicism has yet to touch this version of his mentor. 2006’s Hal is surprised his current self hasn’t taught John about the requirement that Lanterns back up their consciousness. He’s shocked he hasn’t taught him much of anything. It makes him wonder if he trusts John, but he pushes on and delivers his message—“There’s hail in Rushville, Nebraska.”
John has no idea what it means, but 2006 Hal knows his current self will understand the message. He pops out of existence and John is left to carry on to the taco stand. The moment, however, doesn’t read as a one-off. It’s strange that Hal stopped backing up his consciousness 10 years ago. As is his personality change.
The Hal of 2006 would have welcomed a trainee. He would have taught him as he should and been open with his knowledge as a Green Lantern. 2016’s Hal doesn’t care to be a mentor. He tolerates John’s presence, asking about how he survived the crash. This Hal has no problem leaving John stranded after he delivers his message, taking off into the air.
John has to hop a flight and rent a car to get to Rushville, where Hal has been for hours scoping out the aftermath of a shooting at a high school football game. It’s here that Lanterns’ first mystery gets rolling.
Sheriff Kerry Kane Clashes With Hal
The local cops, led by Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), have secured the scene and have been slowly letting people leave as they question witnesses. Kerry is holding firm to having jurisdiction, refusing to turn the scene over to Hal as she doesn’t accept the theory that the shooting involved aliens. If it’s not an extra-terrestrial incident then it stays within her command.
Too gung-ho and green for his own good when it comes to investigating crimes, John tips off a suspect Hal and Kerry had been monitoring. The man, despite the cold, hadn’t grabbed a jacket and didn’t seem to know a soul still left on the field. Noticing his cover has been burnt, he takes off with Kerry and John hot on his heels.
After running around in the high school, John takes a shortcut and heads the man off. He clocks him a good one and knocks him out. The man’s arrested, and Kerry won’t let Hal speak to him, so Hal gets into a bar fight to land himself in jail. On to his scheme, the sheriff ensures the two men don’t get anywhere near each other overnight and in the morning, Hal is arraigned by a judge who has little time for his shenanigans.
Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) intercedes before Hal can get into deeper trouble. He declares that he’s Hal’s lawyer and puts forth the hefty bail that’s being asked for his release. Billy is Kerry’s husband, but he’s also the son of William Macon (Garrett Dillahunt), a militia leader who invites John and Hal to his ranch for dinner.
Both space cops get a surprise while on Macon’s property. John when he realizes that the woman he slept with in her truck the night before is Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan), Macon’s wife, and Macon is aware of their encounter much to Hal’s delight. And Hal learns that Macon isn’t simply a survivalist with an outrageously wealthy benefactor whose name he can’t say due to an airtight NDA.
As he’s grilling, Macon informs Hal that he’s a student of history. He’s aware of the impact and trauma of colonization on established civilizations with their own culture and traditions that have nearly been wiped from the face of the Earth or assimilated down into a fraction of what they once were. It’s not a fate he’s willing to let happen to his planet.
Macon thinks that the aliens that were shot at the football game were a part of an advanced team. It’s why he forces Kerry’s hand into letting Hal speak to the man she has in her custody.
Waylon Hints At Why The Aliens Are in Nebraska
The suspect’s name is Waylon Sanders (Chris Coy). He sticks tight to his story that he’s a truck driver who’d come to see the game because he loves his hometown’s team who were up against the Rushville Pioneers. He easily can answer questions about Nebraska football but when Hal presses Waylon about pop culture he should be familiar with like the name of Harry Potter’s school, the cracks in the man’s identity begin to show.
What truly gives him away is his lack of an opinion on President Barack Obama. Waylon’s knowledge of him can fill two sentences. Hal’s skeptical that a born and bred rural Nebraskan would have so little to say about the nation’s leader considering he lost all five electoral votes in the 2012 election.
Conceding that the jig is up but unwilling to fully acknowledge he’s not human, Waylon presents his reason for being in Rushville as a hypothetical. He, and the dead members of his team, are a part of a group plotting vengeance but he doesn’t say against who.
Waylon, however, has no intention on staying alive long enough to jeopardize the mission. He warned Hal that he was essentially a ticking time bomb. The detonator a thought he could have at any moment when he so chooses. He makes good on that threat leaving Hal to absorb the blast with his ring as John shields Kerry with his body and the building rocks from the explosion.
No one is injured even on the street where the force of the suppressed bomb blew out windows and stopped traffic. But any idea that aliens aren’t in Rushville went out the door with Waylon’s attempt at spreading mass panic and abject harm.
‘Lanterns’ 2026 Timeline Sets Up Hal’s Death
In the present day, John returns to a Rushville marked by change and covered in snow. Kerry, still sheriff after 10 years since their first meeting, greets him warmly with a hug. She takes him to the football field where Hal sits frozen in the same spot on the bleacher he sat in 2016. He’s presumably dead, unresponsive, and without his ring.
The Lanterns premiere ends with no context for how Hal wound up on those bleachers or why his ring didn’t go to John. The mystery of what happened to him and the power that was meant to be bestowed upon his successor seems connected to the case that they both have to solve a decade in the past.
Lanterns streams Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Max. Follow Sabrina Reed on Forbes for weekly coverage of the series and news about the business of TV. For deeper thoughts on the TV she’s watching, chat with Sabrina on X and Substack.