Lanterns Season 1 Finale Review: The Best Scene Happens in a Parked Car

By AJ Hanson · 9 min read

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Full spoilers for Lanterns Season 1 Episode 8, "Dirt and Stars."

Kerry Kane killed Hal Jordan. She shot him on the bleachers while he was telling her he loved her, after he found out her son Noah is a Manhunter and tried to get them both out of Rushville. If you came in expecting a ring fight, there isn't one. The biggest scene in the Lanterns season 1 finale happens in a parked car, and it's the right call. John Stewart does fly by the end. HBO still hasn't ordered season two, so we're looking at a year and a half at least before we see what he does with it.

Hal Gets One Good Year

The episode starts back in 2016, right after the siege in Episode 5. Kerry finds Hal bleeding in the motel wreckage. They both know the Guardians are about to lock him up, and she tells him it's his fault. She's upset anyway. "I can still feel bad about being right" might be the best line Kelly Macdonald gets all season.

Ten years later she's outside the prison with Schlitz and flowers. Rushville hasn't forgiven Hal, and when the whole diner glares at them, Kerry stands up and tells the room he deserves peace and he's with her. Then she sits back down and finishes her garlic bread.

Chandler spent six episodes playing Hal as the loudest guy in every room. Here he sits quietly while someone else defends him, embarrassed at first and then grinning at her. When she invites him to Noah's game and he asks "You mean together?", he sounds like a teenager. We'd never seen Hal happy before this, and it makes the football field in Episode 6 hurt more on a second watch.

Noah Macon Is a Manhunter

Someone throws Molotov cocktails through Hal's window. He goes back for Earl, falls through the burning stairs, and wakes up on the slaughterhouse floor with new skin and the same circular scar Zoe left on John. Noah is standing over him. He saved Hal, and he asks him not to tell Kerry, because she doesn't know that Noah knows what he is.

People online guessed this weeks ago. The show itself didn't do much to set it up, so it lands more as a surprise than a payoff. Shea Pritchard makes it work anyway. He plays Noah calm and polite, and you can see how hard he's working to stay that way.

Sinestro Gets One Scene

Back on the dead planet, John has Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) chained up and has to dunk him in the fear-gas water before he'll talk. Noah broke him out of prison because Sinestro is the only being to ever kill a Guardian, and in return Sinestro forged Noah a lantern out of the fear soaked into that planet. There are cracks of yellow in it. Comics readers know what Sinestro does with fear and a lantern, and the show leaves that for later.

Thomsen is excellent, and he gets one scene. He tries to buy John with the ring and the Halogram with a second life, they both say no, and they leave him chained on a planet covered in bones. The show never says what happens to him next. It does finally fix the ring battery we complained about in Episode 7. John has something to charge it with, and it isn't the Guardians' lantern.

The Car Ride

John steps through the portal and Noah is waiting in the storage unit. He beats John, takes the ring, and makes him drive.

This is where the season gets decided, and it's two people talking in a car. John tells Noah that Zoe wanted him to kill her, because she knew she couldn't stop herself. Noah describes the future he can see if he lets the Manhunter side run things: star quarterback, then fame, then politics, then the kind of power nobody should have. At a fork in the road, he picks the high school game. He tells John he killed Hal, then takes off the ring and asks John to kill him.

John doesn't threaten him. He tells Noah he knows what it's like to carry something you never asked for since you were a kid, and Aaron Pierre plays it with more feeling than John has shown all season. We kept waiting for the ring to come out. It never does, and we didn't miss it.

Who Killed Hal Jordan in the Lanterns Season 1 Finale?

Kerry did. John finds her in the bleachers and tells her she must have been scared for Noah every single day. She knew what he was all along. Zoe's work on Kerry back in Episode 5 left her pregnant when she hadn't been with anyone in months, and she raised the boy anyway.

The flashback goes back to the night on the field. Hal tells her Noah is planning something and he wants to get them both to a safe house in Guadalajara. Kerry panics, tells him he never should have come back, and shoots him while he's telling her he loves her. Noah confessed to protect her.

Some reviews called the twist easy to see coming, and they have a point. We still think it works, because the show cares more about why than who. It also explains Kerry's scene with the Halogram in Episode 7. It was hard to watch then, and now we know she was talking to a copy of the man she shot. She brought John to Rushville because she needed someone to tell her whether she'd raised a monster. Kelly Macdonald was the best thing in Lanterns, and this is her best scene.

John tells her Noah isn't a monster. When she says she'll turn herself in after the game, he tells her Hal wouldn't want that. Noah throws the winning pass as time runs out and commits to Nebraska.

Where Lanterns Episode 8 Stumbles

The Sinestro scene answers almost every open question in one sitting. A few of those answers deserved more room, and Noah gets defined by Sinestro before we spend any real time with him.

Nobody ever explains who firebombed Hal's house. It's the most exciting sequence in the episode and the show just leaves it.

The Manhunter rules bend to fit the ending. All season we were told the programming always wins, and Zoe couldn't beat it even with a family she loved. Noah apparently can, because he was raised well. That might be what season two is about, but the finale mostly treats it as settled.

Then there's Kerry. A sheriff shot a man and keeps her badge because John decides it's what Hal would have wanted. We understand it emotionally. It's still a big call to make on a dead man's behalf.

You Take the Stars, I'll Take the Dirt

John lights the signal and Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) shows up annoyed. John tells him Hal died a hero and that's all he needs to know, then sends the Guardians a message: Earth has a Green Lantern again, working as an independent contractor, with no Guardians and no Corps. Guy takes the stars and John keeps the dirt. That's backwards from the comics, where John usually heads into space and Guy hangs around Earth, and we're curious how the DCU handles it when Guy turns up in Mister Miracle.

The Halogram comes back one more time. He heard everything and he backs John's call on Noah. He tells him not to be afraid to be afraid, then asks what his last words were. John tells him: "I love you." The Halogram says "I love you, too, Junior," and blinks out. Chandler has been dead since Episode 6 and still gets the best goodbye on the show.

John charges the ring, leaves Maggie her money with a note saying he's still sorry, and goes home to his mom, who won't let go of him. Then he rewrites the oath. The classic version promises that no evil escapes his sight. John keeps "In brightest day, in darkest night" and adds "I'll embrace my fear." He still hasn't put on the suit. He does fly, for the first time in eight episodes.

Will There Be Lanterns Season 2?

Not officially. As of the finale, HBO hasn't renewed the show. A writers' room has been working on season two pitches, and HBO wants to see them before it decides anything. Damon Lindelof and Tom King, who co-wrote this finale with showrunner Chris Mundy, won't be back as writers. Even if HBO says yes this month, the realistic gap is a year and a half at minimum, and streaming shows lately take closer to two.

The Lanterns season 1 finale leaves a lot hanging: the Guardians' answer to John, a Manhunter heading off to play college football, a lantern with yellow in it sitting on Earth, and Sinestro chained up on a planet nobody is watching. John is set to appear in Man of Tomorrow, so we'll see him again either way. That isn't the same as more Lanterns. Eight episodes wasn't enough, and we want season two now, not sometime in 2028.

TL;DR (For The Skippers)

Lanterns Season 1 Finale: The Verdict

The Sinestro scene explains too much, the firebombing never gets an answer, and the Manhunter rules bend to fit the ending. The car ride, the bleachers and the Halogram's goodbye are three of the best scenes of the season, and the show gets John off the ground without a single ring fight. We'd have happily taken two more episodes of this.

Verdict: PRESS X

This episode includes a character asking to be killed. If you're struggling, you can call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Outside the US, findahelpline.com lists free support in your country.