Following the series premiere of Lanterns on Sunday night, even hardcore DC fans were left a little confused. The show establishes that, in 2016, Hal Jordan is training John Stewart, who was chosen by the Guardians of the Universe, to replace him as Green Lantern.
However, when Hal dies in 2026, his ring is missing and, in Superman—which was set in 2025—Guy Gardner is protecting Earth as its Green Lantern. Answers are likely coming in the weeks ahead, but it currently feels like a major continuity error in the new DCU.
In an interview with Collider, Lanterns co-creator Damon Lindelof shared insights into DC Studios' approach to building this shared world. He also revealed how Lanterns was added to the wider DCU and James Gunn's plans for the franchise.
"James and Peter [Safran], when they first took over at DC, they brought together a brain trust of comics writers, television writers, film writers, people that they trusted, to kind of begin to iterate what their vision was, and the projects that would relate from that," he explained. "But all of that was already happening after James had written the Superman script, in which Guy Gardner was Green Lantern."
"As soon as I heard [Tom King's pitch], my question was, 'Well, if Guy is the Green Lantern of Earth, then where is Hal? Why aren't they talking about him?' And James was like, 'What do you think? The sky's the limit.' And we very quickly started iterating. 'Well, Hal’s probably still alive, so maybe he's retired. Or, wait a minute, is he alive? And what about John? Don't we want John to be Earth's Green Lantern?'"
"So all of those conversations organically started to kind of come around the spirit of, 'How do we understand that in the present day of the DCU, the one that Superman is kind of a backdoor pilot for?'" Lindelof continued. "And James really, when he and Peter took over, [was] saying, 'We're not doing origin stories, we're going to hit the ground running.'"
As we expected when spoilers for the pilot first leaked online, many fans are unhappy that Hal is killed off. While he'll continue to appear in Lanterns' 2016 timeline and presumably as a "Halogram" in the present, the series acting as the end of his story is widely considered a misstep.
Acknowledging that he and King "looked at each other when we were even kicking around the idea of killing Hal, and we were like, 'We can't do that. Everyone's going to hate us. It feels gimmicky,'" Lindelof credited showrunner Chris Mundy with pushing them to make the decision.
"On Sunday night, are we willing to acknowledge that a lot of people are going to be angry, that if we were watching this and not making it, that we would be saying, 'I waited this long for another live-action version of Hal, having not gotten him since the Ryan Reynolds film, and then basically 50 minutes after getting me to fall in love with Kyle Chandler, you're killing him off? F*** you.'"
Is it truly the end for Hal, though? "I guess our feeling is, let's see how you feel at the end of Episode 8, and if you still feel like it was exploitative or unnecessary, or that it wasn't exactly what had to happen in order for this story to get told, then we deserve it," Lindelof added. "But I think we're willing to absorb the boos from the audience in the first inning, as long as we still have a shot at winning the game."
Some have read these comments as possible confirmation that the finale will reveal Hal is alive. After all, the pilot made a point of establishing that there are aliens on Earth who can disguise themselves as humans, setting the stage to later confirm all is not as it seems.
However, after such a ballsy move in the opening episode, would it not be something of a cop out to then bring Hal back from the dead while John serves as Earth's new Green Lantern? We know Season 2 is tentatively planned, so perhaps that will revolve around the mystery of Hal's whereabouts or even his descent into villainy as Parallax.
"Lanterns gets off to a solid start with its pilot, and while an ending that veers wildly from the comics risks alienating comic book fans, a compelling story and pitch-perfect performances from Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler are reason enough to come back next week," we wrote in our review of the pilot.
The first episode of Lanterns is now streaming on HBO Max.