The first episode of Lanterns ended by jumping from 2016 to 2026 and revealing that Hal Jordan had been murdered in Rushville, Nebraska. The Green Lantern Corps veteran was found dead in the snow by John Stewart, with a bullet wound to the head and his ring missing.
Fans have since had plenty to say about the cliffhanger. Some are outraged that DC Studios has killed Hal, while others are convinced that it's all a big misdirect and that the hero is still very much alive somewhere (he may have even broken bad, becoming the villainous Parallax).
In last night's episode, "Trust Fall," Hal retrieves a few of the dead aliens from the morgue, and not one of them, even in death, has reverted to their human form.
After somehow disguising themselves as humans, the aliens still look like regular people, regardless of whether they were shot or blown up. That makes it increasingly likely that the dead Hal Jordan could be one of these aliens in disguise.
It would explain why the ring didn't seek out John when Hal died, and should help win over fans who are still fuming over the possibility that Hal has been killed during his first DCU appearance. However, Hal later tells John that "alien juice" has leaked all over his car, so it would likely be pretty easy to see whether the dead Hal is human on the inside.
We'll have to wait and see, as this in itself could be a misdirect to make us think there's a chance that Hal is alive and kicking. Even if he doesn't die, we know John will wield the ring in next summer's Man of Tomorrow, potentially leaving Hal powerless moving forward.
In other Lanterns news, some fans are convinced that, after seeing Hal suited up in last night's episode, HBO has tinkered with his costume to make it appear more green after the backlash. While it did look brown in the first trailer, that seems to be down to lighting, as is evident from the image below.
Lanterns co-creator, writer, and executive producer recently said this about the decision to kill Hal in the premiere:
"The first thing that, you know, Tom and I sort of looked at each other when we were even um kicking around the idea of killing Hal. And we're like, we can't do that. Everyone’s going to hate us, and it feels gimmicky. But Mundy actually was like, 'I don't think that it does feel gimmicky. I think that it will actually sort of infuse the entire story with a lot of emotionality, especially if the audience understands that John and Hal were not in a good place at the time that Hal died."
"Traditionally in comic books, my understanding is that these characters can’t die, but what if we're doing something that's supposed to be grounded, maybe this is something that we have to do? Then, we're like, 'Yeah, but we're still going to get blamed for it.' But we gradually started kind of coming around to it, and I think because we were so reluctant to do it, and because we’re fans, at the same time we get our turn to to run with the baton of these amazing characters, but also just as fans, Hal means something to us too."
"So I think that we basically started reframing the question in terms of yes 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 this long for another live-action version of Hal, haven’t 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."
"And 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."
The first two episodes of Lanterns are now streaming on HBO Max.