It'd be understandable if you were getting a bit sick of the Lanterns coverage at this point, but Sunday's season finale did leave us with a lot to discuss, and the final(?) farewell between John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Halogram (Kyle Chandler) included a very interesting detail that a lot of viewers seemed to miss.
Spoilers follow
After John learns that it was actually Sheriff Kerry who killed Hal (she panicked when he told her he knew her son Noah was a Manhunter), he decides to charge Jordan's decommissioned ring using the lantern power source Sinestro created.
Before he takes flight, Halogram - the sentient construct of a younger and far less jaded version of Jordan - shows up to bid farewell. Halogram tells John that he didn't hear Kerry relay his last words, so that Stewart will say them back to him.
Hal replies, "I love you too, junior," and vanishes (possibly for good) with a wink.
The real Hal Jordan started calling his trainee "Junior" after visiting his parents, Bernadette and John Sr., knowing that it would irritate the man the Guardians chose to be his replacement. The Hal construct wasn't aware of this, and had been referring to Stewart by his first name or "trainee" right up to this last conversation.
This may not mean very much, of course, and even if it is supposed to be some kind of hint that Hal could be resurrected down the line (Sinestro mentions that it is possible, but he could have been lying), we're not sure exactly what the significance of Halogram calling John Junior might be.
Did the construct somehow acquire his future self's memories and consciousness?
For many, this show simply wouldn't be the same without the Pierre/Chandler dynamic, but we'll just hsve to wait and see if Hal does return.
"I definitely don't want to speculate about the answer to that question," co-creator Damon Lindelof told Collider when asked whether we might see Jordan again. "I can only tell you that everybody in the Season 1 room, inclusive of the writers who are working on Season 2, felt like, even though we knew that it was going to be emotionally devastating and/or disappointing and maybe even frustrating, that the worst possible schmuck-baity thing that we could do is show you a pilot where Hal Jordan was definitively dead, and then try to walk it back and say, 'Oh, he was a clone,' or 'He's only mostly dead' in the Princess Bride vernacular. In terms of moving forward into subsequent seasons of the show, I swear to you, as I look at you in the eye on Wednesday this 30th of September, I do not know anything about the creative, and I wouldn't want to hamstring those writers in any way for what future storytelling mechanisms they could indulge in.
Knowing what the comics have done with Parallax and Hal, I think, has died at least 3 or 4 times over the course of the canon, and celebrating everything that Kyle did in his performance to get the audience to fall in love with Hal. So I think that honoring the emotional impact and making Season 1 feel felt. The question that you're asking would be the equivalent of, 'Would I want to see a movie called Ghost 2 where Patrick Swayze was alive again?' And the answer is, I would not, because it would degrade the emotional impact of Ghost. But where there's a will, there's a way. Where there's will, there's a way."
Unfortunately, showrunner Chris Mundy gave a less optimistic response to the possibility of Hal's return while speaking to Brandon Davis.
“It’s absolutely the end of the season and the end of [John and Hal’s] relationship. I think our intent was always just that, to close that off emotionally. That’s the best way to say it. I know there are people that love the idea of Hal going forward but… I would never say never to anything, but it’s also like that closed the book on our story for this season.”
HBO in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. The pilot episode is co-written by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, who are co-creators for the series. Mundy serves as showrunner. The first two episodes are directed by James Hawes, with Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Alik Sakharov also tapped to direct. The series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, James Gunn, Peter Safran, King, Ron Schmidt, and Hawes. Based on the DC comic characters from Green Lantern.
The series stars Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
The series follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.