Though there are still three episodes to go, this week's fifth instalment of Lanterns played out more like a season finale, with several big reveals and a few significant character deaths.
When the (black) smoke had cleared, Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) and his alien soldiers, William Macon (Garet Dillahunt), and his wife Zoe, aka the Manhunter (Poorna Jagannathan), were dead, along with a lot of other people in Rushville.
When Zoe "rescues" John Stewart from his crashed rental car (after it exploded), we get confirmation that she did indeed arrive on Earth with Green Lantern Abin Sur... before killing him when her survival instict/programming kicked in.
"When the time comes, that’s why everyone gets their arms out and is ready to take down the Lanterns [and Antaan’s extraterrestrials] for her," Jagannathan tells THR. "When Abin Sur crashed his spaceship in Rushville, Zoe was on that spaceship. And although she didn’t want to kill Abin Sur, there was a slight chance that he would go and tell the Lanterns that Zoe is still alive. So she had to kill him because her survival is paramount to everything. She puts her survival above everything. So she’s been in Rushville all these years, and she’s been since the day that Hal Jordan got his ring [via Abin Sur] in ‘86."
Zoe heals John on the condition that he allows her to kill Hal Jordan, claims the ring, and leaves Rushville, but she doesn't count on his drive to complete his mission and eliminate a potential threat to humanity overcoming his feelings for her.
"Her fatal flaw is assuming that human beings operate like she does. She is programmed in a very certain way and assumes human beings also have that very particular programming. She glitches [human] programming by saving someone when they need it. She glitches their programming by making them indebted. It’s worked throughout her life on Earth, and it’s worked throughout her life on other planets. But John outmaneuvers that. He goes against the contract, and no one has ever, ever gone against that contract. She’s not doing anyone a favor. She’s literally bringing someone back to life from the brink of death. And you can see in that [burning car] scene with John, she waits. She doesn’t pull him out of the car right away. She waits and waits and waits till he gets to the brink of death [for optimal leverage]. That’s who she is. That’s the space that she plays in, and that’s the power she has. But she just got completely outmaneuvered, and that smile at the end is her recognizing the fact that she finally got outmaneuvered. It’s a game-recognizes-game situation."
We don't anticipate Zoe coming back (her crystallized heart is now in Lianna's possession), but there were some pretty big hints that her grandson, Sheriff Kane's son Noah, may have been conceived with Manhunter DNA. There's speculation that Noah will be revealed as Jordan's murderer in the 2026 timeline.
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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.