The first season of Lanterns came to an end on Sunday, and, to the disappointment of a lot of fans, "Dirt and Stars" revealed that the DCU's Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) will most likely remain dead after his body was discovered in the closing moments of the series premiere.
It turns out that Sheriff Kerry Kane killed the man she loved when he told her that he knew the truth about her Manhunter hybrid son, Noah.
Could Hal return? Sinestro tells Halogram and John Stewart that he knows a way to resurrect his former trainee, but the scheming villain might well have been lying. Then there's always the possibility of Jordan coming back via the parasitic entity known as Paralax.
"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."
At any rate, for the time being, Hal Jordan is and shall remain six feet under, and series writer/co-creator Tom King has now addressed the perception that he must "hate" the character for killing him off in such an unceremonious manner.
King says that he "loves Hal" as much as everyone else, viewing the original ring-slinging hero as a Captain Kirk-like figure who doesn't believe in a no-win scenario. He adds that the decision to do away with the character came down to a desire to "cut through the noise" and establish that this "universe is big, and has stakes, and it matters."
I'm sure King doesn't hate Hal Jordan, but a lot of fans are convinced that someone involved with the show does. The issue is that Lanterns didn't just kill off a beloved hero; it dragged him through the mud, putting him through the wringer while presenting him as, if not a villain, then certainly a bit of a selfish asshole, and - according to co-writer Vanessa Baden Kelly, at least - a borderline racist.
Personally, I was fine with this depiction of Jordan for the first seven episodes, because I was sure that we would see the character redeemed in the finale. Yes, Hal served his time, found love, and was ready to do whatever was necessary to protect his girlfriend and her potentially genocidal son... but was then shot in the head and buried in Rushville, with hardly anyone showing up to his funeral.
It's clearly supposed to be a tragic end, but I wonder if the creative team realises that it also bordered on cruel? Stewart tells Guy Gardner that Jordan died a hero, but did he? Maybe the show should have put a little more emphasis on the man Hal Jordan always was underneath while he was still alive.
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.