Episode 5 of HBO’s “Lanterns” opened with a flashback confirming what the show had already hinted at: Sheriff Kerry Kane, played by Kelly Macdonald, is a transplant from Gotham who found her way to the fictional Nebraska setting of Rushville.
The cold open shows a younger Kerry Kane, with bangs, on the run. Her car stalls just outside Rushville, and she pushes it to the diner familiar to viewers from the show’s 2016 timeline. There, men from Gotham catch up with her. The episode reveals that Kerry’s now-deceased father had been mixed up with Gotham’s criminal underworld, and money is owed. When Kerry tries to argue her way out, the men cut off her finger.
Zoe, played by Poorna Jagannathan, arrives and uses her powers to fend off the pursuers and regrow Kerry’s finger. Zoe’s only condition is that Kerry return the favor someday, an exchange that helps explain why the people of Rushville are so devoted to protecting Zoe throughout the series.
The flashback also gives viewers a taste of Gotham as it exists in James Gunn’s new DC universe, including how its residents talk.
Macdonald told Decider that director James Hawes wanted to keep Kerry’s accent restrained rather than lean into a heavy New York-style Gotham voice.
“James, the first block director, when we were talking about accents, he said, ‘She’s from Gotham, but we don’t want to be heavy-handed with that and make it too much of a New York-y kind of accent,'” Macdonald said. “He said ‘east coast,’ but you know, she’s been in Nebraska a while.”
Macdonald said it would have been “much easier to just go full force Gotham,” but Hawes wanted the accent softened to reflect how long Kerry has spent living in Rushville.
Asked whether she’d want to explore more of Kerry’s Gotham backstory in future episodes, Macdonald said she would.
“Oh, God, I would love it,” Macdonald said. “But she’s younger then, as well, is the problem. Yeah, I would love to explore it. I would have loved a bit more of that. But it was tantalizing enough. The way it is, I think, is pretty good. But she does have a history, yeah.”
