HBO’s new series “Lanterns,” which sets much of its story in the fictional town of Rushville, Nebraska, pushed further into mystery territory in its sixth episode, leaving open the question of who killed Green Lantern Hal Jordan.
The episode picks up just before the flash-forward that closed the series premiere, when John Stewart and Sheriff Kerry Kane find Hal Jordan’s body frozen inside the Rushville football stadium. Earlier that night, John had been lured to town by his mother, Bernadette, who told him Hal wanted to apologize to him. The apology never really happens, and instead Hal tells John that his friendship with Bernadette is genuine. The two men argue, John breaks Hal’s nose, and he leaves town. Hours later, Hal is found dead of a point-blank 9mm gunshot wound in the stadium.
Although John was already gone when the shooting happened, the broken nose puts him under suspicion with Kane. He runs into further trouble after activating a Lantern-Signal that Hal left behind for his successor, Guy Gardner (played by Nathan Fillion), the town’s athletic director who took over as the sector’s Green Lantern after Hal burned out and John turned the job down. The move sparks a fistfight between John and Kane’s ex-husband, Billy Macon, and a group of other men. John spends a night in jail before his brother Marcus (Jared Grimes) bails him out.
The episode also fills in more of John’s life since giving up the ring: he now works as an architect designing panic rooms for individuals and for municipalities, through a firm he co-founded with Marcus, using the proceeds to fund the recording career of another brother, Andre (Romeo Brown). He is in Rushville to pitch an underground bunker system for the fictional Midway City, but the ongoing murder investigation and Hal’s funeral keep him tied to Rushville instead.
John takes on the responsibility of arranging Hal’s burial, including a uniform and ring that Guy has to travel into space to retrieve. He also delivers the eulogy Hal had written and given to his ex-girlfriend, Carol Ferris (Amie Mackenzie), which ends with the line, “I hope I mattered.”
Determined to find Hal’s killer, John digs up the body, removes Hal’s decommissioned ring, and activates a digital copy of Hal that reacts to news of his own death. Separately, John and Kane discover a storage-locker key among Hal’s belongings that leads to a vault they cannot open without Hal himself, raising the possibility that the digital version could unlock it.
Another subplot involves a teenager, Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler), who threatens to tell the sheriff she saw John with Hal on the night of his death unless he pays her reparations for damage caused during earlier battles between Lanterns, aliens and the Manhunter known as Zoe. John also takes on the task of feeding Hal’s sentient, carnivorous plant, Earl.
The episode leaves several threads dangling heading into the back half of the season, including who killed Hal Jordan, what the storage vault contains, and how the show’s Guardians and Manhunters figure into the larger mystery.
