‘Lanterns’: What Really Happened to Hal Jordan? His Family History Raises New Questions

The penultimate episode of Lanterns digs deep into Hal Jordan’s (Kyle Chandler) past while John Stewart’s (Aaron Pierre) investigation into his murder leads to one very unexpected discovery, a dark journey into generational trauma, and a familiar Green Lantern enemy. Warning: Spoilers ahead for Lanterns Episode 7.

The episode opens in 1975 with a young Hal Jordan (Henry Samiri) refusing to give up a baseball after coming within two outs of pitching a perfect game. His teammates jump him over it, forcing the team to forfeit, and his coach (Billy Griffin) demands an apology. Hal refuses, and his father, Martin Jordan (Jake B. Miller), backs him up, even getting into a fight with the coach.

That inability to let go later extends to Hal’s identity as a Green Lantern and what losing the ring would eventually mean for him.

“I mean, the whole thing — all of his thoughts about eventually having to get rid of this ring — it’s like retirement,” explained Chandler. “It’s like hitting 65, and you’re retired, and all of a sudden, you don’t have your social people at the office, and your identity is gone. You’re not that guy anymore. You’ve lost your power. You’re just another guy on the street. So, yeah, I mean, it’s pretty heavy on people.”

Afterward, Martin gives Hal a necklace carrying the key to his family’s “failsafe,” something passed down from Hal’s grandfather. But he also gives his son another lesson: Sometimes you have to let go of the ball. You can’t hold onto something forever. Martin dies not long afterward, leaving Hal with both the key and that lesson.

Back in 2026, John Stewart is trying to explain the situation to Hal Jordan’s digital Sentry (Chandler). Hal is dead, and Stewart isn’t a Green Lantern. He’s simply trying to figure out who murdered him.

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John needs the Halogram to open a storage garage using Hal’s voice, and along the way, he learns more about what the construct actually is. The Halogram can apparently manifest whenever John thinks about Hal — even though John isn’t wearing the ring, something a Lantern normally shouldn’t be able to do. John, naturally, has no idea how to take that as a compliment from pseudo-Hal.

Their investigation takes them back to Rushville, where the Green Lantern symbol now sits beside a monument honoring everyone who died because of the Lantern. The Sentry insists Hal wasn’t a killer and that killing isn’t what the Green Lanterns are about.

John stops by the high school, where a pep rally is underway ahead of Noah’s (Shea Pritchard) big game. Noah has become a natural leader, but he still hasn’t decided where he wants to attend college. He’s waiting until after the game to make his decision.

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John pulls Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) aside and introduces her to the Sentry. It’s a bit of a shock to see a former lover back in digital form, but she takes it well. When he asks who might have wanted Hal dead, Kerry has a pretty broad suspect pool: Practically the entire town hated him. But she also reveals something John didn’t know — Hal was a fan of his.

John asks Kerry about Hal’s storage garage. She has to host a party for Noah first, but afterward, she agrees to help.

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The Sentry, however, has developed his own theory: Kerry killed Hal. John doesn’t buy it, and the two continue to the storage unit. Inside, they find a backpack containing a gun and protein bars, and something considerably stranger: a portal leading to another planet.

John climbs through and discovers a vast wasteland beneath a massive spacecraft. The city is abandoned, skulls litter the sand, and an entire civilization appears to have died there.

The place immediately connects to John’s previous encounter with Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor). John explains that Antaan claimed to be the last of his people and injected John with their experiences, forcing him to feel their deaths as though they were happening to him. Their city had been filled with a gas that drove its inhabitants to murder each other and kill themselves.

But one question remains: What was Hal doing there?

John and the Sentry eventually find Hal’s boat sitting on a lake. As they head out onto the water, John finally unloads everything he had been carrying about Hal. He came back because he wanted an apology. Instead, he was left with all the anger over the way Hal treated him — the crash, the lack of training, and the animosity between them.

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When John wants his Hal-shaped companion to disappear, he sings OutKast until the Sentry gets the message. However, once the rain begins to fall, John starts to hallucinate, seeing apples floating in the water, his father, and eventually himself as a child. The Sentry pulls him out of it and realizes the rain clouds contain remnants of the gas that destroyed the planet’s civilization.

That leads the Sentry to explain Hal’s family “failsafe.” When Hal eventually opened what his father had left behind, he found photographs, cash, and a note revealing that Martin had suffered from depression and had tried to hide his pain from his son. “He told me all this because my grandfather left a note to him. The same pain. Passed down from generation to generation…”

Suddenly, Hal becomes a tragic figure. The fearless Green Lantern may have spent his entire life carrying generations of pain he never knew how to escape. And with Hal now dead, John is forced to confront a disturbing possibility: Did Hal die by suicide, following the same path as his father and grandfather? Did Kerry find Hal, or maybe throw the gun away to hide the shame? Or did she pull the trigger?

For Aaron Pierre, that history also reveals just how much John and Hal have in common, as each carry the wounds left by their families. “I actually think that John and Hal discover over a certain amount of time that they have more similarities than opposing, juxtaposed experiences,” Pierre told TV Insider. “They have a lot more similarities, and they have a lot more common ground than they anticipated. And I think that’s another part of the beauty of this storyline and the exploration of what this dynamic is. It’s a real study of the human condition.”

John apologizes to Hal for his struggles, marking the first time he calls him “Hal” rather than “Jordan.”

John and the Halogram make it back to land and discover a structure. Inside, they encounter a mysterious being who immediately threatens the fake Hal. A quick disappearing trick and a jab to the face uncover the mystery attacker…

It’s Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), who has somehow been stranded on this dead planet.

The episode then returns to 1975, after Hal’s father’s funeral. Young Hal sees the baseball he had refused to surrender earlier lying on the ground. In the final image, Hal picks up the ball and walks away.

Lanterns, Season Finale, October 4, HBO Max