Lanterns blows up real good—and wants you to feel the hollowness in the aftershock

Hal, confronted by a pissed off Kerry as Rushville’s citizenry heed the long-awaited sirens and prepare for war against an alien threat, rebuffs Kerry’s certainty that Zoe will destroy the town if Hal doesn’t just leave. “She’s a war criminal!,” Hal barks, “She’s not even human!” Kerry, as unmoved by Hal’s stubbornness as she is by his offhand xenophobic tack, only replies, “Then everything that happens next is on you. Are you willing to accept those consequences when they come?”

Hal lies to Antaan at the diner (after nonchalantly force-bubbling away the aliens’ many bullets) that Macon’s the Manhunter, forcing a showdown. (Antaan’s men employ the series’ third “jump out of a moving car” maneuver to blow up Macon’s weapon storehouse.) Meanwhile, Hal literally flips his ring-sporting middle finger at the sky, daring Zoe to face him, and is somehow shocked when Zoe does just what Kerry warned she’d do, raining death from above on the panicked townspeople. With his desperate rescue actions draining his ring (why, Lanterns, is Hal’s ring always at 5 percent at pivotal moments, I ask you?), he’s ambushed by a furious John at the motel, their resulting fight seeing the much younger, stronger John leave his battered mentor in the rubble of the Zoe-lasered building. 

The betrayals in “Lights Out” are as inevitable as they are crushing. Hal, spitting blood, gets a patient villain speech from the arriving Zoe about John’s supposed double cross, only for Hal to begrudgingly admit, “If there’s one thing I know about that kid, he ain’t no coward.” Realizing that she’s been lured into the open dawning, Zoe turns to where she knows the Marine sniper would be and smiles just as John shoots, his last words a tender, “See you, Zoe.” John returns and, finally, wrenches the ring from Hal’s finger, the defeated Hal’s parting malediction, “They replaced me. They’ll replace you” echoing through the smoke. 

And so Lanterns’ two main 2016 narratives are done (possible future twists notwithstanding). The Manhunters have been extinguished from the universe and John Stewart is the new Green Lantern. Everybody played out their parts more or less as expected, with the aging Hal’s grasping desperation to stay relevant giving way to a younger, arguably more deserving hero. The bad guy is dead, leaving John to take up his mantle. Only he doesn’t.

Aaron Pierre has had to contain so much as John, and “Lights Out” should be the actor’s coming out party as much as the victorious John’s. But as John walks, barefoot, bloodied (and no doubt aching from the sucker-punch nut shot Hal gave him) into the bar where Laura Linney’s Guardian (apparently named Lianna?) eagerly waits for news, actor and character still withhold so much. Pouring himself his first-ever drink, John tosses a bloody backpack on the bar and matter-of-factly tells the obviously disappointed Guardian that he’s left Hal alive—and that he’s not their man. 

In the bag is Zoe’s now-crystallized heart, which John rightly calls the Guardian’s “sins and consequences,” while he carefully removes the all-consuming symbol of a lifetime of plans and dreams and says, just as simply, “You know, I spent a lot of my life wondering what it would feel like to wear this—pride, gratitude, power. But then when I put it on I just felt empty.” 

Empty. That’s how Lanterns wanted its characters to feel—and us, too. It’s a maddening mission statement for a genre exercise where gratification and punch-heavy superhuman problem-solving are the lifeblood, and I can’t help but respect it—even as “Lights Out” leaves a certain unsatisfying aftertaste. When John tells the disbelieving Guardian that Hal “betrayed everything to keep this ring—his code, the oath, even himself, and it broke him. Probably doesn’t even remember why he wanted the damn thing,” the glittering magic ring takes on a decidedly Gollum feel. 

We know now why Guy Gardner’s got the ring in 2026, and why John drives his flashy SUV to a barely rebuilt Rushville to meet the still dogged sheriff Kerry and find Hal’s dead body in those high school bleachers. With three episodes left (and John’s leaked return—presumably wearing a ring—in next year’s Man Of Tomorrow), there’s still another bend ahead, and it’s just as bold (and frustrating) to put the series’ seeming climax little more than halfway through. There’s a cost to superheroing—even the dauntless Superman with his much-derided alter ego disguise acknowledges that. But Lanterns has been all cost and no benefit, to the extent that John makes the only truly heroic move a principled person could make. He gives it away.  

Stray observations

• • On the phone to his parents (“Wait, am I on speaker?,” he asks, amusingly), John notes that he doesn’t think Hal knew the car would blow up with him in it—but he can’t be sure. (Either way, it’s a deeply irresponsible dick move, Hal.)
• • There must be something about that gun shop. Just as he did when slyly smiling through a confrontation with irate townies last week,  John loosens up while on the phone with Bernadette and John Sr., concluding with a righteously pissed, “First, I’m gonna take that ring clean off that motherfucker’s finger.”
• • Halogram, reluctantly summoned for recon by Hal, irritates his present-day self by saying of John, “I met him the other day—I like him!”
• • Laura Linney continues to tickle me, as her Guardian, despite properly pronouncing the current situation in Rushville “a shitstorm,” takes a moment to ask John, “Where are your shoes?”
• • Zoe takes a moment before the shitstorm to comfort the frightened Noah, in her own way. “A lot of people are going to die today. People you know, some you love,” she says with unidentifiable warmth, before telling the boy, “Don’t forget everything I’ve told you.” I wonder what the star high school quarterback in 2026 truly thinks about John’s return. 
• • It’s a wrap on Garrett Dillahunt as well, with Macon getting a noble death, nearly convincing the steely Antaan that he’s the Manhunter before getting his (human) heart cut out. Antaan–revealed to have been Zoe’s mate! (in whatever form she took while infiltrating his planet)—notes to the dying Macon, “You would never welcome death.”
• • Dillahunt and Jagannathan make the couple’s final farewell (spoken in the alien language the grateful Macon has learned) complexly moving. Sure, she’s a shape-shifting killbot who’s leveraged curing Macon’s cancer into a puppet master infiltration of Rushville, but damned if the actors don’t sell the moment. 
• • Still—Zoe’s plan is moving awfully slowly, isn’t it? In 10 years, she’s managed to, what, gain the conditional fealty of a Nebraska town of (as the opening flashback confirms) 1,001 people? I suppose when you’re the sole survivor of a universe-spanning robot army, you work with what you’ve got. 
• • Zoe tells John that she took the form she did (non-white, a woman) because, “the fastest way to understanding a civilization is to start from a disadvantage.” Reaching out to John’s own struggles, she adds, “Adversity makes you stronger in ways comfort never could. Prejudice, injustice, fear—those aren’t obstacles, they’re the crucible that forges your greatest self.” There’s a touchy undercurrent of vindication for Macon’s militia-minded preparedness against the encroach of “others” I’m not sure Lanterns‘ messaging fully grasps. 
• • Much will be made about Hal’s seeming acknowledgement of some sexual fluidity in response to Antaan’s questioning. (Hal responds, “When you’ve experienced the pleasures of the galaxy like we have, it’s less about preference and more about opportunity,” to Antaan’s surprise that he’d supposedly been “coitious” with Macon.) I mean, it feels like Hal’s just running his scam, but he’s admitted he does like to get wasted (and laid) on many, many planets.
• • You just know that closing Bon Iver song was chosen because of the lyric, “there are things behind things behind things / And there are rings within rings within rings.” A little on the nose, Lanterns.