Lanterns Season 1 Episode 5 open on a flashback to 2007, the year Kerry Kane first rolls into Rushville. Her car dies on her right as two men catch up to her on the road, and she’s forced to push the vehicle the rest of the way to a nearby diner. These aren’t random attackers, either. They’ve been tailing her all the way from Gotham, and after taking care of her father, a known snitch, they’ve now turned their guns on Kerry.
What struck me here is how little Kerry actually cares about her dad. She flat-out admits she didn’t shed a single tear when he died, and she tries to talk her way out of the situation instead of pleading for his memory. That bargaining only lasts so long, though, because Zoe (the Manhunter) shows up and ends the standoff fast, killing one of the men outright and grabbing the other before he can run.
Zoe’s solution for making Kerry disappear is as gruesome as it is practical: she convinces Kerry to cut off her own pinky finger so the surviving attacker can carry it back to his bosses as proof she’s dead. In exchange for saving her life, Zoe asks for a favor down the line. She warns Kerry that men will eventually come looking for her, and when they do, Kerry will need to do whatever it takes to protect her. Kerry agrees, not knowing exactly what she’s signing up for.
Hal and John’s Fallout After the Crash
Back in the present, John survives the car crash from the previous episode with nothing worse than some cuts and bruises, but he’s fuming at Hal. His theory is that Hal is planning to take full credit for killing Zoe. Hal shuts that down immediately, reminding John that Lanterns don’t kill, full stop. Given that John was working behind Hal’s back this whole time, Hal walks off and makes it clear, once again, that John is never replacing him.
Hal sends a digital copy of himself through the ring to run Sentry duty at the tower while he searches for Zoe on the ground. Once he tracks her down, he flies in and catches Kerry Kane instead, who immediately opens fire on him. Her reasoning is blunt: if she doesn’t try to take him out, she’s dead anyway. There’s already a kill order set to hit Rushville because of Hal’s presence there. Zoe can see the confrontation happening but can’t hear what’s being said between them.
Kerry tells Hal to leave town, insisting it’s too dangerous for him to try bringing Zoe in himself. What she’s conveniently forgetting is that there’s also an alien hit squad closing in on Rushville with the same target in mind. Hal refuses to back down, because that’s just who he is, and he’s determined to see Zoe answer for her crimes. Before things can go any further, the town’s alarms start blaring and Rushville braces for a full-scale fight.
Zoe and John’s Twisted Bedside Confession
Zoe arrives just in time to watch John’s car go up in flames with him still inside, then hauls him off to the hospital to patch him up herself using her Manhunter lasers. As she works, John rasps out that he’d better not come out of this “White,” a line that got under my skin more than almost anything else in the episode. He calls her inhumane for what she’s doing to him, but the conversation shifts from there into something closer to an origin story for the Manhunters themselves.
Zoe reveals that the Guardians originally created the Manhunters to enforce justice across the universe. The problem was that they became far too brutal in carrying out that mission, and eventually the Guardians pulled the plug and tried to shut the whole program down. It’s a solid piece of world-building dropped in at exactly the moment John (and the audience) needs the context most.
Then comes the gut-punch: Zoe openly admits she intends to kill Hal Jordan, but she wants to keep John alive so he can take the ring for himself once Hal is gone.
The Alien Hit Squad and Antaan’s Suspicions
While all this is happening, Hal shows up at the diner looking for the alien hit squad, hoping to strike a deal. His pitch is simple. They have the numbers, he has the intel, and together they could actually bring Zoe in to face the Guardians instead of letting her keep killing across Rushville.
It’s here that Antaan, leader of the hit squad, drops a theory that reframes everything we’ve seen from John this season: he believes John is compromised because he slept with Zoe. According to Antaan, seduction and manipulation, specifically having sex with the strongest person in a given area, is one of the Manhunters’ most effective tools for gaining control over their targets. Hal also learns that William Macon has personally given the order to have him eliminated, and for now, Antaan is willing to believe Hal really is the Manhunter everyone’s hunting.
Meanwhile, John gets fitted for a new skin suit, and Zoe drops another bombshell: she’s the one who killed Abin Sur. She claims that’s part of why she’s drawn to John in the first place, because he “really sees her” in a way no one else has. Whether that’s genuine connection or just more Manhunter manipulation is left hanging, and honestly, I don’t think we’re supposed to know yet.
The Assault on Macon’s Compound
Antaan doesn’t wait around. He sends his hit squad straight up to William Macon’s compound to take Macon out personally, with different squads assigned to hit specific points, including the Weenie and the front gate, all rigged to blow. Antaan himself heads inside to confront Macon face to face, and Macon buys himself a few precious seconds by pretending to be the Manhunter everyone’s after.
It doesn’t work for long. Antaan sees through the act almost immediately, pins Macon down, and cuts his heart clean out just to confirm he’s actually human. It’s one of the more brutal beats in an episode that’s already stacked with them.
John’s Betrayal Begins
Back at the hospital, John chokes out a guard and slips away, immediately calling his father to get connected to Lianna. His parents, however, aren’t interested in his safety, they just want to know where the ring is. That tells you everything you need to know about John’s family dynamic. John then breaks into a gun store, grabs himself a sniper rifle, and openly admits he’s lost it. His plan from this point forward is to take the ring off Hal’s finger by any means necessary.
Meanwhile, Hal is doing exactly what a hero should do. He’s fighting to stop the Manhunter’s laser beams from raining down on Rushville and killing everyone in it. Zoe escalates things further by dropping the town’s water tower, which releases a strange, darkness-producing smoke and throws the entire area into chaos. In the middle of it, Hal conjures a tornado with his ring and hurls Antaan into the air to keep him away from civilians, and Antaan ends up exploding mid-flight as a result. Hal manages to escape the blast zone and heads for the motel to recharge his ring.
That’s when John ambushes him. The two fight hard, and at one point John has Hal nearly choked out completely, close enough to taking the ring that it should have been over. But Hal spots Zoe’s lasers bearing down on both of them just in time, manages to slip the ring back on, and throws up a shield that saves them both from her attack.
The Sniper Shot That Changes Everything
John bolts the moment the blast clears, and Zoe shows up right after to taunt Hal directly. What neither of them realizes is that John orchestrated this entire moment to use Zoe as bait. He lines up his sniper rifle and shoots her straight through the head, killing her instantly. Then, in one of the coldest moments of the episode, he cuts out her heart, which has turned to crystal, and tucks it into his bag like a trophy.
With Zoe dead, John walks over to Hal’s broken body and pries the ring straight off his finger. Hal, barely conscious, asks him if it was worth it. John doesn’t answer. He just walks away, while Hal warns him with his last bit of strength that he’ll be replaced too, eventually.
John Faces the Guardian
Ring in hand, John shows up in front of the Guardian carrying the Manhunter’s crystal heart as proof of what he’s done. It’s here that reality catches up to him: he realizes he hasn’t actually earned this ring, no matter how he got it. He tries to spin the story anyway, insisting Hal broke his own oath by trying to hold onto the ring instead of letting it go. By the end of the scene, John genuinely doesn’t seem to know what he wants anymore. He takes the ring off and walks away, leaving the episode on a note of total moral exhaustion.
The Review: Is Lanterns Actually Rooting for the Wrong Hero?
So this is the episode where John Stewart’s villain origin comes into full, unmistakable focus, and he gets there by embracing basically the worst version of himself imaginable. Almost every meaningful choice he makes here is deeply immoral, and it doesn’t do his character any favors at all. Sure, you could argue he’s compromised after sleeping with Zoe, at least if Antaan’s theory holds up, and that would explain some of his behavior. But an explanation isn’t the same thing as an excuse, and the show seems to know that even as it keeps giving John more room to justify himself.
John’s backstory does add some real weight here, though. His parents apparently decided that abusing their own child was the best way to toughen him up, projecting their ambitions onto him until he had basically no identity left that was actually his. By the end of this episode, even John doesn’t seem sure whether becoming a Green Lantern was ever his dream to begin with, or just something forced onto him from childhood.
There’s an unnecessary racial gag tucked into this episode too, John hoping he doesn’t “come out White” after Zoe patches him up, that felt out of place and added nothing to the scene. Then, right after that, he goes on to steal the ring from a man who spent the entire hour trying to save Rushville from total destruction. Worse still, Hal does this literally up until his dying breath, shielding both himself and John from a Manhunter blast that would have killed them both. John’s response to being saved is to beat Hal down, tear the ring off his finger, and walk away without a word. That’s not a morally gray choice. It’s cowardly, and it’s exactly what a villain does, which is probably why John looks so hollowed out once he finally puts that ring on.
To be fair, Hal isn’t some flawless saint in all of this either. He manipulates Antaan into attacking the wrong target, and the way he treats John over the car situation earlier in the episode isn’t exactly a shining moment. But the idea that Hal “didn’t earn” the ring is honestly a little funny once you actually think about it, because within the show’s own rules, he clearly did. The ring went to John’s father first, then to a string of other candidates who all failed the test before it, and only then did it land on Hal, who actually passed. That’s the system this show built for itself. Hal didn’t force his way into anything. John, meanwhile, has spent most of this season trying to prove he deserves something that was never his to take.
This is not a strong episode for any of these characters, if I’m being honest. There’s more action here than usual, and the Manhunter lore around the Guardians is genuinely interesting material to build on. But the core problem is that the writers seem genuinely torn on how they want us to view John Stewart. If this is meant to be his absolute rock bottom before some kind of redemption arc later, fine, that’s a valid structure. But we already know Hal Jordan ends up dead eventually, so the show is clearly steering toward that outcome while simultaneously asking us to sympathize with a man who has now proven, repeatedly, that he’s willing to kill.
It’s also worth pointing out that the person supposedly explaining morality to John here, telling him Lanterns don’t kill, is the exact same guy the show keeps implying “didn’t earn his spot.” This goes all the way back to the Grey Wolf mission in episode 3, where John was fully willing to kill a man in cold blood while Hal wasn’t. Sure, John lost his job over that decision, but he also went in already warned about the risks, so at least some of that responsibility has to land on him. And honestly, with a mother as terrifying as Bernadette, I get the appeal of wanting to escape that house by any means necessary.
But jokes aside, for a show that’s supposedly built around themes of worthiness, justice, and doing the right thing, Lanterns keeps showing us Hal actually living those values while John violates them at nearly every turn, and then it turns around and asks us to feel bad for John as the one who’s been wronged by the system. For a story fundamentally about earning the right to wear that ring, that’s a real problem, and one this show needs to reckon with soon.
Lanterns S1 E4 | Lanterns S1 Episode Guide | Lanterns S1 E6
