Lanterns Episode 7 Teases A Sinestro-Focused Finale
The Lanterns finally get off-planet — and come one step closer to solving Hal’s murder.
It took nearly the entire season, but with Lanterns, we finally have lift-off.
We always knew DC’s Green Lantern series would deliver a fairly grounded version of the cosmic comic book adventures, borrowing more from a show like True Detective — but most expected at least a little bit of Lanterns to take place somewhere other than Earth. Aside from a brief trip to Oa, where the disgraced Lantern Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) is imprisoned, Lanterns is otherwise stuck on Earth. All of its alien characters appear in human disguises, which only adds to the distance between the source material and the new origin story we’re getting in the DCU.
Lanterns is now closer to the end of its season than its beginning: this week’s episode will be the last before the series finale on October 4. Of course, hasn’t stopped it from launching into a new mystery involving the demise of Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). Unless you subscribe to DC boss James Gunn’s cryptic statements, Hal’s journey most certainly ends in Lanterns. It’s a shame, but the series is cleverly using that twist to fuel an intriguing mystery — one that finally takes this adventure off-planet. It also sets up a Sinestro-centric finale.
Spoilers ahead for Lanterns Episode 7!
Lanterns Episode 7’s ending, explained
John and Hal (or, Hal’s hologram) are finally working together in Lanterns Episode 7.
The original Hal may be in the ground, but Hal’s consciousness circa 2006 — which he uploaded into his ring — is still very much alive. With some clever manipulation in Episode 6, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) got his hands on Hal’s ring and found a way to bring it back online. When we catch up with him and the “Halogram” in Episode 7, the duo are mostly working to open the strange cube-thing that OG-Hal stashed in a storage unit in Rushville. What they eventually find inside (after a big, tedious scavenger hunt through the town) isn’t what anybody expected. It’s a portal that takes John and the Halogram to another planet.
Somewhat disappointingly, this planet mostly looks like any barren desert you’d find in the American West... but it’s not for no reason. John and Hal have been transported to the homeworld of Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor), the enigmatic alien who was seeking revenge against Rushville’s resident Manhunter, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan). She and her fellow Manhunters destroyed his alien society, a sprawling city that still floats high above the no-man’s-land his planet has become. Antaan was the sole survivor of that attack — so how did Hal know about this place? And why would he have a portal that leads directly to it?
The return of Sinestro
So Hal busted Sinestro out of space-prison — but why?
John and the Halogram get their answer, and much more than they bargained for, at the end of Episode 7. After a harrowing encounter with the same toxic chemicals that drove Antaan’s people insane, our heroes find a small island at the center of a lake. Inside a strange and spooky tower, they find Sinestro ready for a fight. It’s clear he was brought to this planet against his will: when he ambushes them, it’s only to make a daring escape with the portal that brought them there. John and the Halogram obviously don’t let that happen, but their showdown opens up a whole new can of worms for Lanterns’ finale to address.
Sinestro’s return does resolve one dangling plot point from previous episodes. Last week, the current Green Lantern, Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), told John that Sinestro had been busted out of prison. Episode 7 reveals that Hal was the one who abducted him and brought him to this yet-unnamed planet... but to what end? This mystery adds new layers to the mystery of Hal’s murder: maybe someone else is hunting Sinestro and, in an effort to hunt him down, attacked Hal. Maybe the truth is even more complicated — but whatever it is, Lanterns’ final episode should set the record straight once and for all. Ideally, it’ll take the series into even more cosmic directions and give us more context to Sinestro’s past villain arc. It might be too little, too late for a show that should have been in space all along, but this pivot is welcome all the same.
