Lanterns Season 1 Finale Review & Recap

Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Lanterns Season 1, Episode 8!

How much you enjoy the finale of Lanterns Season 1 is going to depend heavily on how well you can manage your expectations. There have been plenty of outlandish fan theories regarding where the series has been building towards and the identity of Hal Jordan’s killer. Is Hal even dead, or is this all part of some massive conspiracy involving complex doppelganger constructs or Manhunter-based resurrection? Well, it’s best to put all of that to the side and just enjoy the finale for what it is. It’s probably not going to shock most of us with its plot twists and character developments. Nor does it represent a pivot back to the sort of spectacle we saw in Episode 5. But it does deliver an ending that feels true to the story the series has been telling all along.

A lot of burning questions have been hanging over the series in light of Episode 7, which changed the game by dragging John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and the Halogram to a war-ravaged alien world and inserting Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) back into the mix. Is this where the series blows the doors wide open in terms of the cosmic Green Lantern elements? Is Sinestro himself, not the mysteries in Rushville, the ultimate endgame of Season 1?

No, not really. The fact that Episode 8 opens with a quiet flashback to 2016 and then to Hal’s life immediately after being released from prison clues us into the fact that this is still a small-town murder mystery at its core. Even when the focus does shift to Sinestro and the gang, Sinestro himself is more a means of exposition than a supervillain mastermind. These early scenes wind up resolving a number of the show’s ongoing mysteries. We learn that Noah (Shea Pritchard) is indeed a Manhunter of sorts. He was the one who busted Sinestro out of Spazkaban, all for the purpose of forging a Lantern Noah can use to slaughter the Guardians. Everything is wrapped up in a neat little package. Mostly.

Part of me is disappointed that Sinestro’s ultimate role in the series is so minimal. He’s the Green Lantern villain, after all, but we only see him in a handful of scenes this season, one of which involves him being waterboarded by John. The series never fully leaned into the possibilities of Sinestro as the Hannibal Lecter to Hal’s Will Graham. Worse, perhaps, is that his comments about the value of fear as a weapon suggest that there’s no real history of Sinestro forming his own Lantern Corps in the DCU. Maybe we’ll get there in a future season, but probably not with Hal in the picture. Like with Hector Hammond (Jason Manuel Olazábal), it feels like the series has really downplayed Sinestro’s importance in Hal’s own story.

That all being said, the Noah of it all works well for me. No, the Manhunter reveal is not the most surprising direction the series could have taken. But as Christopher Nolan would argue, just because we can predict a plot twist ahead of time, that doesn’t automatically invalidate the story. Sometimes you just have to let these things play out as they should.

The same goes for the later reveal that Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) is Hal’s actual killer. I think most of us saw that one coming, but it makes too much sense not to go down that road. She’s a character who’s been deceiving Hal and John from the very first episode. Not out of malice, but a desire to protect those two alien beings she loves so dearly. For all the ambitious theorizing surrounding Hal’s murder, it feels appropriate that the whole thing boils down to a momentary burst of passion. And you really can’t fault Macdonald’s performance in this episode, particularly during her tearful confession to John.

The same goes for Pierre, who’s given an awful lot of meaty material to work with in the finale. Early on, John is quietly wracked with uncertainty and dread regarding the revelations about Noah. As the episode unfolds, he becomes a man at peace with himself and his place in the cosmos. Through it all, Pierre remains a master of saying a lot through subtle facial expressions and body language. I’ve said it before, but this is a role that could easily have been boring in the wrong hands. Pierre’s are clearly the right hands.

Most satisfying of all is the way this episode caps off the season-long tension between John and Hal and shows us the all-important passing of the torch. The Halogram is able to express emotions the real Hal never could, allowing us to appreciate a bond the latter would never be caught dead acknowledging. Hal saying “I love you too, Junior,” is almost hokey, but Kyle Chandler sells the scene so well you simply have to believe it.

Granted, I am disappointed the finale doesn’t find a way to keep Chandler in the picture, either by preserving the Halogram or somehow resurrecting the real Hal (something Sinestro seems to believe is possible). It’s tough to imagine a second season of Lanterns working half as well without that critical dynamic between Hal and John. But I suppose that’s a problem for another day. For now, this farewell really tugs at the heartstrings.

What we’re left with is a mostly cohesive and satisfying account of how John Stewart finally embraces his destiny as Earth’s Green Lantern. I do think the show could have done a slightly better job of exploring how John has learned to embrace fear rather than push it away. His arc has been more focused on overcoming his conditioning. However, that’s more an issue with the season as a whole rather than this episode in particular. And in any case, the final scenes do a great job of setting him up for bigger and better things in the DCU. At long last, it’s time for John Stewart to fly.