[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “Lanterns” Episode 5, “Lights Out,” including the ending. Find last week’s review here, or for a spoiler-free analysis, read our full season review.]
“Was it worth it?”
Hal Jordan’s (Kyle Chandler) parting words to John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) encompass so much of what makes Episode 5, “Lights Out,” as morally complex as it is viscerally thrilling. On the one hand, Hal is a sore loser. He went toe to toe with his replacement, and he lost. He lost the battle of wits, failing to keep John “off the chessboard”; he lost the fistfight in the motel room, even though he does use the ring to save John’s life from the Manhunter’s red death rays; and he lost the ring, which he coveted more than anything and ultimately proved his undoing.
While Hal’s question may not deserve to be taken seriously, John does, in part because he’s already started asking himself the same thing: Is becoming Earth’s next Green Lantern worth becoming a jealous, cynical, old man? Is it worth sacrificing his relationships with his family, living a lonely existence where anyone out to get him will also come after his loved ones? Is it worth working for the Guardians, a group who’s never cared about humanity and will always manipulate him for their own ends?
Maybe it’s possible for a human to be a good Green Lantern, but John recognizes a disqualifying trait in himself that he also sees in John: He wants it too much.
So he walks away.
“Lanterns” Episode 5, “Lights Out,” is the HBO series’ most thrilling hour yet. Rushville is blown to smithereens. Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) is, too, but not before he carves Macon’s (Garret Dillahunt) heart out of his still-breathing chest. Sheriff Kane (Kelly MacDonald) gets an origin story, and Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) sees her story come to a close. (Mercifully for her and us, John removes the Manhunter’s heart after she’s already dead.)
But beyond the tease of what happens next — the dual mysteries of John’s unknown future and Hal’s unknown end — “Lights Out” offers plenty to ponder. So lets unpack all the sins and consequences, starting with those tied to the case John just closed.
The Case
Stripped of context, the events of Episode 5 are fairly straightforward: What everyone has been warning could happen, does happen. Antaan and his hit squad come to Rushville and try to blow up the Manhunter. The Manhunter defends itself. Hal and John try (in their own respective ways) to put an end to the conflict. Chaos ensues.
What’s distinct from a big-picture perspective, though, is how the big battle resembles the climax of so many other superhero stories, when it’s actually subverting them. Time and time again, Hal is cautioned against his plan. Sheriff Kane pleads with him to leave: “The best thing you can do for all of us is just go,” she says. “If you want to save lives, leave,” she says, and when he won’t: “Then everything that happens next is on you.”
Sure, OK. The local cop who’s indebted to Hal’s target claims if he sticks around, innocent people will die. Maybe she’s biased. Maybe she doesn’t grasp the magnitude of the situation. But she’s also repeating what Antaan already told Hal. “If you’re lying to us,” Antaan tells Hal in the diner, “innocent people are going to die.” Sure, it’s a classic bad guy line (delivered by Ben-Victor with an excellent bad guy snarl), but once the sheriff echoes his point, the alarm bells should start ringing.
The hero cop and the villainous alien are telling Hal the same thing? That his plan sucks? Uh oh! Maybe he should listen!
From an audience perspective, we’re conditioned to anticipate the moment when the shit hits the fan and our superhero has to use his powers and save the day. Technically, “Lanterns” delivers on that expectation. The Manhunter is killed. Antaan explodes in the sky. Hal uses the ring a lot. All the elements of a traditional superhero ending are present.
Except what “Lights Out” suggests is that Green Lantern didn’t save the day so much as he caused it to go south. That’s why instead of ending on a high, Episode 5 wraps with one downer after another: Hal and John’s fragile partnership is shattered, and the former hero is left in the rubble of his own disaster. John marches through a devastated Rushville, the toll of which director Geeta Vasant Patel shrewdly emphasizes by positioning her tracking shot of John from behind the bombed-out buildings filled with wounded citizens. Finally, John rejects what he once considered his birthright, turning over the ring and lantern he no longer wants.
In a different light (or a conventional superhero show), this could’ve been John’s coronation. Instead, “Lanterns” digs deeper, and his story continues.
The Suspect
Before the focus of this category shifts from hunting down the Manhunter to finding justice for Jordan, it’s important to unpack why John pulled the trigger. After all, there’s an argument to be made that Zoe didn’t deserve to die; that she was just a victim of Antaan’s vigilantism and the Guardians’ shame.
“The fastest way to understanding a civilization is if you start from a disadvantage,” Zoe tells John, just before healing his singed skin. “In this world, adversity is seen as some insurmountable barrier. But I need that barrier in order to achieve a higher vantage point, a deeper purpose. 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.”
You can see why John would identify with her. He was raised to be impervious to prejudice, injustice, and fear, all so he could attain the higher calling that was denied to his father. In many ways, John’s upbringing made him a better man — but the key word there isn’t “better.” It’s “man.” John never lost his humanity, despite coming perilously close. (It’s kind of amazing he still values human life so highly considering how many apples were shot off his head / he shot off his parents’ heads.)
Zoe was never human, and her programming doesn’t account for human qualities like mercy, sacrifice, or love (not the way we experience it, anyway). After her little speech, John asks her if she killed Abin Sur, the Green Lantern who saved her when the Guardians came to eradicate the rest of the Manhunters. But rather than thank him, she killed him. “I had to,” she said. He was the only one who knew she was still alive, so eliminating him all but ensured her survival. She had to protect herself because that’s what she was programmed to do.
John sees that same “inhumanity” in Zoe when she lets him burn in the car. He recognizes why she does it — so he’ll be further indebted to her, and she can explain her side of things before it’s too late — but it still takes a scary level of detachment to watch someone burst into flames and not rush to put them out. When he says “I see you, Zoe” after shooting her, he’s saying that he sees all of her: the good and the bad. She helped a lot of people in Rushville over the years, but not because she’s inherently kind or altruistic. It’s because doing so helped protect her. (Just look at her relationship with the sheriff, as outlined in the pre-title opening sequence.)
In the end, she’s willing to sacrifice her husband, her friends, and an entire town to survive. That’s just what she’s programmed to do. Jagannathan’s excellent performance captures all this and more, inching as close to the emotional extremes of those around her without quite being able to experience them. The Manhunter’s coldness is present in the disaffected stare she gives John when he’s screaming for help, but there’s a yearning there, too; a desire she may not even understand that “draws” her to John, almost as if all her years around humans have made her want to be one of us. Like she’s heartbroken and heartless at once.
R.I.P. Zoe. She had to go, but she still deserved better than the Guardians allowed and the universe could give.
The Co(r)ps
Precisely because the Manhunter isn’t human — because it was programmed by the Guardians, not raised by humans — Hal knows exactly how it will respond when it’s attacked. That puts the onus on Hal, the ostensible hero, to protect the innocent from the explosive fallout of an interplanetary dispute that has nothing to do with them.
And yet the good people of Rushville are the last thing on Hal’s mind when he concocts his plan to nab the Manhunter. He sets it up so Macon and Antaan attack each other while he looks for Zoe, knowing full well those attacks will trigger the Manhunter to do whatever it takes to survive. What that may be is a mystery, but there’s no reason to assume it’s safe for anyone in the area. Hal may have even guessed that after Zoe faked her own death by blowing up her car with a laser beam from space that she may create more havoc through similar tactics.
But he doesn’t think about that because that’s not his priority. Hal’s priority is capturing the Manhunter and parading it in front of the Guardians so they stop trying to replace him as Earth’s only Green Lantern. He’s acting on his own behalf, which means he’s failed long before his plan goes to shit.
“In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight” — that’s the oath Hal rushes through every time he needs to recharge. Perhaps if he wasn’t in such a hurry, the words’ meaning may have seeped through enough for him to realize that evil can come from anywhere, including within. Wanting to remain Green Lantern may not be inherently wrong, but putting that desire above protecting the innocent is explicitly wrong.
So, after John shoots Zoe — even if he’s already decided against becoming the Green Lantern himself — he’s right to take the ring from Hal. John’s been right all along: Hal doesn’t deserve it. The tragedy in Rushville is just the latest example of his unworthiness.
It’s like Sheriff Kane says right before the battle: “Everything that happens next is on you. Are you willing to accept those consequences when they come?” Hal was ready to accept the repercussions for everyone else, but he refused to accept them for himself. Luckily, John was there to make him.
This time.
Grade: A
“Lanterns” releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
“Good Luck or Oh Fuck” (Points of Clarity)
• So… who killed Hal Jordan? As the Manhunter investigation ends, the murder investigation is about to begin (albeit 10 years later, narratively speaking). Are there stray members of Antaan’s alien faction who came back for further vengeance? Did someone within Rushville, a town decimated by Jordan’s recklessness, wait 10 years for a little revenge of their own? Are the Guardians wrapping up loose ends, much like they programmed the Manhunters to do? (Zoe killed Abin Sur to protect herself, even though he saved her life — the Guardians may not be above killing a former Lantern for… reasons.) Or maybe Sheriff Kane fulfilled her debt to Zoe not by rallying the town around her in 2016, but by killing her target in 2026? Thin leads, all of them. Let’s see what turns up next week!
• Not to get all conspiracy-brained, but technically Zoe never named the “someone” who “gave me a chance when I needed it most.” (This is what she told the future Sheriff Kane when she saved her life in the diner.) Since Zoe admits to killing Abin Sur, it seems safe to assume that’s who she’s talking about — but there’s a chance someone else intervened on Zoe’s behalf, and saving her meant killing the Green Lantern assigned to dispose of her. Maybe that’s reading too much between the lines. But until we know why Sinestro killed a Guardian, I think he has a larger role to play here.
• Zoe’s moment with her grandson is also unusual, making the kid promise to remember everything she told him. OK, what did she tell him? What did she pass on?
• “John had a little coitus, but I was Macon’s main target, and we were very, uh, coitious.”
“You’ve always presented as heterosexual.”
“When you’ve experienced the pleasures of the galaxy as much as we have, it’s less about preference and more about opportunity.”
Amazing stuff here, Mr. Chandler. There aren’t enough Emmys in the world.
• The tears welling up in Macon’s eyes when he thanks Zoe for the “extra time — I loved every minute of it”? Bravo, Garret Dillahunt! I didn’t think I felt that much for Macon, but boy did I feel a whole lot, real fast, especially when Antaan dragged you onto that desk. Talk about giving your heart over to love, my god.
• Great use of Bon Iver, “Things Behind Things Behind Things.” Tough chord to strike in that moment, and the song really found it.
