What was so special about Rushville, Nebraska? It seemed like this small Midwestern town was harboring more than just secrets, and the fifth episode of Lanterns confirmed just as much with its explosive resolution to the Manhunter mystery.
But now that the Manhunter has been discovered and John Stewart and Hal Jordan have laid everything out on the table, what happens next? There are two episodes left to Lanterns, and it feels like we just had a season finale’s worth of plot tied up neatly in the fifth episode. But first, we must address the follow-ups to last week’s shocking revelations about the Manhunter and the nature of its relationship to Rushville itself.
Warning! Spoilers for Lanterns Episode 5 below.
Lanterns Episode 5, Zoe twist, explained
Episode 4 left us with a few shockers to ponder: Zoe is the Manhunter, and Hal just left John in a crashed rental car. The latter felt like the less shocking of the episode’s cliffhangers, until Episode 5 picks up with John trapped in the car, which has now caught on fire. As the fire begins to consume John, Zoe arrives and stands by and watches him burn, only rescuing him before the damage becomes too severe. He wakes in the hospital covered in third-degree burns and with Zoe by his side, ready to make a deal: She can heal him with her advanced alien technology, but he has to give her Hal. John, angry that Hal left him to burn alive, reluctantly agrees and is healed in her machine.
Zoe heals John in her machine.
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It turns out this is how Zoe has turned Rushville into essentially her fortress. As hinted in Episode 4, when she met William Macon, she cured his advanced cancer. In a flashback to 2007 in this episode, we see Kerry arrive in Rushville, fleeing men with orders to kill her, and Zoe saves her on the condition that she one day return the favor. She essentially rules Rushville through a complex system of favors, and almost anyone would die for her — which she finally uses, mobilizing the entire town with a kill order for Hal Jordan. However, despite the militant way that Zoe acts to protect herself, actress Poorna Jagannathan stresses to Inverse that there is a humanity to the character.
“I had so many questions on how to play her once the reveal happened,” Poorna Jagannathan says. “Should I become a little more mechanical? Should I withdraw a little bit? And [showrunner] Chris Mundy was really adamant on bringing the humanity to the Manhunter and their plight.”
The Manhunter displays some of that humanity whenever she makes her “deals” with the humans that protect her. We see it when she saves a desperate Kerry, offering her a life of safety and security. We see it when she has her final conversation with Macon, who pretends to be the Manhunter to Antaan, the leader of the aliens hunting the Manhunter for causing genocide to their entire race. Macon’s stony exterior melts away, and he thanks Zoe for the “extra years.”
“I was just thrilled to have such a complex character to play,” Garrett Dillahunt tells Inverse. “Outwardly, it seems very simple and turns out he’s not the one in power. He’s not the one. There’s just so many things about him that are not as they appear, and that’s very exciting to play as an actor, to actually have this complexity.”
And Macon holds true to his promise to Zoe until the end, playing ball with Antaan until Antaan sees past his facade and rips out his heart, which is very much a bloody human one.
Abin Sur’s fate changes everything
However, the most humanity we see from the Manhunter is in her hospital bedside conversation with John Stewart, who realizes that she killed Abin Sur, the Green Lantern predecessor of Hal Jordan. But Jagannathan reveals this wasn’t something that the Manhunter did gladly.
“The Manhunter didn’t want to kill Abin Sur,” Jagannathan says. “Abin Sur brought her to Earth to live peacefully and safely because he knew what she had gone through, but she couldn’t help but kill him because her programming was so strong that if he had gone back and told anyone, they would come after her. He was the last remaining connection.”
For the Manhunter, survival was simply built into her programming. However, by the end of the episode, it’s clear that the Manhunter isn’t immune to her own emotions. When she confronts Hal Jordan, lying injured and ringless in the rubble after his fight with John, she prepares to kill him, thinking that John left him for her as part of their deal. But Hal correctly calls it what it is: a trap. John shoots Zoe in the head with a sniper rifle, then cuts out her heart, which crystallizes, before putting it in a bag to bring to the Guardians.
With that, he brings an end to the Manhunter mystery and his own (short) run as Green Lantern. So, what could be next for Lanterns? There’s still the unresolved mystery of Hal Jordan’s actual death in 2026, when his body is discovered frozen by Kerry back in Rushville, Nebraska. Is this truly the end for the Manhunters on Earth? And has the ring truly moved on? We’ll have to see in the coming weeks.
