After a banger of a first episode, Lanterns returns for Episode 2 on HBO with an hour that is what I would characterize as “pretty good!” And I know that sounds like faint praise, but where “Pilot” felt like a clockwork machine intricately coming together and firing on all cylinders, this second hour, “Trust Fall,” has a bit of the ‘ol repilot energy.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you don’t know, back in the day a show would have a pilot setting up the premise of a show, and then since there was no streaming and reruns would come later, the second episode would often be a “repilot,” i.e. restating the premise and characters for any new viewers who are catching up after positive buzz from the premiere. That’s fine with a 22-25 episode broadcast series, slightly less fine with an eight-episode HBO prestige series.
It’s not all restatement of the premise, but there is a fair amount of exposition mixed through this episode, as well as characters getting each other caught up to what each other have been up to, as well as the additions of basic Green Lantern mythology that turned some folks off from the premiere and turned other folks on. For my money, I thought it was nicely laid in over buddy cop tropes in the premiere. In Episode 2? We’ve got a lot more sci-fi; and some of it works, and some of it doesn’t.
To stop being cagey about it all, and to get you caught up to speed with a precap for the recap, we’re following Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), a gruff, older space cop who has been assigned a trainee, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Hal doesn’t like having a trainee, and John doesn’t like Hal… But he’s also been training his whole life to be Green Lantern, and stays (mostly) locked up and on the job.
While the premiere ended in 2026 with the death of Hal Jordan (or seeming death) found on the bleachers in the town of Rushville, Nebraska by John and the town’s sheriff, Kerry Kane (Kelly MacDonald), the bulk of the action this time around takes place in 2016. Hal and John end up in Rushville when it turns out four men – who are actually aliens in disguise – were shot to death on a football field. And one more taken into custody blows up rather than get interrogated by Hal, taking half the police station with him.
Meanwhile we’ve also met Kerry’s sleazy lawyer husband Billy Macon (Jason Ritter), who is defending Hal after he got arrested in a bar fight, as well as Billy’s dad William Macon (Garrett Dillahunt), who runs a ranch, has a mysterious benefactor, and is prepping a militia for war with aliens. Oh, and John slept with William’s wife Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan), not realizing she was married. Oops!
So lots going on there – and I’m skipping over plenty we’ll get to in the recap proper. But point being there’s a fair amount of restating the character dynamics that happens here versus moving things forward. But there’s also some Easter eggs (y’all do love those, right?) for both Green Lantern mythology and Batman mythology. So enough wind-up, let’s get to the recap.
Spoilers for Lanterns Episode 2 past this point.
The Green Canary In The Coal Mine
Things start quietly this episode with John asleep in his motel room, though an ominous shadow passes by the window outside. The door creaks open and… It’s Hal, splashing John with water. John is, shall we say, not pleased, and he’s even less pleased when Hal says he hasn’t called the Guardians about their “four dead aliens” problem (actually five dead aliens, but what’s a dead alien between friends).
John finally exits the room, and Hal reveals he’s going to teach John how to fly. He hands John the ring, and Hal gives the lesson which is… “You fly.” For Hal, it’s instinctual. For John, who is not a fighter pilot, not so much. And once again proving that John isn’t instantly good at everything, he’s entirely unable to fly. But he is able to make a bird construct. And not only that, he’s able to keep the construct going without the ring, which shocks Hal. It also could have something to with John not having the ring in 2026, as seen last episode. Perhaps he can create constructs without one?
Speculation aside, Hal does the ol’ Fonz “knock the ring” to recharge it a bit. And he sends a confused John out on a plane flight to his home in Coast City to pick up his lantern, to recharge the ring… And also feed Earl. What is Earl? We’ll find out soon enough, but Hal gives John one more assignment… Keep the bird alive the entire time he’s gone.
Field Of Dreams
Back at the bleachers where he’ll ultimately meet his demise, Hal scans the scene, still trying to figure out what the aliens were up to. There’s not much there, but he does notice one strange thing: the metal detectors aren’t working. They don’t get his belt, his rental car’s bumper (technically John’s rental), so what are they detecting?
Hal tries to get in touch with Sheriff Kane, but she’s not answering, and the town is empty. So Hal uses what little charge he has left flying to find out where everyone is. Turns out they’re gathered in the town hall, so Hal heads over and sees another detector, also not working. Well, it is working, but not the way Hal thinks.
“Were you talking about me?” Hal says when the town meeting goes silent. He then does the whole “excuse me” thing to the center of the row, banking on annoying everyone until a clue shakes loose, but the meeting continues. Should they go on with Friday’s football game, given the shooting?
While the coach talks about this, Billy goes and sits waaaay too close to Hal, telling him that all charges have been dropped and he’s free to get out of town immediately. Hal, though, wants to know how Billy’s father’s friends knew the guys they shot on the field were aliens. Billy says he doesn’t know, which is when Kerry interrupts, saying, “Excuse me, honey,” with both Billy and Hal answering “yes.” Funny! This show does have fun.
Hal’s whole goal is to talk to Kerry, though, and he’s really driving her up the wall when he gets a call from John, who can’t find the key to his house. He finds the key in a fake rock, which is shaped like a potato with a smile (or a frown if it’s upside down)… And a quick sidebar here. While a lot of this is funny, we’re about 12ish minutes into the episode so far, and after an extremely tightly scripted pilot, it’s a little odd how shaggy this one is, hitting the same beats we’ve seen before and not adding a ton more info. But I digress!
Mogo Doesn’t Socialize
John heads through Hal’s mansion to find the lantern, while Hal heads into the hospital to find the morgue. Hal got his house from a rich guy, who he saved the son of, and there’s basically nothing in the house other than pictures of Hal hanging out with the Pope and whatnot. And while he tells John about this, he also takes a fully nude male corpse – one of the aliens – and drags it out of the morgue.
John spies the Green Lantern uniforms Hal isn’t wearing, and takes one out, seeing how he might look in it, in the mirror. And in a winky moment, when John asks if Hal needs a uniform, the latter quips, “Not unless you’re going to teach me how someone takes a piss in one of those things.” This is winky because traditionally superhero uniforms in movies and on TV shows don’t have a zipper, making it impossible to go to the bathroom. Now you know!
Hal voice activates opening the box that holds the lantern with “Mogo doesn’t socialize,” which is a reference to the planet-sized lantern Mogo who sometimes works as the base of operations for the Green Lantern Corps. And John discovers that the box isn’t really a box, it’s a pocket dimension.
…Not to keep interrupting, but pocket dimensions have been a major facet of the DCU so far. Superman introduced the idea of unstable pocket dimensions ripping the fabric of reality apart. Peacemaker Season 2 had a whole room called the Quantum Unfolding Chamber with stable doors to various pocket dimensions, leading to Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) figuring out how to stabilize them, and throwing Peacemaker (John Cena) into one called Sanctuary. And now Hal has one in his closet – though in 2016, this predates both the movie and the other TV series. What does this mean? Who’s to say? But it’s interesting.
Anyway, John reaches into the pocket dimension, and the bird construct flies around in there. John pulls out the lantern, carefully, and it has a moment of ceremony to it. Meanwhile, Hal unceremoniously pulls more alien corpses into his car, and John discovers that Earl Jordan eats “custom beef and bison,” basically the only thing in Hal’s fridge other than a Coke, some ketchup, and a few beers and leftovers.
John wanders off with a chewed spoon to find Earl, who it turns out is in the greenhouse. Wondering what Earl is? It’s a carnivorous, clearly alien plant of the Audrey II variety. If you’re wondering who Earl is from the comics, as usual he’s… Nothing. There are some plants called Black Mercy, but they’re nothing like Earl. And some carnivorous plant creatures called Keh-Topli from the excellent Green Lantern series Far Sector, but those are humanoid. So yeah, Earl is… Earl.
Back to Hal, if you’re wondering why he took the corpses, it’s to figure out what’s up with the detectors, which aren’t metal detectors… They’re alien detectors. And while Hal figures this out, John is black bagged and abducted by a bunch of thugs from the front of Hal’s house.
Van Wilder
Waking up in the back of a van, John distracts one of the thugs with his bird and manages to escape out of the back of the van, and on to the highway. Was anyone else oddly reminded of The Matrix Reloaded during this scene? Anyway, John runs down the highway, and one of the thugs follows, leaping extraordinarily high. John saves his bird from getting killed, but gets smacked by the van and knocked out.
And back to Hal again, who gets pulled over by Kerry for having, you know, stolen corpses in the car. “This is pretty much exactly what it looks like,” Hal says, adding that in his defense, she did shush him at the meeting. Kerry is livid, of course, but she also knows that the metal detector is “actually an alien detector… Congratulations, now can you let me do my job?”
After a bit more (let’s be honest) romantic sparring, Hal reveals he wants to see Will Macon, something Kerry thinks is a “profoundly bad idea.” She adds that it’s not illegal to be obsessed with aliens, and it “would make my marriage a hell of a lot smoother,” if it was. “Your marriage is unsmooth?” Hal asks, earnestly.
Home On The Range
Kerry does agree to take Hal to Macon as long as she gets to do the talking (guess how well that will go), and they head to the ol’ Macon ranch. Hal invites himself in as Macon trots over and muses about why Hal is still in town. Hal explains that he thinks Macon is hiding something, which is when Macon’s guard tower guy guns up. Why is Hal testing the waters here? Because he’s been all over the galaxy and never seen anything as sophisticated as an alien detector. Macon says it’s from his benefactor, the man who owns the property.
Dropping another hot cultural reference, Hal asks if this is a Keyser Söze situation (and I doubt it’s pointed, but odd for him to reference Kevin Spacey an episode after he referenced JK Rowling… Get some non-controversial refs, Hal), but Macon assures Hal that the benefactor is “very real.” Hal isn’t backing down, he wants to see what other tech is on the compound, and when he takes two steps forward… Well, he gets shot.
Who Hunts The Manhunters?
Things aren’t looking too good for John, either, who wakes up zip tied to a chair in an abandoned office building. When he wakes, a man named Antaan (played by Paul Ben-Victor) apologizes for the violence, and is curious how Hal is keeping the bird construct going over such a great distance. John explains it’s him, not Hal, and Antaan asks how he’s doing it without a ring. But John would really like to get to why he’s there, and the answer is: Manhunters.
Before I go HAM on the comic book lore of Manhunters, let’s stick with the show for a second. John, like most of the viewing audience, doesn’t know anything about Manhunters, much to the surprise of his interrogators. They are aliens, by the way, and their plan isn’t to torture John… They want to recruit him.
…And furthermore, they don’t have a lot of time because one of the most dangerous beings who has ever existed “knows it has been found, which means it is preparing its brutal response.” Antaan’s referring to the Manhunter, of course, which is when we get the lowdown. There was a “time of chaos in the galaxy,” which is when the Manhunters, synthetic beings, came and could pretend to be any species, entirely undetected. The Manhunters built tech beyond the capabilities of the planets they inhabited, were “brutal. They were deceptive.” And while they wiped out entire species, then they disappeared… Except for one, on the home planet of the aliens we’re watching now, who saw their whole planet wiped out in a holocaust. And using some sort of memory gun, they make John experience everything that happened to them while he screams in horror. Of note: John keeps the bird going, meaning they don’t have all of his concentration.
Antaan frees John, and continues to explain that a Green Lantern took the Manhunter into custody, swore he’d be executed, but they discovered that the Manhunter escaped and hid out in Rushville. Conveniently, he could be any human, which is why they headed to Rushville and were subsequently murdered before they could figure out who the Manhunter is, so they need John to identify the Manhunter. Either John finds the Manhunter in 48 hours, or the aliens blow up the entire town of Rushville, setting our stakes exponentially high.
Okay, lore dump. While there’s likely a lot more to come on this, in DC Comics Manhunters are created by the Guardians as their first police corps… But as robots they see things in binary: right, or wrong, nothing in between. And that of course goes very, very wrong with the Guardians ultimately forced to shut down the Manhunters and replace them with the Green Lantern Corps, aka living beings with more nuance. They’ve escaped or been rebooted time and again throughout the comics, though are usually just robots, not shape-shifting planet killers, so that’s new.
And as for what alien race they destroyed? Could be anything, though in the comics Manhunters did kill everyone in Sector 666 except for five beings, including a guy named Atrocitus. He was driven to a rage against the Guardians because of this, and became the first rage-powered Red Lantern, leading to a rival Corps of, essentially berserkers. Is that what our alien invaders are? They seem much calmer than one might expect, so maybe, maybe not. And HBO does credit the character as Antaan — not Atrocitus — so unless we’ve got a name swerve, likely this is something else.
Hal-spital visit
Good news: Hal isn’t dead, he’s in the hospital, while Kerry sits at his bedside, reading a book. She doesn’t have a great bedside manner, and she’s also very curious about Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen); Hal was saying his name in his sleep. While Hal doesn’t want to talk, it’s public knowledge that Sinestro is an ex-Lantern who led a coup and killed one of the Guardians before Hal took him down.
Also? Hal is handcuffed to the bed for trespassing, and she lays down the law. In short? Everything Hal has been doing is undercutting her authority, the same authority she’s worked years to establish. This gets through to Hal, who actually says, “You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
Kerry unlocks Hal’s handcuffs, during which they have a little bit of an eye-lock moment, and Kerry explains why she fought Hal last episode. In short? She was wrong about Waylon (Chris Coy) being an alien, and continues to explain she didn’t want Will Macon frothing everyone in town up. So with this new détente reached between the two… Why hasn’t Hal left? His gut, of course. And Kerry wants him gone because everything feels primed to explode, the town is losing their mind.
Another side-note here: one of my least favorite things in TV shows and movies is when there’s a lot of talk about everyone going nuts, but there are approximately two people in every scene. I don’t need to see it constantly, and I realize this is a budgetary concern, but other than the one town hall meeting, Rushville feels empty right now. If people are on edge, we need to see more of those people.
Hal gets checked out of the hospital, and immediately notices there are no other patients, which is weird. And that’s when Hal asks Kerry where she’s from. “I’m from Gotham,” Kerry says. “Moved here on a whim.”
That’s all she gives, but as we discussed last episode Kerry is Kerry Kane, aka likely a member of the Kane family, one of the richest families in Gotham City. Prominent members include Kate Kane (aka Batwoman) and Bruce Wayne (aka Batman), whose mother is Martha Wayne, born Martha Kane. Additionally, though I missed this last episode, Kerry was telling someone on the phone that she can’t comment on active investigations. While we didn’t find out who she was talking to, she did say “Tell Barb I say hey,” which could mean she was talking to Jim Gordon, father of Barbara Gordon (and married to another Barbara Gordon). Or not! But those particular plot points do seem to be piling up.
Hal, who definitely heard some of what Kerry said, notices that the hospital has no patients AND equipment that’s never been used. Kerry makes a joke about it, but yeah, there is something weird going on in this town.
How’s Your White Man?
John comes back to Rushville in a taxi, stopping at a diner for a cup of coffee, and who is there but Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan). John initially passes on her offer to share a cup of coffee, but then relents and heads over to talk with her. He gets right to it, letting her know that he wouldn’t have slept with her if he knew she was married.
They talk about Will, and how he’s a weirdo – but Zoe seems not to be. “White men have the privilege of being eccentric,” she says, which gets to the heart of the connection between her and John… They’re both people of color trying to navigate a world where white men are given whatever they want, weird outbursts or eccentricities be damned. Zoe does like it, though, she likes the security; and she doesn’t leave because she loves him. “Hey, how’s your White man?” she asks, realizing that John is putting a lot of his thoughts about Hal on her and Will.
John, though, is trying to figure out if he can trust Hal. Zoe believes that if he has to ask, he already knows the answer… So there’s a fair amount of tension when Hal and John finally reunite. Hal is wearing a sling, and John gets up to speed, tossing Hal the bag with the lantern in it – as well as a suit. Hal does a quick, perfunctory recharge of the ring, then gets down to business… He believes there’s something on Macon’s compound, and the Benefactor is the key to everything.
John gives a “whatever you say,” and notices Hal ripped his bumper off and got dead body juice all over the seats of the car (it’s called “alien goo.”) John begins to lose his temper, Hal giggles, finally having gotten a rise out of his trainee, and then John makes a very interesting decision.
“What do you know about Manhunters?” he asks, and then lays out everything that happened to him (more or less), including that they have 48 hours, and John was not supposed to tell Hal. They agree that the Guardians wouldn’t have hidden a Manhunter in Rushville, so there’s more going on. Specifically, Abin Sur must have brought the Manhunter to Earth, the Manhunter killed him, and that’s how Hal got his ring.
John needles Hal for not giving him a “hoorah” about his bird construct, Hal does give him a “hoorah,” wondering what’s up with the bird. “It’s just a bird,” he says, dismantling the construct.
Meet Sinestro
Back in his motel room, Hal puts on the suit and flies off into space onto an unnamed alien planet. There, he enters a guarded facility that turns out to be a prison (likely Sciencells, detention facilities created by the Guardians to hold high-risk prisoners).
Who is he visiting? Sinestro, of course. Hal wants to know about Manhunters.
“No hello?” asks Sinestro. “No how have I been?”
“Hello Sinestro,” Hal answers. “How have you been? Now what the f**k do you know about Manhunters?”
“If one still existed, it’d be the second greatest threat you’re currently facing,” Sinestro says. ”So why don’t you tell me about John Stewart?”
Uhoh. So Hal’s greatest enemy/former mentor is going to try and turn him further against his trainee? Bad news, folks. Before we go, let’s do some speculation time here, based on further clues in this episode. And I’m adding a third mystery to the pile.
Who Killed Hal Jordan?
Given we don’t spend any time in the 2026 portion of the timeline, there aren’t really any clues (that I see) for who killed Hal, other than he’s generally annoying. While it could be Macon (who had him shot once already), I’m sticking with my John Stewart Sr. guess, just because I’ve become further convinced that Hal’s death isn’t a grand mystery, it’s a sad, lonely one caused by the grief of a father whose son (John) didn’t reach his full potential.
Of note, there’s been a lot of speculation online about that not being Hal dead… With the amount of time spent talking about how aliens can look like anyone, fans have become convinced that the dead Hal isn’t Hal at all, it’s an alien. That’s certainly possible, but in my mind that would cheat the emotional impact of the whole thing, though I guess we’ll see!
Who Is Macon’s Benefactor?
So as we discussed on our podcast recap for the first episode, benefactor implies money, so this could be someone like Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). I doubt it, and same with other rich folks like Bruce Wayne because they’re external to the series. It could be a member of the Kane family, but again, we haven’t (as far as we know) met them yet.
Another interesting clue mentioned in our Comic Book Club Discord was that the gate has a big “M” on it, ostensibly for Macon, but Will keeps insisting he’s merely the caretaker for the land. So who then? Perhaps it’s “M” for “Manhunter”? Or maybe it’s just Macon and we’re overthinking it.
My theory that the benefactor is Zoe seems a little shot this episode, given she talks about having Will’s money take care of her. But perhaps we’re talking about a benefactor of the non-monetary variety (all the assumption the benefactor is a man also seems to be a swerve, imo)?
Who Is The Manhunter?
…And is that because Zoe is the Manhunter? I’ll go back to what I said last episode: she seems to know too much about Green Lanterns, and John. She may just be intuitive, but having her be the “man” behind the curtain seems the most likely to me right now. It would hurt John (he would think/know he’s not as good as he thinks he is), and perhaps would lead to things not being so black and white as Manhunters are in the comics. Perhaps Zoe has come to like living on Earth, and isn’t looking to wipe anyone out anymore?
As for other suspects, it could be Will, again, or Billy, or Billy’s son Noah, or even Hal. But I’m gonna stick with Zoe for the moment, even though I’m less convinced this episode that I was during the premiere.
Lanterns Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Lanterns premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET. Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Lanterns with premiere dates.
- Sunday, August 16, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 1, “Pilot”
- Sunday, August 23, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 2, “Trust Fall”
- Sunday, August 30, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 3
- Sunday, September 6, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 4
- Sunday, September 13, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 5
- Sunday, September 20, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 6
- Sunday, September 27, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 7
- Sunday, October 4, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
Where To Watch Lanterns
Listen to Sons Of A Gunn:
Share this:
Discover more from Comic Book Club
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Manhunters being shapeshifters was the entire basis of the DC 80’s crossover – Millennium. Basically, Secret Invasion before Marvel even dreamt it up.
Thank you!
Nice