It’s time for the penultimate episode of HBO‘s Lanterns, as Episode 7 “The Jordan Boys Legacy” teams up John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) with the Halogram (Kyle Chandler) to solve the murder of Hal Jordan (also Chandler). Is the internet right and Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly MacDonald) pulled the trigger? Am I right, and it’s actually John Stewart Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) behind the gun? Or were we both (me and the internet) wrong?
Before we get there, let’s do some precap before the recap, explaining how we got to the point where we begin in Lanterns Episode 7, and spoilers past this point.
Back in 2016, Hal and John tangled with a Manhunter named Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan), an alien robot thingy created by the Guardians of the Universe to police the galaxy. Unfortunately for them, the Manhunters had a very skewed version of justice, and the Guardians shut them down — except Zoe, for unknown reasons. The Guardians replaced the Manhunters with Green Lanterns, alien (and eventually human) space cops, including one named Abin Sur. After crash-landing on Earth, Zoe killed Abin Sur and enmeshed herself in the society of Rushville, Nebraska, leading to a confrontation with Hal (and John) that left a good chunk of the town dead.
10 years later, John is working as an architect pitching panic rooms to the military, when his mother Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) calls him to tell him Hal wants to apologize. The latter took the fall for the destruction of Rushville, and went to jail sans Green Lantern ring (John also rejected it, so it went to Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner). After getting out, he tried to make amends with Rushville, and struck up a romance with Kerry. But something was scaring him, and the popular theory is that something is Kerry’s son Noah (Shea Pritchard), a second Manhunter. Is he? We’ll find out shortly.
Anyway, John punched Hal in the nose and left, only to discover he was murdered mere hours later. Through a series of circumstances too complicated to explain here (hey, there’s a whole recap of “Bad Optics” for that), John ended up with Hal’s version of the ring with 5% battery, enough to activate the Halogram — a back-up of Hal from 20 years ago — likely so he can get into the vault real Hal left in the Fortress of Storage, a storage unit in his name. Not only that, but there’s a waitress named Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler) who saw John punch Hal, and is blackmailing him.
One last detail, though there’s surely plenty more to get into: Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), Hal’s old mentor who led a coup against the Guardians and killed one of them, has been broken out of space jail by someone. Who broke him out? And what has Sinestro been up to? Again, keep reading to find out.
Okay, that’s enough precap, on to the recap! Let’s dive into the “Jordan Boys Legacy,” shall we?
The Bad News Hals
We’re starting, of all places, in 1975 — and with baseball, very against the “football is life” ethos of this show. Martin Jordan (Jake B. Miller) enters as the baseball coach is admonishing little Hal Jordan. Hal was pitching an almost no-hitter, and refused to let his teammate Danny Bochner pitch… So Hal fought his whole team.
Martin, surprisingly, defends Hal, but the coach doesn’t care… And so Martin fights the coach. Good dad?
Later they eat rocket pops at the airfield, and Hal teaches his dad a trick about putting the pops on your nose… Martin does it, laughs, and gives little Hal his necklace. “You scared?” Martin asks, echoing the question John’s dad asked him. He tells a story about his own father having “no fear” when he went to the war. But Grandpa Jordan also made preparations, giving Martin the key to his safe, “failsafe… Literal guy, your grandpa.” In the safe was money, and keepsakes, and things that stayed between Martin and his dad. Which we’ll find out about later.
So what Martin gives Hal is the key to his own safe, if anything happens to him. Why not give it to Mrs. Jordan? It’s in Hal’s blood, dad says, “the Jordan boys legacy.” As Martin continues to talk, he notes that Hal can throw the ball away. “Can’t hold onto it forever,” Martin says. Why can’t he hold on forever? “Because it’s f**king exhausting.” And I know it’s early, but this is the metaphor of the episode.
While we don’t see Martin die in a test flight crash, we do get to see the funeral in montage as young Hal sees his dad get buried, with a full Air Force salute. Hal stands over his dad’s grave with a shovel, staring in, and of course we fade to the Halogram looking at the body of Hal Jordan in 2026.
Halogram! Halogram For John Stewart!
Halogram gets caught up, remembering John Stewart from 10 years earlier, and is none too happy about John being “Earth’s Green Lantern,” which John doesn’t correct immediately. Also, we discover the Halogram is solid and can touch things. John sets the stakes, explaining they need Halogram to open the vault in the storage… And Hal asks about the funeral.
John lies, saying the whole Lantern Corps, including Ch’p and Mogo showed up. “You kidding?” John says. “Mogo and I stood right here.”
“Mogo’s a goddamn planet,” Hal says, which is canonically correct with the DC Comics material, and just as Halogram freaks out, John sends him back into the ring.
What’s In The Box?
As John drives to the Fortress of Storage, he calls his brothers Aaron (Romeo Brown) and Marcus (Jared Grimes), and explains he needs $315,000 to pay off Maggie. They don’t totally agree, and John is pissed off. Also pissed off? Halogram, who doesn’t want to speak to open the vault. Instead, Halogram does charades, gets them to close the storage unit, and wants to know who Marcus is.
Turns out the Halogram can hear John in the ring, and doesn’t trust John — he thinks John probably murdered him. Halogram wants to talk to Kerry, but John refuses: “pulling up with your f**king ghost is not going to be helpful.” Halogram reacts to the whole thing in reverse order, surprised he was in jail, and then surprised he was in love. And furthermore, he refuses to help until John takes him to Kerry, with only an hour of talk time to go.
Halogram, worse than Hal, doesn’t do what its told, and when it hears “Shake Your Booty” it comes out of the ring. John gets pissed off now, takes off the ring, and Halogram stays, shocked. “That’s not possible,” he says. “Yeah, I guess it is,” John says, and just like with the bird he kept “alive” one tends to wonder what, exactly, is up with John Stewart.
…And unlike real Hal, Halogram is stunned and says “bravo.” John lays out that Hal never complimented him, so it’s a little weird. But the Halogram continues to be dutifully impressed.
What’s Hat?
Seeing everyone is at Noah’s hat ceremony, Halogram notices the Lantern Signal that Guy created, and we get more exposition about what happened in Rushville back in 2016. Back in the car, John brings Halogram up to speed, and John decides to ignore him, singing along to OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” instead. If Marcus and Aaron were there, they would have made serious fun of “Chosen.”
At the ceremony, Maggie asks John whether he has the money, and he needs a little more time. In order to put her off, John gives her his watch, and she tells him “you’re on the clock,” adding yet another ticking time bomb to this whole thing.
Inside the hat ceremony, the coach, unlike Hal’s coach, is complimenting Noah on doing things with his whole team. In the stands, Noah’s dad Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) cheers, while Kerry watches from the sidelines — as does John.
Noah takes the microphone, and shouts out that they’re not doing this for him, they’re doing it because the town needs a win… And so he puts off making his decision until they play Chadron later that night (extremely close to Charon, ferryman of the underworld). The town isn’t upset, though Billy is, confronting John. Kerry calls him off, protecting John, who asks Kerry to talk somewhere else, so they head to the science lab down the hall.
As John walks to the lab, the bank calls and he gets the $315k approved for transfer. John tries to explain the Halogram, who then pops out and says, “Jesus, you’re over-explaining it.” Kerry is stunned when she turns around and sees him. Slowly, she walks towards the Halogram and touches him, and starts to cry.
“You’re real,” Kerry says, and as John tries to explain they both tell him to shut up. Halogram explains it better, and adds that “I just wanted to meet you, that’s all.”
“I was open… I was open with you?” Halogram asks. “We… Told each other everything,” Kerry answers, crying. And Halogram wants to know if they talked about his father dying.
Halogram wants to know if John killed him, and Kerry explains that John is “the team you yell at every Sunday,” the football team that always gives you hope, but always lets you down. “Big fan,” she finishes.
John desperately wants to go, Kerry explains she needs to make an appearance at the hat ceremony after party at her house, then they can all go to the storage unit together… But John should not come inside, or Billy will throw his dip at me.
Kerry Killed Hal?
Halogram appears in the car, and immediately calls that popular theory: he thinks Kerry killed him, and he’s basing it on how she touched his face. So they go right to the vault, with the Halogram worried the vault was “trying to keep something in.”
That opens the vault, of course, which has a backpack and a paper bag. In the backpack is a canteen, poncho, protein bars, and a gun. In the paper bag? One of those black balls of goo that forms a portal, which we previously saw one of the Guardians use during John’s origin story, and was used in “Hector Hammond’s” slaughterhouse to transport cows.
What does this one do? Well, first John has to learn about Einsten-Rosen bridges: this is a dark matter manhole, and whoever set it up can take it from point A to point B. Looking into the portal, the Halogram sees the it goes to another planet… And worried about Kerry, he tells John to take the portal somewhere safe away from prying eyes. So they head to the water-tower, or what remains of it after 2016.
A Different World
John tells Halogram to ask him if he’s afraid. “F**k no,” John says, and heads through the portal to a desert planet where everything echoes. Halogram doesn’t recognize the place, but John maybe does, which is weird: he’s never been off-planet.
There’s an island far away in the middle of a lake, and some sort of strange structure in the sky. Halogram gets John to project him up to the structure to take a look, while John heads off towards the glowing light in the distance.
As Hal walks, he hears crunching beneath his feet, and finds the planet is covered in skulls… If you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the planet Antaan (Paul Ben Victor) and his aliens came from, who were destroyed by Zoe Manhunter. John was “injected with his people’s experience, and I felt it.” John lays it out for Hal, that the Manhunter released gas that made everyone terrified, so they all started killing each other and jumping out of the sky city.
So what was Hal doing here? John spots a boat, which they head towards. And yes, the whole thing is extremely River of Styx, if you were curious. As they row, Halogram asks why John said he was the last one to see Hal alive. And John gets Halogram caught up on everything that happened at the diner in 2026 (i.e., John punched Hal).
John also lays out everything Hal did wrong, and they argue, John sings again, and the Halogram checks out. Rain falls, lightning crashes, and John sees a light like a lighthouse. In the water, there’s an apple. John Stewart Sr. appears, puts the apple on his head, asks him if he’s afraid… And when John gets ready to shoot, Senior switches with young John, who demands our John shoot.
John goes nuts, falls in the water, and Halogram pulls him out of the water… Turns out the fear gas in the air was still there, and made John almost shoot himself in the head.
They continue to row, and Halogram tells John about how his father — really Hal’s father — died. When he did, he opened the safe his father left him. It had cash, photographs, and a note… A suicide note, essentially, that the pain he had his whole life, it was getting worse. “Couldn’t bear to let us see it,” Halogram recalls, adding that Grandpa Jordan had “the same pain… They call it the Jordan boys legacy. Man, I’m not fearless because I’m brave, I’m fearless because I’m broken.”
John asks the Halogram whether he’s now thinking he killed himself, and Kerry maybe threw away the gun, protecting him like how he protected his “old man.” It’s a theory, but seems like there’s perhaps more to come, right?
Arriving on the shore, John tells Halogram he lost the gun, and they establish there’s barely any charge left on the ring. Slowly, carefully, they walk into a strange structure, when Halogram is grabbed by a “Cave Dweller.”
Halogram fades out, John punches him, and of course it’s Sinestro. “You must be John Stewart,” he says.
“Great arm, kid,” Halogram says, in echoes of the first scene. As “Father to Son” plays, young Hal walks out to the field where his father died, and picks up the baseball he threw all those years before. Now we’ve got a real father-son duo in Halogram and John Stewart. But with one episode to go, we don’t know who killed Hal, we don’t know what Sinestro is up to… Lots to delve into, and not much time. We’ll see you next week for the season finale.
So… Who Killed Hal Jordan?
One last time, let’s throw out theories for who we think killed Hal Jordan. On one hand, this could be Halogram following its gut like Hal is right on the money: Kerry killed Hal, or Hal killed Hal and Kerry covered it up. But that seems far less certain than when Hal and John called that Zoe was the Manhunter a few episodes back, so I’m willing to toss that one out.
Noah still seems suspect simply because we’re spending so much time on him, and it could be him, him being a Manhunter, or… Something. It could also explain Halogram’s gut reaction: if Noah killed Hal, of course Kerry would give off odd vibes.
But honestly, just for consistency’s sake I’m gonna stick with John Stewart Sr, particularly with the strong focus on fathers and sons in this episode, John Stewart Sr. showing up again asking to be shot in the head… I’m probably way off here, but it really feels like everything is pointing away from him except the actual, textual clues. We’ll see how right — or wrong — I am next week.
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: “OutKast“
- Sunday, September 6, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 4: “The Weenie“
- Sunday, September 13, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 5: “Lights Out“
- Sunday, September 20, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 6: “Bad Optics“
- Sunday, September 27, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 7: “The Jordan Boys Legacy”
- Sunday, October 4, 2026: Lanterns, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
Where To Watch Lanterns
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