The penultimate episode of HBO’s Lanterns delivered its biggest revelations yet, shifting the series’ central mystery from the secret identity of the Manhunter to the question of who killed the real Hal Jordan. In the present day, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) has taken Hal’s Green Lantern ring after digging up Hal’s casket, using it to manifest the Hal-ogram, a backup of Hal’s consciousness stored from 2006. Together, the two open Hal’s secret storage vault in Rushville and step through a portal to the destroyed homeworld of the alien Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor), uncovering evidence that ties Hal’s death to the very genocide that wiped out an entire civilization.
As the final episode before the season finale, Lanterns episode 7 rewards attentive viewers with a shocking cliffhanger and resolves a mystery that, once answered, reframes everything that came before. The episode weaves together 1975 flashbacks, present-day investigation, and a journey to a dying alien world to connect Hal’s past, his death, and the larger cosmic stakes of the series.
What Lies Inside Hal Jordan’s Vault
Episode 6 first revealed that Hal had rented a storage unit in Rushville, and the penultimate episode finally lets John and Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) inside. The space contains a large alien vault similar to the one Hal once kept at his mansion, though it will not open without Hal identifying himself aloud. A voicemail recording on Kerry’s phone cannot fool the lock, which is precisely why John previously tricked Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) into having Hal buried with his uniform and ring, all so John could exhume the body and retrieve the ring.
The Hal-ogram agrees to open the vault, but only on the condition that John first lets him meet Kerry. Inside, they find surprisingly little: a bag packed with supplies, including a handgun and a canteen, along with one of the black spheres that have created portals throughout the season. John dismisses the haul as “stuff for a hike,” but the episode’s 1975 flashbacks give the discovery a far darker meaning.
The flashback sequence opens in 1975, where a young Hal gets into trouble after refusing to surrender a baseball during a game, forcing a forfeit for his team. His father, Martin Jordan, arrives at the classroom and promptly gets into a fight with the coach while defending his son. Martin then gives Hal a strange key, explaining that before Hal’s grandfather left to fly in a war, he stashed money, keepsakes, and private items in a safe and handed Martin the key to this “failsafe.” Martin now passes his own key to Hal, framing it as part of the Jordan family legacy and a tradition among military men preparing for the possibility that they might not return home.
Much later, Hal reveals the painful truth behind the key: Martin gave it to him several months before dying by suicide. Inside the safe, Hal had found money, coins, photographs, and a note explaining that his father had lived with worsening pain and believed his family would be better off without him. Hal’s grandfather also died by suicide.
“It’s the same pain passed down generation to generation.”
Hal Jordan, Lanterns
With that context, Hal’s storage unit and the “failsafe” he left behind take on a particularly grim tone, suggesting the supplies were meant as an escape plan rather than a simple hike.
The Journey to Antaan’s Dead World
Wary of Kerry, the Hal-ogram insists that John and he bring the portal to the old water tower in town before opening it there, proceeding through to an alien planet. On the other side, they find a flat desert littered with bones, an enormous abandoned city hanging in the sky, and a distant island and lighthouse as the only structures still reachable from the ground. John experiences déjà vu, having effectively been there before.
The episode never names the planet, but John confirms it is the destroyed homeworld of Antaan. He recalls being abducted by Antaan’s henchmen in episode 2, when they used an alien device to inject him with the memories of the dying alien civilization.
“We weren’t the only ones looking for a Manhunter. I got grabbed by this guy Antaan. He told me he was the last of his kind. I didn’t believe him, so he injected me with his people’s experience, and I felt it. Like it happened to me.”
John Stewart, Lanterns
John remembers being inside a city as gas spread through it, causing everyone who breathed it to attack one another, kill themselves, or leap to their deaths. He now understands that the city hung in the sky, explaining why so many people were falling. Traces of that substance remain in the planet’s clouds and water, and when a storm strikes while John and the Hal-ogram cross a lake on a man-made boat, John hallucinates, seeing his abusive father and his younger self accusing him of fear. When he falls into the water, the Hal-ogram manifests and pulls him back, saving his life.
How Did Sinestro End Up on Antaan’s Planet?
The greater mystery is why Hal maintained a private portal to this world. Was he investigating the destruction of Antaan’s people before the Rushville incident, or did he begin after he got out of jail? Whatever the answer, John and the Hal-ogram are stunned when they reach the island and discover Sinestro trapped inside a building that appears to be emitting the gas into the atmosphere.
Back in episode 6, Guy Gardner told John that someone had broken Sinestro out of “Spacekaban,” the extraterrestrial prison Hal had visited earlier in the series. Now we know he ended up stranded on Antaan’s dead world, raising the question of whether Hal, who had easy access to the portal, was responsible for the breakout, and if so, why. Antaan blames the Manhunter for the genocide of his people, and Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) herself admitted to John that her programming compelled her to carry it out, pointing to the possibility that she orchestrated the gas.
For now, episode 7 establishes a compelling chain of connections: someone freed Sinestro, Hal maintained a secret route to his hiding place, and Hal was murdered by someone a few months after returning to Rushville. Sinestro may not have pulled the trigger, but he may know why Hal died. As Lanterns heads toward its finale, all eyes will be on whether John can unravel the truth before the series closes out its first season.
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