Major spoilers for the “Lanterns” premiere follow. Please turn back if you didn’t see last night’s premiere.
HBO’s “Lanterns” promised a murder mystery involving two intergalactic cops, but its premiere revealed that the show’s most consequential victim was hiding in plain sight.
After spending most of the episode establishing the combative mentor-protégé relationship between Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) in 2016, the series jumped forward a decade and revealed Hal’s frozen corpse in a Nebraska football stadium, dead from a gunshot wound with his power ring missing.
In other words, one of DC Comics’ most famous heroes is already dead. And according to the series’ creators, killing Hal was not simply a cliffhanger designed to shock viewers.
“They’re never gonna let us do that,” executive producer Damon Lindelof recalled thinking when the idea first emerged. Nevertheless, DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran apparently approved the massive swing.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Lindelof said Hal’s murder unmistakably establishes John as the series’ central figure, even as the bulk of the story continues to unfold through the pair’s investigation in 2016.
“It focuses the show on John,” Lindelof explained. “And although the show is called ‘Lanterns’ and it is a buddy-cop construct, when you leave these episodes you’re going to be leaving them with John Stewart. We want you to get your brains around that. We want you to know it coming in.”
Showrunner Chris Mundy (“Ozark”) said the writers initially considered killing Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), who assists Hal and John with their investigation into an alien-related mass shooting in Rushville, Nebraska. The idea was abandoned because killing Kerry to motivate the two male heroes felt too much like the familiar “fridging” trope.
“You felt that it’s been done and it was gonna be a disservice to her,” Mundy said. “I think Damon basically said the most meaningful thing that could happen would be if Hal had died. What else do we care about more than that? And then it instantly felt like that would be incredible to get to try to write to, if the powers that be were willing to let us write to it.”
The decision also helped the writers place “Lanterns” within the larger DCU timeline. “Superman,” which occurs after the show’s 2016 storyline, establishes Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner as an active Green Lantern protecting Earth. Removing Hal from the present-day story helps explain how Guy eventually comes to occupy that position while giving John a deeply personal mystery to solve.
“If [Hal] did die, there’d be huge, significant emotional stakes, especially if he died at a time when his relationship with John was unresolved,” Lindelof said. He compared the structure to “Ghost,” which kills Patrick Swayze’s character early but continues telling a story built around his presence and relationships.
The writers considered saving Hal’s death for the season finale but decided that approach would feel too “clickbaity” and “exploitative.” Revealing it immediately instead tells audiences how far the series is prepared to go.
“We were immediately signaling to the audience this is where the show is willing to go, this is what we’re willing to do,” Lindelof explained.
Hal’s death does not mean Chandler disappears from “Lanterns.” Beyond the extensive 2016 storyline that runs throughout the first season, the actor portrays the “Halogram,” a version of Hal’s consciousness preserved within his power ring. Hal has also died and returned in various forms throughout DC Comics history, although nothing yet suggests the series intends to reverse its premiere revelation.
For his part, Chandler enjoyed the morbid collision between “Lanterns” and his most beloved television role.
“Maybe I made it up in my mind, but Coach Taylor’s sitting in the stands with a bullet in his head,” Chandler said. “I thought that was kinda cool.”
Comic-book writer and executive producer Tom King teased that the murder is not merely an isolated piece of the show’s central mystery. Hal’s death “raises the stakes,” he said, and “has consequences that reverberate throughout the rest of the universe for a long time.”
“Lanterns” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
