‘Lanterns’ Season 1 Finale Explained: What Will Happen to John Stewart Next?

After eight weeks and eight episodes, the first live-action show in James Gunn’s new DCU ended. Lanterns It was the second attempt to bring the Green Lantern mythos to life after Ryan Reynolds’ disastrous 2011 vehicle, and the two projects couldn’t be more different. While the film opted to jump right into the antics of the cosmic superheroes, Lanterns Instead, it took a much more grounded approach, explicitly modeling itself after HBO. real detective an approach that may have disappointed fans looking for the procedural space opera of the comics, but mostly resonated with critics and general audiences.

Certainly that does not mean that Lanterns he didn’t engage with the higher aspects of the source material. Instead, the entire first season used the mystery of the Manhunters’ presence on Earth and the modern-day disappearance of Hal Jordan as a launching pad to introduce the world of the Green Lantern Corps, which is sure to expand when Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart appears in the next season. Man of tomorrow. But the show’s season finale dramatically changed the status quo with several major reveals and defining character changes, meaning the DCU version of Green Lantern Corps will be tumultuous in its own particular way.

What happens in the season finale of? Lanterns?

After John and Hal’s hologram enters the portal to the long-dead Antaan homeworld and discovers Sinestro in Episode 7, the pair waste no time interrogating him to find out why he is there and how he escaped imprisonment. After John waterboards him, Hal’s villainous former mentor delivers the episode’s first major twist: Sheriff Kerry’s son Noah is actually the last Manhunter on Earth, and he helped Sinestro escape so he could forge a power battery for himself. It becomes clear that Noah’s human conditioning is in conflict with his android programming, and John is determined to prove that Noah can choose to avoid violence.

During his confrontation with him, Noah confesses to Hal Jordan’s murder, explaining that he killed Hal because he would not keep silent about his true nature, but also reveals that he struggles with his identity and dreams of simply living a normal life. Noah begs John to kill him out of mercy, as John claims to have done the same to Zoe, Noah’s grandmother, but John refuses because he knows the truth: Hal’s killer is actually Sheriff Kerry, and he killed him in a moment of desperate impulse after Hal revealed that he knew the truth about his son. While Kerry offers to turn herself in, John urges her not to, insisting that it is not what Hal would have wanted. She stays to watch Noah’s last high school football game, wracked with grief over killing the man she loved, but hoping that Noah’s lie about her safety indicates that he is capable of overriding her programming.

The finale ends with an unexpected new direction for John’s future. He uses the Lantern signal in the middle of Rushville to call Guy Gardner, who immediately recognizes that John is wearing Hal’s ring. When Guy threatens to report him to the Guardians, John tells him to do exactly that, because he will take over patrolling Earth as a sort of “independent contractor”, using the defective lantern created by Sinestro (which is infected by the residual “fear” left on the world of Antaan) to become a Green Lantern free from the restrictions of the Guardians of the Universe. John recites his own new oath, affirming his decision to finally embrace and conquer his fears, before flying into an uncertain future.

What’s next for John Stewart?

After the conclusion of lanterns, John Stewart’s character flies into uncharted territory. While he has had his fair share of conflicts with the Guardians of the Universe, he has never operated as a Green Lantern independent of them and, in fact, in the 1992-1993 storyline. Green Lantern: Mosaic, John even becomes the first human guardian. In an ironic twist, John’s current trajectory looks a lot like it did in 1992. Guy Gardner: Reborn, a series in which Guy loses his Green Lantern ring and steals the yellow power ring of a (then dead) Sinestro to operate as his own vigilante, an era that took place before Geoff Johns took over Green Lantern in the early 2000s and reconfigured the yellow ring as powered by the fear entity Parallax.

While it appears that John will continue to operate as a Green Lantern (despite the power of fear locked in his new battery), it’s hard to imagine that he won’t face off against other members of the Corps. An unauthorized Lantern patrolling Earth doesn’t seem like something the Guardians of Oa would take lightly, and realizing they’d been tricked only worsens the growing rivalry between John and Guy. With Lanterns Season 2 is already in development, it may follow the consequences of John’s decision and the Guardians’ response… and we may even meet one of the many Earth Lanterns who come after Hal, John and Guy.

We already know that Aaron Pierre will be in last year’s sequel Superman, and at this point, it’s a safe bet that he’ll replace Guy as Earth’s Green Lantern, but does that mean he’ll also take his place in the Justice Gang? And if so, knowing that the group is obviously being created as a precursor to the Justice League, will we see John Stewart become a founding member of DC’s premier superhero team? Lanterns It may not have been the high-concept cosmic superhero epic that fans were hoping for, but it still worked as an origin story for one of the most beloved Green Lanterns, and we’ll almost certainly see John in those kinds of adventures in the future.

Lanterns airs on HBO.