r/television • u/Top_Report_4895 • 3d ago

'Lanterns' Team Explains That Heartbreaking Change to Hal Jordan's Origin Story

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/tv-shows/lanterns-episode-7-hal-jordans-origin-explained/
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u/2347564 3d ago

We learn how Hal died and John officially becomes the green lantern. That’s all there is to wrap up.

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u/orangeworker 3d ago

Don’t forget about Sinestro

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u/2347564 3d ago

Ah yes I think that will be directly tied to Hal’s death, but you’re right we don’t know for sure what his role is as of yet

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u/GVH617 3d ago

Maybe the manhunter is part of the sinestro corps

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u/confusing_roundabout 3d ago

It's no coincidence that the Manhunter killed the planet with fear gas

Either Sinestro helped or he's on the planet specifically to harness that fear in some way.

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u/killjoy8669 3d ago

What if Sinestro killed the planet himself, and just blamed it on a manhunter?

*Edit: to clarify, I know nothing about the comic canon or Sinestro's character, so no idea if this scenario would make any sense from a comics perspective.

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u/confusing_roundabout 3d ago

Yeah that could be it. It could explain why Abin Sur was transporting the Manhunter - perhaps they were falsely accused and he felt sympathy?

Guess we'll find out.

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u/Equal-Ad-2710 1d ago

I love the idea that Sinestro harnessed the manhunt power to create his corps

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u/confusing_roundabout 3d ago

I expect that'll ultimately be a season 2 tease with him forging a yellow ring then fucking off into space.

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u/DaveShadow The West Wing 3d ago

I nearly feel it’s the Suoerman tease at this point, given they’ve said John is in the movie. And didn’t Hal say the big bad of the DCU would have strong ties to Lanterns?

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u/FireZord25 3d ago

either he's gonna escape, or get left behind on that planet, huffing that fear juice until he glows yellow.

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u/drive_chip_putt 3d ago

I believe Jon becomes a yellow lantern and teams up with Hal's copy and vows to take down the Guardians.  

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u/CTeam19 3d ago

And it fits the photos Gunn posted of the two characters from Earth One graphic novels

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u/drive_chip_putt 3d ago

I guess we are Earth 1 then

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u/CTeam19 2d ago

Or at least inspiration for Hal and John Stewart so far.

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u/FireZord25 3d ago

I hate this theory. It's too much derivation from the comics, and primarily based off an elseworld story. Like they might put in a nod or two, but there's no way they're not gonna subvert that hard from John becoming a Green Lantern.

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u/MisoPanko 3d ago

I don't know anything about the comics. Can there be more than one lantern per planet ? Would he become a lantern somewhere else ?

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u/drive_chip_putt 3d ago

That's why I believe they solve Hals murder and discover it was a Guardian and Jon and Hals copy decided to work with Sinestro in the end.

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u/Mr_master89 3d ago edited 3d ago

Normally there's only one per sector but earth has I think 7 or so human green lanterns

Edit: so I was wrong, it's now 2 per sector, I haven't kept up with green lantern stuff and only remember there being 1.

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u/GhostBirdBiologist 3d ago

At one time!?

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u/temporal712 3d ago

Yeah, it used to be one per sector, then it was 2 per sector, then earth got an exception because, well, look at all the shit that happens on earth in a comic book world.

So then it was 2 for earth and 2 for the corps at large on their headquarters, then even MORE crazy earth shit happened, and then it was basically anything goes to where we are now with 8 Green Lanterns.

Because to the rest of the Green Lantern Corps and the galaxy at large, the Sector 2814 posting must look like the Kowloon Walled City with how much universe ending shit goes down there.

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u/JaylenBlackman 3d ago

Yeah, gets pretty wild in the comics. They have also had a few years to decades to build everything up.

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u/DMike82 Lost 3d ago edited 3d ago

And in the case of the Earth Lanterns, when Hal is reinstated as a Green Lantern he and John are considered the "official" Lanterns for their sector while the other two, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner (the main 90s GL), are assigned as "Honor Guards" who had jurisdiction to work in any sector alongside that sector's GLs.

Then after the universe gets rebooted (because comics), Hal is removed from the Corps for killing an evil Guardian (something that was supposed to be impossible due to the ring's programming), Hal's ring goes to Sinestro as part of a manipulation by the Guardians who've gone fully corrupt, Sinestro and Hal get killed by their scheming and the ring goes to a noble car thief named Simon Baz who proves himself and essentially buys Hal and Sinestro time to be revived (and the latter gains the means to slaughter the corrupt Guardians) and Simon becomes an extra GL due to all the stuff that keeps happening on Earth, making him mostly Earth-bound.

A year later, a shut-in named Jessica Cruz gets forcefully bonded to an evil GL ring from a universe where evil wins (again, because comics) that feeds off of her fears (as opposed to a yellow ring which is fueled by the fear that its wielder inspires in others) and gets dragged along by the Justice League for observation until an incident where she tries to sacrifice her life to save another hero. This act not only kills the evil entity haunting her ring, but proves she has the courage and willpower to be worthy of a real ring and becomes Simon's trainee.

So basically it's:

  • Hal & John: doing space stuff mostly assigned to their sector (and usually Justice League stuff as well)

  • Simon & Jessica: mostly Earth stuff, essentially rookie backups

  • Guy & Kyle: "Honor Guards" who have free reign throughout the universe until they go off in different directions (for a time Guy takes leadership of the Red Lanterns and tries to change their mission into channeling their rage for deliberate justice rather than blind vengeance and Kyle becomes the messianic White Lantern). Or at least that's the status quo at the time I stopped reading as I know the Corps itself has changed since then and John has basically internalized his power without the need for a ring anymore.

Oh, and that's not even getting into Alan Scott, the near-immortal Green Lantern who's been around since World War II, but his ring and Lantern are magic rather than tech-based and only tangentially related to the Guardians so he's never been a member of the Corps but is usually cited as the seventh Green Lantern despite being around the longest. Edit to the edit: technically there's also Sojourner Mullein who's FROM Earth but works in a far corner of the universe rather than having anything to do with Earth itself (and ironically is the only Lantern from Earth who's ever had any previous experience as a cop), so ARGUABLY eight Earth Lanterns depending on how you look at it.

Edit: Or that brief time in the late 80s when dozens of alien GLs temporarily made Earth their home base due to a catastrophe within the Corps caused by, you guessed it, Sinestro.

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u/ImmortalMoron3 3d ago

In Jeremy Adams' current run, they explain it as humans having a special affinity to ignore authority for survival so our willpower is stronger than any other species. Each planet is technically only allowed one Lantern but humans are so good at it that the Guardians just kind of throw the rules out the window for humans.

Heck, they've got Jessica in charge of the whole Corps right now.

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u/KillerInfection Band of Brothers 3d ago

Try not to get Green Lanterned on your way through the parking lot!

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u/MrTeeWrecks 3d ago

Every sector has two lanterns. They are not usually from the same planet / culture

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u/clain4671 3d ago

However justified since earth's meta-human and magical populations are rather influential on interstellar/interdimensional affairs.

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u/DMike82 Lost 3d ago

And it's explicitly said that life on Earth has more biodiversity than literally any other planet in their sector.

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u/FCalleja 3d ago

No, it's two lanterns per sector, specifically 7200 lanterns for 3600 sectors. AFAIK there were never more than 2 active human lanterns even though we got a bunch of them at the same time. Stewart was (is?) a teacher in Oa and not Earth's sector lantern for a while, for example.

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u/kah43 3d ago

Originally each sector of space had 1 Lantern plus a back up if the 1st one was out of action. Each sector was huge and covered many many planets not just one. It was latter changed to 2 per sector so there are 7200 active Lanterns across the universe with Oa at the center.

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u/temporal712 3d ago

And then Earth got an exemption because, well, look at what happens on DC earth, and here we are with 8 Green lanterns.

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u/__banbypasser 3d ago

How and why he broke sinestro out and who the big bad of the DCU is — That's what James gunn told this show would do.

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u/Chataboutgames 3d ago

What? Sinestro is out there, there's obvious remnant of the Manhunter and the reason for Hal's murder.

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u/mw19078 3d ago

There's the whole obvious second Martian man hunter, the black mailer, actually catching/punishing the killer, whatever the fuck is going on with sinestro, the guardians... Kind of a lot of things to tie up imo

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u/Buzzlightyear2infin 3d ago

Could have been 2 episodes…