Lanterns Recap: No, Seriously — Who Killed Hal Jordan?

We've got two weeks left to figure out who offed Green Lantern Hal Jordan. And Sunday's "Lanterns," while illuminative about a few key points regarding Hal's backstory, doesn't get us much closer to finding the person who put a bullet in the superhero's head in the series' premiere. 

The hour does present a few intriguing possible suspects in the polarizing killing, though. And we get a fever dream of a trip to a far-off world, so that's fun. Read on for Episode 7's highlights.

The episode opens with a flashback to 1975, when a young Hal, sporting a shiner, sits in his coach's office. He got into a fight with pretty much his whole team when he wouldn't give up the ball when the coach wanted to swap pitchers. The team had to forfeit, and the ball is still clenched tightly in Hal's hand. "Is the other kid better?" Hal's dad asks when he shows up to take Hal home. The coach replies that it doesn't matter. "It's all that f—in' matters," Papa Jordan says, and then he and the coach start duking it out.

Afterward, Hal and his dad eat popsicles and watch planes take off. Dad takes a key that's been hanging around his neck and puts it around Hal's, saying his father did something similar before he went off to war. The key opened Grandpa Jordan's safe; the one Dad gave Hal opens his. When Hal wonders whether his mother should have it, instead, Dad says: "It's not something she can carry. But you can, Hal. It's in your blood, just like it was in Grandpa's, and mine. Jordan boys' legacy." Then he reassures Hal that he'll be around for a long time, unlike his own father, who died in battle. And he advises that Hal toss the ball away, because holding onto it forever is "f—ing exhausting." Hal does, and his dad admires the strength of his throw.

Next thing we know, Hal is attending his father's funeral. The boy is not much older, if at all, than he was in the previous scene. As he peers down into his dad's grave, we transition to 2026, where the Halogram is doing the same to Hal's open casket.

The Halogram is bummed that Actual Hal is dead, and he doesn't immediately remember who John is. When he's reminded, he assumes John is the current Green Lantern. Stewart sets him straight — "You/he got shot, and I'm trying to figure out who did it," he explains — but then loses the hologram's trust when he lies about how there was intergalactic attendance at the funeral. A frustrated John deactivates him.

Onto John's next pressing problem: He needs roughly $315,000 in cash to pay off Maggie, the waitress who's threatening to tell the cops about his fighting with Hal the night of his death. But John's brothers aren't sure they want to help him by wiring the money.

And even though the Halogram wasn't activated during John's phone conversation, he heard it all — and he's refusing to say anything that will help John open the safe until he knows what's going on. "Maybe you're the one that killed me," the Halogram says. "No, I just wish I killed you," Stewart mutters.

An undeterred Halogram demands to talk to local law-enforcement, which leads John to give a brief but pointed rebuttal/recap as to why that's a terrible idea. "I was in jail?" the Halogram asks. "Yeah," John says. "I was in love?" the Halogram wonders. "Yes," John says, a little more kindly. The Halogram says he won't talk to the box until John has taken him to see the sheriff, and since the ring only has about an hour of power left, clock's ticking!

The Halogram surprises John by appearing in the car, even though "I didn't summon you," as Stewart points out. But the Halogram says he shows up whenever the ring-wearer is thinking of him. A perturbed John takes off the ring, which shocks the Halogram: He should've disappeared the minute Stewart removed the jewelry from his hand, but "I'm still here," he says, confused. "That's not possible." His bewilderment turns to awe. "Bravo! Well f—in' done, trainee. That's amazing!" John is touched: "Hal never complemented me before. It's kinda weird." Aw, guys!

No one is at the sheriff's department because it's the day of the high school hat ceremony; on the way there, the Halogram learns about the carnage that happened on the day Zoe died. He assumes Hal killed her, and that's why John hates him. John doesn't correct him.

John has managed to banish the Halogram by the time he arrives at the school. He's stopped briefly by Maggie, who demands his fancy watch in exchange for a little more time in getting her the cash. Inside, the entire town goes crazy as Noah Macon and the football team's offensive line get ready to tell everyone where they've decided to go to college. But when Noah gets the mic, he says it's more important for everyone to focus on the championship game they've got that night, so he's not going to announce his decision before then.

As the slightly confused crowd disperses, Billy Macon tries to start something with John. Kerry intervenes, but she's not excited to hear he wants to talk. "Can it wait? I'm hosting 100 people at my house to celebrate a decision my kid just didn't make," she says. But when she hears that it's about Hal, she tells him to meet her at the school's science lab in a few minutes.

John tries to prepare her ("I just need you to know this man isn't who you knew"), but when the Halogram appears behind her and she hear's Hal's voice, Kerry's face goes ashen. She turns to face him, and when she reaches to touch his face and can make contact, she nearly starts crying. (Side note: I love when John tries to explain that the construct isn't real, and both the Halogram and Kerry tell him to zip it.)

"We were close?" the Halogram gently asks her. "Very," she says, nearly undone. "And I was open with you?" he wonders. "We told each other everything," she replies, hastily wiping away the tears that have started to fall. She confirms that Hal told her how his father died. She tells him that Hal "talked about John like a football team that was always giving you hope and then letting you down."

Once Kerry realizes that the Halogram is there in an effort to get into the box in the storage unit, she says they have to go to the storage unit together — they just have to stop at the party at her house first. And once the guys are back in John's truck, just the two of them, the Halogram is sure that Kerry killed him. So he wants to get to the vault and open it before she arrives. "I think you're being paranoid," John says. "Well I think being murdered allows for a little paranoia," his companion shoots back.

Before they access the vault, though: "What if I wasn't trying to keep people out, I was trying to keep something in?" the Halogram suddenly wonders. But it's too late — his voice has opened the box. There's a backpack containing a canteen, a poncho, protein bars, and a gun (John sticks the latter in his waistband). There's also a black ball of goo that the Halogram places on the floor, where it flattens out of its own accord. "I ever teach you about Einstein-Rosen bridges, trainee?" he wonders. Yep: It's a wormhole, presumably one that Hal set up to transport him to somewhere else in the universe. Hal sticks his head in and ascertains that yep, it's a portal to another planet, and hey: The air seems breathable!

"Let me get this straight," an incensed John asks, "you got a planet in a box in a storage unit in the middle of f—in' Nebraska?" The Halogram is nonplussed. "And a poncho and a gun," he adds. Then, before the "hot-but-possibly-evil sheriff" can return, they transport that wormhole to the downed water tower and activate it there. "Ask me if I'm afraid," John orders, and the Halogram does. "F–k no," Stewart says, and steps through.

The portal takes them to a dry and barren plain; the Halogram's not sure if he's been there before, but John says it seems familiar — despite the fact that he's never left Earth. A destroyed husk of an airborne city hovers above them; John projects the Halogram up there to see what's what. On the ground, John finds remains buried in the sand; when the Halogram returns, he reports it empty, and they realize they're surrounded by dead beings. "We weren't the only ones looking for a Manhunter," he says.

He explains about being injected with Antaan's people's experiences; we're on Antaan's planet, where a gas released into the atmosphere made everyone so terrified that they started killing each other and themselves. "I didn't realize that the city was in the sky. I didn't understand why they were jumping," he continues. "Now, I do."

But why was Hal there? The men walk toward a boat on a lake; John guesses that it belonged to the Lantern. It's full night as John paddles and the Halogram interrogates him about why he was the last person to see Hal alive. After all, John doesn't live in Nebraska. John's explanation turns into a litany of all the ways Hal let him down during their relationship, including but not limited to driving him off a cliff and into a pole. The Halogram apologizes, but John doesn't want it unless it comes from the genuine article. The Halogram points out that Hal seemed to be in trouble toward the end, and maybe his former trainee should've been more aware? The whole thing annoys (or maybe pains) John so much, he starts singing out loud and his distracted brain lets the Halogram disappear.

Just then, it starts to storm. And then apples begin to fall along with the rain. Stewart's father as a young man appears in the boat, putting one of the apples on his head. He goads him into shooting the fruit off his head, but when John pulls his weapon, all of a sudden his younger self is sitting across from him. "You ARE scared!" the kid shouts. "Scared that they know you never wanted to be a Lantern!" Little John keeps goading his older self until all of a sudden something knocks John off the boat and into the water. Next thing we know, the Halogram has him back in the boat.

He explains that John was acting insane, seeing things that weren't there, and was about to shoot himself in the head when the Halogram intervened. Stewart instantly realizes that the gas that made everyone nuts is still very much in the atmosphere. "See, I told you that poncho was important," the Halogram quips.

The storm abates, and the men continue. After a pause, the Halogram abruptly tells John that his father killed himself, though everyone thought it was an accident in the course of his work as a test pilot. He relates the story about the day we saw at the top of the episode. When young Hal opened the safe, it was full of cash, coins, and photographs — "and a note. My old man, he was convinced we'd be better off without him. He said he'd had that pain his whole life. Said it was getting worse. He couldn't hide it. He couldn't bear to let us see it. Couldn't bear to let us see him."

Hal's grandfather had done the same, conveyed via a note that was in in his own safe. "The same pain, passed down generation to generation, father to son," the Halogram says sadly. "Man, I'm not fearless because I'm brave. I'm fearless because I'm broken."

John wonders if the Halogram thinks Hal killed himself. The construct considers the possibility that the sheriff found him and covered it up to protect his legacy. "Like you protected your dad," John says, and there's real empathy in his voice when he says he's sorry. "That's the first time you've called me Hal," the Halogram notes.

They arrive at an island; John notes that he lost the gun. And there's not a lot of charge left on the ring. They make their way to a building that's giving off an ominous light. After just a few moments inside, a hooded figure grabs the Halogram from behind and threatens to kill him if they don't give him their boat and portal off the world. "Trainee, they're playing our song," the Halogram says, code that John should make the hologram disappear. So he does, and punches the flummoxed mystery man in the face.

His hood falls away, and it's Sinestro. "You must be John Stewart," the former Lantern says. "Great arm, kid," the Halogram tells John, echoing what his father told him after he hucked the game ball at the start of the hour.

The final shot of the episode is of young Hal, still in his suit from the funeral, retrieving the ball his dad told him to throw away.

Now it's your turn. What's your current theory about Hal's death? Tell us everything in the comments!

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