Lanterns Season 1 Finale Reveals Hal Jordan’s Killer, Sets Up John Stewart’s Man of Tomorrow Turn

HBO’s freshman DC Studios drama Lanterns wrapped its eight episode first season this weekend, and the finale finally closed the book on the question that’s driven the whole show: who killed Hal Jordan. The episode also handed John Stewart a new identity as Earth’s Green Lantern, one that’s expected to carry straight into James Gunn’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow next summer.

Kerry Is Revealed as Hal Jordan’s Killer

The finale confirms that Kerry pulled the trigger, shooting Hal at a deserted football field after he confronted her about wanting to move her and her son Noah to a safe house in Mexico, having realized Noah was secretly a Manhunter and a danger to those around him. John ultimately works out what happened not through hard evidence but by reading Kerry’s maternal fear for her son, and despite everything, he declines to kill Noah when the teenager asks him to. Noah instead gets to play his football game and make plans to study at the University of Nebraska.

Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan in a scene from Lanterns’ first season.

John Stewart Steps Into the Ring on His Own Terms

The bigger shift is what happens to John Stewart once the mystery is solved. John had spent years refusing to carry a ring at all, a holdover from a childhood where his parents’ obsession with the Green Lantern Corps pushed him toward architecture instead, leaving Guy Gardner to cover Earth’s patch of space as the Guardians’ default pick. In the finale, John claims Hal’s ring for himself and charges it on his own terms, telling Gardner, “You take the stars. I’ll take the dirt.” It’s a declaration that he’s patrolling Earth without reporting to the Guardians of the Universe or the wider Corps, an arrangement Gardner reluctantly agrees to carry back to his superiors. Sinestro, played by Ulrich Thomsen, is left behind on the alien planet where he’d secretly been forging a fear infused power source of his own, with his fate left open for a potential second season.

Setting the Stage for Man of Tomorrow

Showrunner Chris Mundy, who developed the series alongside Damon Lindelof and Tom King, has said the writers’ room wasn’t handed a fixed destination for John Stewart’s arc. “We weren’t tasked with having any specific landing point,” Mundy said, framing that freedom as a chance to leave John somewhere the wider DC Universe could pick him up. That destination is already confirmed: Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart, who first appeared in a supporting role in 2025’s Superman, is set to return in Superman: Man of Tomorrow, James Gunn’s sequel that wrapped principal photography in August and arrives in theaters on July 9, 2027. With Lanterns leaving him as an unaffiliated, self-declared protector of Earth, the show has effectively built the version of John Stewart that Man of Tomorrow now inherits. Gamersuniverse covered Gunn’s plans for after Man of Tomorrow in our report on his next project, and you can revisit our Superman review for where the DCU stood before Lanterns picked up the Green Lantern thread.

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Picture Source: HBO