From the very beginning, HBO’s Lanterns has been playing around with multiple points in time, fueling easy comparisons to neo-noir series like True Detective and Watchmen. While most of the series’ action takes place in 2016, Lanterns opens on a sequence from 1996 when Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) is a relatively new Green Lantern and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) is still just a young boy. Hal lost his father at a young age, and that made him fearless enough to accept the Green Lantern ring. We also learn that Stewart was essentially programmed by his parents to be completely fearless so he could one day become the Green Lantern.

After a tense episode ends with a literally explosive moment, what’s ostensibly an epilogue takes us further into the future for a shocking cliffhanger set in 2026. Let’s break it down.

Spoilers follow for Lanterns season 1 episode 1.

Lanterns episode 1 ending explained

In 2016, Hal has been training John as a backup Green Lantern for about two months when the show begins. Quickly, they wind up in Rushville, Nebraska, to investigate a mass shooting at the local football stadium. One of Hal’s notorious gut feelings indicates that aliens may have been involved somehow. Working with Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald), they apprehend a suspect who, by all accounts, appears human. When Hal is finally able to interview him, however, he uses years of experience with extraterrestrials to trick the alien into exposing himself.

The alien clarifies that his purpose is “war” and “vengeance” but explains that the specifics of his mission cannot be revealed, so he has a “biometric neutron device” woven into his skeleton to blow himself up. Just as the alien self-destructs, Hal contains most of the blast with an energy bubble created with his Green Lantern ring.

Immediately after, we shift to a snowy scene at night in 2026. An older John sports a goatee as he drives by the ruins of a building and to the Rushville football stadium where he meets up with Sheriff Kerry. In the same place in the stands where John and Hal sat 10 years prior, Kerry and John find Hal Jordan dead, frozen in the snow, with a bullet in the forehead and blood on his face. John checks Hal’s right hand. There’s no ring — green or otherwise. “Knievel” by Scud Mountain Boys plays over the end credits, punctuating the scene with a melancholic alt-country vibe about the inherent self-destruction in seeking thrills.

So, despite being a weathered and powerful hotshot in 2016, Hal Jordan is destined to die in the winter of 2026, alone in the snow.

Is Hal Jordan really dead in Lanterns?

This is a show based on comic books, so is any character ever truly dead? Particularly because Lanterns has already established itself as a show that includes alien shapeshifters, there could be any sort of explanation here to work around Hal’s death or eventual resurrection. Some fans have already theorized that the dead Hal is a construct, shapeshifting alien, or something else entirely.

But the people who made Lanterns aren’t treating it as a fake-out. Co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King have all spoken openly about the decision to kill Hal, describing it as one of the foundational ideas behind the series.

“One of the very first things that was part of the premise was that this is a murder mystery with Green Lantern solving it,” Lindelof told Variety. But who gets murdered, and how do the writers get the audience to care right away? According to Lindelof, their conversations kept returning to one answer: “What if it was one of them?”

Lindelof and King initially worried that killing such an important DC hero would feel like a cheap provocation. “We can’t do that. Everyone’s going to hate us. It feels gimmicky,” Lindelof said in an interview with Collider. Mundy argued that losing Hal would instead “infuse the entire story with a lot of emotionality,” particularly once viewers understood the history between Hal and John.

Hal’s death also hangs over Chandler’s performance throughout the 2016 storyline. During a roundtable interview attended by Polygon, Lindelof explained that revealing Hal’s fate immediately allowed the writers to explore the mortality beneath his swagger.

“HBO afforded us a lot of time and a lot of patience, and we got to spend a lot of time with John and a lot of time with Hal,” Lindelof said. “We get to feel Hal’s mortality because of the way that the pilot ends. And so that idea of someone who’s looking back and saying, you know, ‘What was it all for?’ Those were just some of the ideas that really captivated us in the writers’ room, and it was our job to try to kind of get that into the scripts.”

The time-jumping structure means Chandler isn’t leaving Lanterns after one episode. Most of the series still takes place in 2016, allowing the show to develop Hal and John’s partnership even as viewers know how it ends. Earlier in episode 1, John encountered a “Halogram” (a digital backup of Hal’s consciousness kept in the ring) that had a message for the real Hal, which is what ultimately led them to Rushville to begin with. So there’s every possibility that even if the flesh-and-blood Hal Jordan is dead at this point in 2026, a Halogram is still stored in his Green Lantern ring — wherever that is. As such, Kyle Chandler’s role in the show, even in 2026, is not over. It also means Hal could potentially show up in other DC Universe projects in the future in Halogram form.

Is John Stewart the Green Lantern in 2026?

Aaron Pierre is already confirmed to reprise his role as John Stewart in James Gunn’s 2027 movie Man of Tomorrow, which focuses on Superman and Lex Luthor teaming up to face Brainiac. Lanterns doesn’t really create any uncertainty about John’s survival or his larger DCU future. Because Hal is dead and doesn’t have a Green Lantern ring, it’s easy to assume John is a Green Lantern already in this sequence.

Not exactly. In the first shot we see of John in 2026, he raises his right hand and drinks from a portable cup. Whether it’s coffee, water, or something else doesn’t matter. There is no ring on any of his fingers. Earlier in the episode, we see that when John does wear Hal’s ring, he wears it on his right hand. John Stewart has a future as the Green Lantern, but it seems like that future hasn’t caught up with him just yet.

Sure, maybe he wears his ring on his left hand or is keeping it in his pocket while he does quiet, regular human things. If he does have a ring at this point, then it’s certainly a different ring than the one that Hal wields. Why else would John check Hal’s hand like that?