Lanterns Episode 7 Ending, Explained
If there’s one thing we’ve come to know about Lanterns, it is that there’s always going to be a kicker of an ending for each episode.
The sixth episode of the DCU series left us with the strangest one yet, with John Stewart decided to dig up his mentor/foe Hal Jordan before his body was even cold, swiping that ring and using it to manifest the Halogram we were first introduced to at the beginning of the series.
While the majority of the episode carried on in 2026, the episode also provided us with the opportunity to learn a little more about Hal’s past, similar to how Episode 3 took us through some of John’s most formative years after effectively being raised to be the Green Lantern: something that, ultimately, he never got to be by his own volition.
There are a lot of threads left loose at the end of the penultimate episode of Lanterns, and truth be told, there are quite a few spoilers ahead. So, bear that in mind before we go any further.
What’s Inside The Giant Cube in the Fortress of Storage Unit?
You might be wondering — what the hell motivated John to dig up poor Hal and manifest the Halogram anyway? Quite simply, he wanted answers about Hal’s death. And the only way to get those answers, from his point of view, was to open the weird cube situated in the ‘Fortress Of Storage’ unit. It can only be opened by Hal’s voice, and given his trick with Kerry's phone didn’t work, I guess he felt that this was his only option.
However, even the Halogram can’t resist being a thorn in John’s side, as he refuses to help him until he’s had a chance to meet Kerry. It seems he’s intrigued by the idea that Hal Jordan, of all people, managed to fall in love with someone other than himself. Yet, after meeting Kerry, which happened after John dropped by her son Noah’s hat ceremony that he ultimately never fulfilled, the Halogram voices his suspicions about her being responsible for Hal’s death. So, the pair head to the Fortress of Storage alone instead.
When they open the cube, they find a strange combination: a gun, a poncho, and a weird black thing that acts as a portal to another planet. When they use the miscellaneous thing as an entrance to the planet, which involves a city in the sky, John comes across a skull. He realises that this is the planet Antaan and his people used to live there before its population was wiped out by the Manhunter. You might remember that John ended up experiencing the pain of all that loss when Antaan kidnapped him, which he tells the Halogram about.
What (Or Who) Is Across The Lake in Lanterns Episode 7?
The duo decide to take a spooky boat across the alien lake. During the journey, John ends up hallucinating a bunch of apples, his father, and then his childhood self. He is taunted about, apparently, never actually wanting to be the Green Lantern. Suddenly, John is plunged into the water, but the Halogram, in doing this, wasn’t trying to kill him: he was trying to stop John from shooting himself in the head. It turns out that Zoe wiped out Antaan’s kind by essentially driving them to suicide, with John recounting how, in experiencing the genocide, he saw and felt people jumping out of the city in the sky to their death in the barren terrain below.
This boat ride is pretty important to Hal’s character development, too. At the start of the episode, we see Hal as a child refusing to give up a baseball to other teammates, not unlike the way he refuses to give up the ring. When the coach brings Hal’s father to reprimand him, he actually ends up agreeing with his son, and fighting the coach. The pair then bond, but Hal is later seen at his father’s funeral.
Anyway, this is relevant because the Halogram reveals that Hal’s father, a test pilot, didn’t crash that plane by accident: he intentionally committed suicide. The key (with a bird keychain, no less) that his father gives Hal as a child opens a safe that includes a suicide note. Hal’s grandfather, in turn, died in similar circumstances. The Halogram describes this cycle of death as the “Jordan Boys’ Legacy,” which is also the name of the episode. As we know, the keychain ends up in John’s possession, and begs an important question: Did Hal kill himself?
We don’t get much time to ruminate on that because after the Halogram and John disembark, a hooded figure grabs the Halogram and threatens to kill him. You can’t really kill a Halogram, so John de-manifests him. The identity of the figure (who gets a big punch in the face courtesy of John) is none other than Sinestro. This, obviously, raises a lot of questions and implications, but the episode ends by returning to the flashback, with a young Hal, following his father’s funeral, once again picking up the baseball he was so reluctant to give up. Again, there’s probably a parallel here about Hal not wanting to give up the ring — but we will save that speculation for the season finale next week.
