The first season of Lanterns has wrapped up on HBO. Part of the ever-expanding DC Universe, the show introduced us to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), the Green Lantern in charge of policing the section of the universe that includes Earth. We also met his trainee John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), who ended up taking over Hal’s role by the end of the season, working as a sort of “independent contractor” outside the purview of the Green Lantern Corps.
Someone had to; we learned in the pilot episode that Hal Jordan eventually dies. That said, in the superhero genre, characters come back from the dead all the time. In the finale, the supervillain Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) even suggests that he’s capable of bringing Hal Jordan back to life. Will we see Hal return in future seasons?
Although he didn’t fully commit to an answer, Lanterns co-creator Damon Lindelof made it sound like Hal Jordan is gone for good while talking to Collider. “And I think that part and parcel of making the hardest decision, which was, we’re going to get a lot of mileage out of a story that its central conflict basically revolves around one ring, two people vying for the ring,” he said. “And, in order to play fair, it felt like one of them definitively had to end up with it, and I don’t think that there was any question amongst Tom [King], Chris [Mundy], and I, and certainly once we brought in the larger room, that Hal’s death had to stick in order for it to be felt.”
And even though, as an audience, as a DC fan, as a writer, the ridiculousness of, “Okay, now you can play with Hal Jordan, you’re going to kill him off in the pilot? What are you, insane?” But also sort of understanding that it didn’t feel like John could take the ring until Hal was gone, and that there was some degree of stewardship under Hal, but also a lot of things that Hal would get wrong. We had the ingredients, but in terms of how to prepare the casserole, the last instruction was Hal has gone for good and sends John on his way. That enables John to accept the ring on his own terms vs. Hal’s terms or the Guardians’ terms, and that ring had to be forged with a little special something in and of itself that could potentially set up future storylines.
“Hal’s death had to stick.” “The last instruction was Hal has gone for good.” It sounds like if Damon Lindelof has his way, Hal Jordan will not come back.
Lindelof went on to describe how it would feel “schmuck-baity” to bring Hal back after so much of the first season revolved around figuring out who killed him. “I can only tell you that everybody in the Season 1 room, inclusive of the writers who are working on ideating on Season 2, felt like, even though we knew that it was going to be emotionally devastating and/or disappointing and maybe even frustrating, that the worst possible schmuck-baity thing that we could do is show you a pilot where Hal Jordan was definitively dead, and then try to walk it back and say, ‘Oh, he was a clone’ or ‘He’s only mostly dead,'” he said.
So I think that honoring the emotional impact and making Season 1 feel felt. The question that you’re asking would be the equivalent of, “Would I want to see a movie called Ghost 2 where Patrick Swayze was alive again?” And the answer is, I would not, because it would degrade the emotional impact of Ghost. But where there’s a will, there’s a way.
However, Lindelof emphasized that he is not involved in planning the second season, so it’s possible that the writers could go in a different direction. “I do not know anything about the creative, and I wouldn’t want to hamstring those writers in any way for what future storytelling mechanisms they could indulge in,” he said. “Knowing what the comics have done with Parallax and Hal, I think, has died at least 3 or 4 times over the course of the canon, and celebrating everything that Kyle did in his performance to get the audience to fall in love with Hal.”
At the moment, HBO has not formally given the greenlight for a second season of Lanterns, although the wheels are turning. At the least, we know that John Stewart will be back in Man of Tomorrow, the sequel to 2025’s Superman movie.
If Lanterns does come back for a second season, there are plenty of conflicts left to explore. John Stewart has essentially declared himself the Green Lantern in charge of protecting Earth. That does not sit well with Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), the Green Lantern who currently has this beat under the direction of the watchful Guardians. Also, Sinestro is still alive, albeit tied up on an alien island. How will he survive? “Sinestro is very resourceful,” Lindelof hinted.
All eight episodes of Lanterns Season 1 are streaming now on HBO Max.
- Release Date
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August 16, 2026
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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Chris Mundy
- Directors
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Alik Sakharov, James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Patel
- Writers
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Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, Tom King, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Justin Britt-Gibson, Breannah Gibson
