Warning: This story contains major spoilers for Episode 5 of Lanterns
Lots of plot threads came to a head in Episode 5 of Lanterns. The Manhunter’s identity is finally revealed, the simmering rivalry between John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) boils over into physical blows, and the town of Rushville, Neb., is changed forever.
Although John and Hal spent most of last week’s episode suspecting that William Macon (Garret Dillahunt) was the alien Manhunter in disguise, they discerned by the end that it was actually Macon’s wife, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan). This week’s episode opens with a flashback confirming that intel.
In Lanterns’ latest time-jump, the opening scene is set in 2007 and shows us a younger Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) arriving in Rushville for the first time, running from some bad business in Gotham City. Unfortunately that business has followed her in the form of two male goons who have been tasked with killing her and bringing back her finger as proof. But when they try to accost her at a diner, Zoe steps in, using her superhuman strength to kill one of them and beat the other into submission. She then instructs Kerry to cut off her finger so that the surviving criminal can take it back to Gotham and prevent any more crooks from coming after Kerry. In exchange, Zoe asks for Kerry’s help one day when more dangerous people come looking for Zoe.
“What I really love about the beginning of Episode 5 is you see how the contract happens,” Jagannathan tells Gold Derby.
Up until now, Zoe has been a soft presence on screen, mostly making love to John and supporting her husband. But in this scene, Jagannathan got to kick some butt.
“She is so strong. She is capable of so much damage, and you realize she moves through the world with so much restraint, actually,” Jagannathan says. “She’s built a family, she’s built a life, she’s built peace, she’s built community. So for just one second you see the flip side of who she can be. It was an extraordinary scene to shoot. What you see at play is the contract that she has to make to survive, and the extrapolation is she’s had this conversation with everyone.”
Back in 2016, John is hospitalized after the car crash Hal caused at the end of Episode 4. Hal says he meant to just “take you off the game board,” but when the car catches fire, John ends up with serious injuries. But Zoe uses her Manhunter technology to heal him, just like she once regrew a pinky finger for Kerry.
As Hal investigates the situation, he deploys a new feature of the Green Lantern ring that we haven’t seen yet. It’s called “sentry protocol,” and it creates an identical hologram of Hal for investigation and decoy purposes.
As her enemies close in, Zoe finally calls in the debt owed to her by the residents of Rushville, and they start mobilizing to defend her. Hal ends up giving her one of the greatest gifts of all though, by sending Antaan (Paul-Ben Victor) and his Manhunter hunters after Macon instead of Zoe. That’s fine by Macon, who despite seeming like a typical American alpha male until now, proves that he is more than ready to sacrifice himself for his wife.
“You go from thinking that I’m the trophy wife and he’s the head honcho of the town, to that phone call we have in Episode 5 where it’s clear what the actual relationship is,” Jagannathan says. “I have given him the gift of life, and he will do anything to protect and preserve me.”
Both Jagannathan and Dillahunt relished the switcheroo here, getting to subvert what viewers and other characters assumed their gender roles were.
“If anything, I’m the trophy husband,” Dillahunt says. “I’m not the power player here, I’m one of her weapons. And I think that’s cool.”
Hal’s been playing fast and loose with his ring’s power level, and eventually has to run back to the motel to recharge it with the power battery. That’s where John catches up with him, and they have a brutal knock-down drag-out fistfight to finally settle their differences. The younger man triumphs in the end, but that’s not good news for Zoe. John leaves Hal as bait to bring the Manhunter into the open, where he snipes her dead. “I see you, Zoe,” he says as he pulls the trigger.
It’s not good news for John, either. He tells the Guardian (Laura Linney) that despite a lifetime of looking forward to wearing the ring and expecting it to make him feel proud and powerful, it actually only makes him feel empty. After all the intense training his parents put him through, it’s still not enough to prove yourself capable of overcoming fear. To be a Green Lantern, you also have to want it — and John doesn’t.
