RECAP: ‘Lanterns’ Episode 8 — “Dirt and Stars”

Questions are answered, a mystery is solved, and John and the Halogram face some of the season’s most shocking revelations in Lanterns Episode 8. Still, while some chapters close and stories end, new stories and ideas to explore are just beginning in the finale, “Dirt and Stars.”

It’s 2016, and in the wake of the devastation left behind by the manhunter, Zoey Macon (Poorna Jagannathan) and Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) take responsibility for the recklessness that caused all the destruction. Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) takes him into custody, and Hal Jordan serves ten years in prison.

When Hal gets out of prison, it’s 2026, and Sheriff Kane is the only person in Rushville willing to talk to him. The two begin a friendship that blossoms into something more, even as everyone else in town treats Hal like a pariah.

Then, one night, Hal comes home, and a Molotov cocktail is thrown through his window, setting the house on fire. Despite his best efforts, Hal can’t get out of the burning house because he spent too much time trying to rescue his pet carnivorous plant, Earl. Eventually, Hal passes out in the smoke-filled house.

Lanterns Episode 8 finds Sinestro spilling important truths to Hal and John.

When Hal wakes, he’s lying on the floor of the cattle ranch he and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) found while investigating the manhunter ten years earlier. A man approaches and kneels, revealing that it’s none other than Sheriff Kane’s son, Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard).

After Noah explains that Hal’s skin is new from the alien tech, he says that he wishes he could have healed Hal without having to reveal what he really is. Lanterns Episode 8 cuts back to the cave where John has Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) tied up after besting him at the end of Episode 7.

Sinestro reveals that not only is Noah a manhunter, but that he is the reason that Sinestro is out of prison. Noah released him in exchange for Sinestro working on building him a new lantern. However, John did have to resort to some hallucinogenic waterboarding to get that information out of Sinestro. That lantern is now complete.

“The Lantern Corps believes that fear makes you weak. They couldn’t be more wrong. If harnessed correctly, fear can be the most powerful force in the universe.” Although Sinestro likely meant that as a sinister way of saying that inspiring fear can be a great tool for gaining cooperation, John understands that it also means Sinestro used fear itself to forge this new lantern.

Sinestro calls Hal soft but also tries to appeal to his ego.

The Halogram asks Sinestro what Hal is doing here, and Sinestro explains that after Hal was saved by Noah following the fire, he began following Noah to see what he was up to. When Hal found Noah’s portal, he found Sinestro, who encouraged him to kill Noah.

Sinestro reasons that Hal is dead now because he went soft and refused to pull the trigger, making himself a loose end in the process. Sinestro turns to the Halogram and attempts to appeal to Hal’s self-importance, offering to join together in overpowering John for the ring and bringing the real Hal back to life.

Sinestro also speaks on the urgency because the ring is almost out of power. If John connects it to the lantern or if the power runs out, the Halogram will be gone forever. The Halogram declines, and he and John leave Sinestro tied up in his cave despite begging them not to leave him behind.

As they head back to the portal, the Halogram insists John charge the ring so he’s not defenseless against a manhunter. John believes that there is good in Noah and that Noah would never hurt him. The Halogram believes John is overly optimistic. To conserve power, he shuts himself back off, and John goes through the portal alone.

A major fallout follows their conversation with Sinestro.

Instead of stepping through to the storage unit where he had gone through, the portal is now suspended in the air and no longer in the storage unit at all, so John steps through on the planet’s side and enters Earth by falling to the ground below him.

Without any time to react to that, Noah begins beating the stuffing out of John. As soon as John is down, Noah takes the ring and lantern and, with it, all of John’s leverage. He forces John to drive towards the school.

John attempts to reach the good inside Noah, believing there’s more than just the programming of a manhunter. As they arrive at the school for Noah’s football game, Noah is clearly struggling with his own inner demons, ones that promise immense power. As a manhunter, he knows that he could easily make his way to the top of the world.

John reinforces that Noah is capable of making his own decisions regardless of how a manhunter is programmed. He even shares a personal anecdote about growing up with the expectation to become The Green Lantern, which could have acted as a programming. Ultimately, though, John made his own path.

John tries to appeal to Noah’s kindness and humanity. 

Noah asks why John killed his grandmother. John very easily could have explained that she was so busy killing innocent people that she didn’t leave him much choice. Instead, he chooses the more human answer: that Zoey practically asked him to do so to hide Noah’s true nature, even if John didn’t understand the reason at the time.

Then comes the admission. Noah says that he killed Hal, afraid that he’d go and tell the world about him or try to stop him from his goal. John clarifies that the goal is to kill Guardians. That’s why he had Sinestro forge a lantern for him. He knows that Sinestro is the only one ever to kill a Guardian, and that they are impossibly difficult to kill without one.

Noah takes off the ring, puts it on the dashboard, and tells John he needs a favor. He wants John to kill him after he goes out and plays in the championship game. He asks that he not see it coming. It’s unclear if this is out of fear of his own death or if he’s afraid his programming will keep him from accepting loss. 

With that, Noah goes and plays the biggest game of his young life with college scouts out in full force from multiple universities. Meanwhile, Lanterns Episode 8 turns its attention to John as he stands with Sheriff Kane, looking toward the game.

Sheriff Kane reveals a shocking truth. 

John plays all his cards in Lanterns Episode 8, assuming that Sheriff Kane already knows that Noah is a manhunter. He tells her the story of his mother dropping him off in random rough neighborhoods and making him find his way home. He tells her about his mother looking like she had been holding her breath every single time, waiting for him to walk through the door.

When Sheriff Kane asks why he’s telling this to her, John explains that he thinks she knows exactly how his mother felt because she must have felt it for Noah; always afraid that the truth about him being a manhunter would be discovered. He says that fear and love can motivate people to do otherwise unimaginable things.

John tells her about Noah wanting him to kill her and trying to take the blame for her. He assures her that he won’t kill Noah because he believes that Noah is capable of good. Knowing that she’s been caught, Sheriff Kane confesses.

The day she called John to tell him about Hal’s death, she had been putting up signs at the football field when Hal came to her to tell her about him being a manhunter. Sheriff Kane tries to shut Hal up while Hal is genuinely scared about what to do next.

John Stewart makes a promise to Guy Gardner as he assumes his role as Green Lantern.

In the heat of the moment, Hal, trying to make her understand, says he loves her, with this feeling like more was coming to explain why he was so adamant. He never gets that chance as Sheriff Kane, worried for her son, turns and shoots Hal.

As the flashback in Lanterns Episode 8 ends, Sheriff Kane says she’ll turn herself in as soon as the game is over. John tells her he doesn’t believe that’s what Hal would have wanted, turning to walk away. The game ends. Noah is a champion and celebrates with his parents and his teammates.

John heads to the giant Green Lantern call signal. When Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) arrives, he looks annoyed that John is calling on him again. That is, until he sees the ring on John’s hand. John explains that he tricked Guy because Guy wasn’t interested in finding out who killed Hal.

Then he tells Guy to give the Guardians a message. He wants Guy to tell them that John plans to take the new lantern and Hal’s ring and become Green Lantern for Earth. When Guy protests and reminds John that Earth is part of his jurisdiction, John tells him to think of him as an independent contractor. John will take the dirt, and Guy can take the stars, so they don’t get in each other’s way.

A final, important goodbye. For now, at least.

After Guy leaves, the Halogram appears one final time to say goodbye to John. After the emotional goodbye, which includes the Halogram telling John that he loves him, the Halogram disappears, and John charges the lantern.

After leaving the call signal, John makes a stop at the cafe and drops off a case full of money for Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler) before heading home to reunite with his family wearing his Green Lantern ring.

The Lanterns Season 1 Finale ends with John remembering the moment after Guy left the call signal. John needed to say the oath but didn’t feel like it really worked for him. After reworking it to include language embracing fear instead of shoving it down, John takes the modified oath and flies up into the sky.

Lanterns Episode 8 does a lot of things right. Unfortunately, like its predecessor, it’s still plagued by ideas that don’t make much sense. The most prominent is the idea that charging the ring would make the Halogram disappear forever.

There’s not really any evidence for that. The Halogram in both instances that he’s summoned is summoned by John putting on the ring. Why, then, would the Halogram disappear forever by giving it more juice, and furthermore, why is this rule something that’s introduced to the audience by Sinestro? Yes, he was part of the Lantern Corps, but it’s almost like the series forgot that he lies.

“Dirt and Stars” tries to tie up loose ends. 

In fact, the ring being charged is a decent idea for how to incorporate Kyle Chandler into future seasons of Lanterns. The idea that John and Hal’s chemistry could continue to be explored by the use of the Halogram makes a lot of sense, but then the series explicitly says that the Halogram can’t be restored if John charges the ring.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t find a workaround. Sci-fi always finds a way to tell the story they want to tell instead of giving up on a good idea. If Star Trek characters can come back from the dead whenever they want, Lanterns characters can absolutely make a similar leap.

While not as obvious an issue as Episode 7, Lanterns Episode 8 still has the implausible battery issue. The audience is told that the ring’s battery has seven minutes left of talk time towards the beginning of the episode, and then we’re supposed to believe that the Halogram voluntarily going into sleep mode is going to preserve just enough battery to allow him to disappear at the end of the episode.

What makes the least sense, however, is that John paid Maggie the hush money. He has no reason other than guilt. Yes, there’s plenty of reason to believe he’s doing it for that precise reason, but he’s using money from a business account that he shares with his brothers, and then he leaves town immediately.

There’s no reason to fear Maggie talking to the sheriff anymore, though. Sheriff Kane isn’t going to go and arrest John on murder charges for a murder she committed. While it would have been weird to drop the thread entirely, Lanterns Episode 8 makes the case pretty clear that the hush money isn’t necessary, and then John goes and gives it to her anyway.

Despite some narrative inconsistencies, Lanterns Episode 8 is an evocative season finale.

On the other side of that is some truly amazing storytelling. Shea Pritchard is very talented, with a bright future ahead. His portrayal of a manhunter with a conscience is striking. He knows how to turn on the manhunter intimidation, the popular jock energy, and a scared boy all in the same episode, and it’s brilliant.

Having Sinestro give some of the most profound statements about the power of fear and actually be helpful to John and the Halogram is a real mind-bending decision in the best possible way. In the very next breath, Sinestro is trying to push a wedge between the Halogram and John from every possible angle, showcasing that even villains have some form of humanity that betrays their darkest thoughts.

The statement that this makes in Lanterns Episode 8 can’t be understated. Between the realization that a manhunter can be more than his programming and that Sinestro is more than a caricature of a villain, the message is loud and clear: people can be more than they appear.

Lanterns Episode 8 is an improvement over the last few episodes for sure, but there are still some glaring issues that are worth mentioning. Lanterns Episode 8’s saving grace is that the emotional story beats, huge revelations, and messaging that are some of the best in the whole season. It’s not perfect, but as season finales go, it’s still really good.

Lanterns Episode 8 is streaming now on HBO Max.

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