‘Lanterns’ Episode 2 Review & Ending Explained: Who Is the Manhunter Hiding in Rushville?

Lanterns spends its second episode splitting Hal Jordan and John Stewart. Well, it’s Hal deciding to treat John as his errand boy. While he deals with the small-town alien mystery, John is kidnapped and interrogated by a group of aliens led by one Antaan (one of the theories suggest he might be Atrocitus, a powerful supervillain). Lanterns Episode 1 was a grounded introduction to an otherwise pretty cosmic corner of the DCU. The second episode enlightens a little but also deepens the mystery. 

Episode 2, titled Trust Fall, makes the show’s central relationship more interesting by splitting the two. Hal’s mentorship, if that’s what it is, has been abrasive. But this episode proves how little Hal (Kyle Chandler) really trusts his mentee. We already know that’s because of his insecurity and the feeling that John may actually be a better Lantern. But it might also be because Hal sees John (Aaron Pierre) as an active threat. This makes us curious as to what happened in the intervening years between 2016 and 2026 and how their relationship developed. 

Lanterns Episode 2 Review

The Lanterns Episode 2 opens with Hal teaching John how to fly. As seen in the trailer, John can only conjure a bird, conjured whole-cloth from wherever the subconscious keeps its aviary. But it is actually pretty impressive, or at least that’s what Antaan tells him. We know from the comics that Lantern rings’ constructs are not just driven by will but also by the subconscious. The bird is then a man discovering that the ring reads his interior weather and renders it externally, whether he consents to the exposure or not.

In Coast City, John’s plot runs the inverse. He finds Earl, Hal’s “pet,” revealed to be a sentient, carnivorous plant tucked into a greenhouse. It is the episode’s best sight gag. It is also a deadpan piece of world-building that tells you more about Hal’s isolation than three pages of dialogue would. The bird from the cold open follows John everywhere, becoming his shadow, the physical residue of an act of imaginative will he didn’t ask to perform. His brief scene with Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan) gives the hour a grounding beat of ordinary, messy intimacy with her dry agreement that her husband is “pretty f***ing weird”.

Overall, while it is not as taut as the Pilot, Trust Fall is a great hour of superhero television. Hal’s ring is still out of juice, and the episode takes this as an opportunity for him to play detective rather than a Lantern, and like Episode 1, the fact that it does not lean on spectacle is precisely why it is so compelling. 

John’s side of the story throws him on an errand whose importance proves greater than what it was made out to be, and this is where the show gets into its biggest exposition on the Green Lantern mythos. This is great for the die-hard fans but can get a little overboard for new viewers. This time, it really puts Pierre’s acting skills to the test, and he delivers a very convincing performance by relying on facial expressions alone without much dialogue. In two episodes, Lanterns seems less focused on its cosmic mythology than on the inner lives of its characters.

Lanterns Episode 2 Ending Explained

John and Hal size each other up in Lanterns Episode 2, Trust Fall | Credits: HBO

Antaan’s ultimatum in Lanterns Episode 2 is that John should find and hand over the Manhunter still hiding in Rushville within 48 hours. Or Antaan’s people will be explored as the alien did in the last episode. John returns to Rushville shaken. But he decides to trust Hal. But Hal, being Hal, he is not very forthcoming about the Manhunters and what he knows (which is, presumably, not much). For a moment, Hal stops deflecting and tells John about the possibility that Abin Sur, the previous ring-bearer, might have been killed fighting the same Manhunter. We know Hal wields the ring that once adorned Sur’s finger. This is Hal’s modern origin in DC Comics in Green Lantern: Secret Origin (via DC Comics).

Towards the end, Hal is off Earth. He suits up, finally, and flies to Oa to see Sinestro, his old foe. Hal probably hopes that the Green Lantern Corps’ most infamous prisoner can tell him more about the Manhunter. But Sinestro says if a Manhunter is real, it would be the second greatest threat for Hal. The first, he implies, is John. 

Who Are the Biggest Suspects for Manhunter?

The short answer is, we don’t know yet. Manhunters in DC Comics are existential villains for the Corps, and I don’t think the mystery will be resolved until the final episode of Lanterns. There are a few that fit the bill. The biggest candidate is, of course, William “Will” Macon (Garret Dillahunt). He is a well-off local with a whole militia at his disposal. His family seems to be underwriting the town’s covert alien-detection network. But he claims he is merely a steward, which, if taken at face value, argues against him being the Manhunter himself: a being capable of masquerading undetected for years would have every reason to avoid painting a target on its own back by funding the very machines built to find it. Or perhaps the Manhunter thought being in plain sight would be the best? “It’s so overt, it’s covert,” as Sherlock Holmes said.

​His son, Billy (Jason Ritter), and his wife, Zoe, also both fit the profile of a Manhunter hiding in plain sight, patient enough to pass as domestic furniture for years. Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) is the other loose thread worth tracking. Her offhand admission that she grew up in Gotham before moving to Rushville “on a whim” is the only biographical detail any character offers unprompted this episode. The show frames her reluctance to elaborate as pointed rather than incidental. Whether that’s connective tissue to the wider DC map or a red herring built to make viewers suspicious of the one character who’s consistently a step ahead of Hal, Trust Fall isn’t saying yet. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Who do you think is the Manhunter hiding in Rushville — William, Billy, Zoe, or someone we haven’t even met yet? Drop your Lanterns theory in the comments below.

Lanterns Episode 1 and 2 are now streaming on HBO Max.

‘Lanterns’ Episode 2 Review & Ending Explained: Who Is the Manhunter Hiding in Rushville?