‘Lanterns’ Kicks off With Big Twists That Will Rock the DC Universe

There will be spoilers for the Lanterns premiere. You have been warned!

The 2011 Green Lantern film may be the most disappointing thing I have ever seen in a movie theater, which is really saying something. I had been mainlining the comics in the years leading up to the film’s release, and the character getting his own film at a time when superhero movies were taking center stage felt like kismet. It was going to knock my socks off and show everybody else how incredible the character and his mythos could be! However, the movie did none of those things.

If anything, the movie set the franchise back significantly. When the new DCU was being developed, ole GL was nowhere to be found. There were teases for years in various media, and we almost got a Finn Wittrock-starring TV show a few years ago, but the space cop has seemed almost untouchable. Yet, here we are, over fifteen years later, and the excellent Lanterns has landed on our screens with an entrancing, green glow, some top-notch acting, and a series of mysteries that have already reshaped James Gunn’s DCU.

Right away, the show establishes its timeline, which includes flashbacks to 1996 and a young John Stewart. It’s revealed that Hal Jordan, the first Green Lantern, was chosen ten years earlier. So, there has been a Green Lantern defending Earth since 1986. We know that superheroes existed in Gunn’s universe pre-Superman, but this is the most direct timeline we’ve been given for one of DC’s bigger heroes, save for a shadowy appearance of Batman in Creature Commandos (which raised more questions than answers).

Not only does this shift in timeline let us know when GL first appeared, but since we later see Hal training John to be a Green Lantern, it’s safe to say that when we see Stewart in Man of Tomorrow, he’ll have more of a history with the ring than we might have expected. Things get slightly more confusing, as we see in 2026, that neither Hal nor John has the Green Lantern ring, but we know that at least one other Green Lantern is out there at that point in the form of Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner.

Here’s where things get even trickier. It’s made clear that, at least in 2016 (when the bulk of the premiere takes place), there is only one Green Lantern charged with defending Earth. But, presumably, Guy Gardner gets added to the mix at some point or another. In the comics, when the Green Lanterns were recharged and rebuilt in the early 2000s, it was decided that at least two Green Lanterns would defend each sector instead of one. There’s a chance that something happened between 2016 and 2026 that called for more than one Green Lantern per sector. Or, we’re about to find out that Guy Gardner or John Stewart is more like a roaming deputy or something.

The biggest twist to come out of the premiere is that someone has killed Hal Jordan in 2026 (or he’s dead, at least) and neither he nor John Stewart has his ring. It could be that one of the oddly aged characters (Garret Dillahunt is only 15 years older than Jason Ritter but plays his dad…) introduced in 2016 has taken it from him and is using it for nefarious purposes. There’s also, apparently, some intergalactic criminal hiding in the town they’re investigating, so they could have it as well.

Regardless, this does a lot of table-setting for Man of Tomorrow, which comes out next year. We know Pierre will appear as John Stewart in that film, and I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and assume that he’ll at least have a ring by then. But it looks like we won’t see Chandler’s Hal Jordan in that movie (or any others), which is a bummer because he’s pretty great. There’s a slight chance that he could return. I doubt they’ll turn him into God’s Agent of Vengeance like what happened in the comics (don’t ask, unless you’re ready for more questions), but it’s not completely off the table.

Also, a lot can happen in ten years. If Hal was still out there ring-slinging between 2016 and 2026, there could be other stories to tell. But Chandler seems pretty content with how things are. “The whole search is to find out what happened to him,” the actor explained to Deadline. “I like the fact that the show is non-linear and they’ve layered it like that.” You can tell he’s having a good time; the show is better for it, and using Hal to define some corners of the DCU is a lot of fun.