Lanterns Episode 5 Ending Explained: Character Deaths and Ring Fate

For four episodes, Lanterns has kept the truth about Rushville buried beneath layers of conspiracy. Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) know a Manhunter is hiding somewhere in town, and that the shapeshifting alien Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) will destroy Rushville unless they identify it. They also know the Manhunter has some mysterious connection to Abin Sur, Hal’s Lantern predecessor who crashed near Rushville years ago. Almost everything else they have been told is either incomplete or deliberately misleading.

Lanterns episode 5 finally brings most of the show’s secrets out into the open, turning Rushville into a war zone in the process. The Manhunter reveals itself, several major characters die, and the entire 2016 narrative arc seems to wrap up neatly. Here is a look at everything that happened.

Warning: Major spoilers follow for Lanterns season 1, episode 5.

What really happened to Abin Sur?

Following the car crash cliffhanger at the end of episode 4, John is badly burned when the car explodes. Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) brings him to the hospital and uses a drop of her own blood to help a machine regenerate his damaged tissue. Before and after this procedure, she makes several confessions.

Confirming John and Hal’s suspicions at the end of episode 4, Zoe admits to being the Manhunter. Created by the Guardians of the Universe before the Green Lantern Corps, the Manhunters were intended to serve as peacekeepers. But their brutal methods ultimately convinced the Guardians they were too dangerous. As Zoe puts it, the Guardians flipped a switch, and for some reason she was the only one left alive.

Zoe survived as a fugitive for some time, embedding herself into alien societies, including Antaan’s. In episode 2, Antaan claimed the Manhunter orchestrated a holocaust against his people. Episode 5 gives us more context when Antaan confronts William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), who pretends to be the Manhunter. Through their conversation, spoken entirely in an alien language, we learn that the Manhunter and Antaan were in love and failed to conceive. Ultimately, the Manhunter’s programming compelled it to bring justice to a chaotic world by killing.

Some time after that, Abin Sur presumably captured the Manhunter and was in the process of escorting it back to the Guardians when his ship crashed on Earth near Rushville. Antaan previously said he traced that Manhunter’s unique radiation signature to Earth. John makes an educated guess, which Zoe confirms: She killed Abin Sur out of fear he might eventually tell the Guardians about her. From there, we know Abin Sur’s ring first sought out John’s father before settling on Hal’s finger.

What happens to the Manhunter?

Zoe promises John that she will kill Hal, so John can take the ring and become the Green Lantern, fulfilling his destiny. At this point, however, John does not really trust anybody: not Hal, not the Guardians, and definitely not Zoe.

Hal’s plan had been to remove John from the conflict entirely so he could capture the Manhunter alone and bring her to the Guardians, restoring his reputation in the process. He uses a ring-powered Hal-ogram running sentry protocol to track Zoe down and confronts her on the outskirts of town. Zoe’s goons, however, knock down the nearby water tower, which was full of the black smoke that nullifies Lantern powers. With the ring nearly depleted, Hal fights his way out before flying a helicopter back to the hotel to retrieve the Lantern and recharge the ring.

John, meanwhile, escapes from the hospital and takes a sniper rifle from a local gun store, angrily telling his parents on the phone that he is going to take the ring. He ambushes Hal at the motel, and they fight over the ring. Before John can fully get the upper hand, Zoe targets them with one of Rushville’s satellite lasers, forcing Hal to shield them with the very last of the ring’s charge. John disappears in the chaos, leaving Hal pinned down under some of the wreckage.

When Zoe arrives to kill Hal, however, we see that John only ran away to take up a sniper perch. He shoots Zoe in the head and then cuts out her heart, which crystallizes, proving she is indeed a Manhunter. And based on what Zoe herself said, she is the last of her kind.

Who else dies in Lanterns episode 5?

William Macon and Antaan are the episode’s other major casualties, and both die because Hal turns them against each other.

Hal meets Antaan and his followers at the Rushville diner, where he lies and claims Macon is the Manhunter. This sends Antaan’s forces to the Macon ranch. Antaan sees through the ruse, killing Macon and cutting out his human heart.

Immediately after this, Antaan seemingly runs toward the chaos by the water tower, beeping as if he is about to self-destruct. At just the right moment, however, Hal steps out of the smoke and manifests a tornado that hurls Antaan up into the air where he explodes.

What happens to John, Hal, and the Green Lantern ring?

After tossing Zoe’s heart in a random backpack and grabbing the Lantern, John pries the ring off Hal’s finger, and Hal asks him a simple question: “Was it worth it?” Lanterns encourages us to think that it was not.

John carries the ring, lantern, and Zoe’s heart through the wreckage of Rushville and finds the Guardian (Laura Linney) waiting. She says the ring looks good on him and asks what he has brought in the bag.

“Your sins and consequences,” John replies.

“You know, I spent all of my life imagining what it would feel like to wear this — pride, gratitude, power — but then when I put it on, I just felt empty,” he continues. “Hal betrayed everything to keep this ring: his code, the oath, even himself, and it broke him. Probably doesn’t even remember why he wanted the damn thing… and neither do I.”

With that, John places the ring on the bar and walks away, rejecting his destiny. It is a profound and meaningful way to end this particular story arc. John resents the Guardians for forcing him to take the ring from Hal, compelling him to use violence and deception to claim the power rather than receive it because he deserves it. He probably also resents Zoe for feeding into that same cycle of violence. That makes the victory feel hollow, and there is something brave about walking away.

This feels like the definitive end of the 2016 storyline, particularly because we have already jumped 10 years into the future where, in 2026, John finds Hal dead in the middle of winter. Back at the end of episode 1, John checked Hal’s finger for the ring, and we never get a clear look at John’s hand. Does John have it? Did Hal somehow get it back? Did Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) somehow get his hands on it? We will have to wait and see.

What song plays toward the end of Lanterns episode 5?

Lanterns has already had some excellent needle drops, like OutKast’s “Gasoline Dreams” at the end of episode 3, reinforcing John’s role as an outcast even within his own family. The solemn moment in episode 5 as John walks away from Hal with the ring, lantern, and crystallized heart gets punctuated by an emotive song as Bon Iver’s “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS,” from the 2025 album SABLE, fABLE, begins to play.

Even just the title neatly captures a story arc built around layers of secrecy with various people concealing motives and identities. The Manhunter conspiracy hides the Guardians’ original sin. Zoe’s quiet life in Rushville conceals years of manipulation. Hal’s stated desire to protect John masks his desperation to keep the ring. Even John’s pursuit of his supposed destiny feels hollow when he is never really given the option to choose that destiny, which is precisely why he ultimately rejects it.

The lyric “rings within rings within rings” feels a little too obvious for a show that puts so much focus on magical cosmic jewelry, but the larger connection is to the cycles its characters cannot escape. Hal compromises himself to keep the ring. Zoe perpetuates the violence built into her programming. The Guardians conceal one failure and create another while trying to correct it. John has been pushed toward the ring since childhood, following a destiny other people chose for him.

The ring once represented everything John wanted to become. Episode 5 forces him to see all the things hiding behind it. Once he does, taking it off becomes perhaps the first choice he has ever been able to make for himself.

Lanterns episode 5 is streaming on HBO Max.

Source: Polygon