Lanterns Recap: Episode 2 - Trust Fall

Ash Walker • 26 Aug 2026 Features

“Mogo doesn’t socialise.”

SPOILERS AHEAD!

And we’re back! Hal (Kyle Chandler) gives John (Aaron Pierre) a rude awakening with a bucket of water to the face, and we’re right back into the 2016 investigation - where we spend all of our time this episode. Our heroes are still kicking around Rushville, Nebraska - much to the annoyance of Sheriff Kane (Kelly Macdonald) - because Hal is convinced that there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

Kane, and her highly suspicious father-in-law Macon (Garret Dillahunt), are more than ready to call the case closed after the alien suspect blew himself up at the end of last week’s episode, but Hal is like a dog with a bone and refuses to let it go.

But first we have a hilarious flying lesson, of sorts, in which Hal hands John the ring and tells him to ‘just fly’. It doesn’t work, obviously, but John does manage to manifest a small green bird from his subconscious. A bird which, to Hal’s great surprise, doesn’t vanish when John removes the ring.

Could this be our first hint at John’s inherent power, and the reason the Guardians selected him to be a Green Lantern in the first place?

The ring gives a low-power warning, and so Hal sends John on a fetch quest to Coast City to retrieve his lantern power battery. Which is in his closet, obviously. In a pocket dimension. And so our heroes spend most of the episode apart, getting into various hijinx.

John’s adventure in Coast City takes him to Hal’s depressingly empty mansion, where he’s abducted by more of the same aliens that were murdered in Rushville. They reveal that their group is convinced that something called a Manhunter - a synthetic being responsible for a holocaust on their home planet - is hiding in Rushville, masquerading as an ordinary person, and they want John’s help in ferreting it out.

Meanwhile, Hal continues his dogged investigation, dragging the alien corpses out of the morgue and discovering that some suspiciously high-tech alien detectors were set up at the football game. By none other than Macon, of course. He confronts the mysterious Marlboro Man and gets shot for his troubles.

When Hal and John finally regroup, John tells Hal everything the aliens told him, thus confirming Hal’s suspicions - something big really is going on in Rushville.

The episode ends with Hal donning the Green Lantern uniform once more and heading out into the cosmos to a planet that is presumably Oa, the exact centre of the universe and headquarters of the Green Lantern Corps. He heads down into the Sciencells and speaks to one of the prisoners there - the renegade Lantern Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), who Hal has a very complicated relationship with…

Random Thoughts:

• This episode really started to drip-feed us some of the more out-there Green Lantern lore, from Sinestro and Manhunters to Hal’s pet alien plant, Earl, and even a mention of planet-sized Lantern Mogo!
• I’m loving the designs of the Lantern tech that we’ve seen so far. The ring and the lantern itself look almost Victorian or Steampunk in their aesthetics, which makes them seem all the more alien and mysterious.
• Between this, Peacemaker and Superman, the new DCU is, frankly, obsessed with pocket dimensions.
• So happy that they didn’t get rid of Sinestro’s iconic moustache.

Verdict: Another solid episode, with a bit more action and some well-needed revelations about the central mystery. Bring on Episode 3!

Lanterns is available to stream every Monday from 2am on HBO MAX, available now as part of Sky Ultimate TV.