[00:00] The trailer for the Lanterns finale may have revealed who killed how and offered a look at the upcoming confrontation with Sinestro. Welcome back to Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Airy and the Lanterns finale is right around the corner and we still have so many questions.
[00:12] Who killed how? How did Sinestro escape? And is Noah Macon a secret manhunter? We're going to break down the episode trailer and share some theories for this upcoming finale. Now the last episode ended with John and the Hologram finding Sinestro on this deserted yellow planet.
[00:25] Now in our breakdown we theorize that this planet was a mix of two different worlds from the comics. Kord and Biot. That theory doesn't hinge on the yellow planet alone, but rather, who's been on it? Sinestro and the Manhunter. Kord is the anti-matter planet Sinestro was banished to after the Guardians put him on trial.
[00:42] Now, while the blue bosses sent him there, hoping he'd fade into oblivion, Sinestro instead began his revenge plan. He befriended the Weaponers, a group of Kordian smiths, and together they forged a new power ring, the Yellow Ring.
[00:54] Biot became the Manhunter's chosen homeworld after their exile. Now, in the comics, the two planets have little interaction, but it makes a lot of sense for them to be merged here. In the last episode, it was confirmed that this was Anton's homeworld.
[01:06] I got grabbed by this guy, Anton. He told me that he was the last of his kind. In the past, we theorized that Anton was from the planet Raius, the homeworld of the Red Lantern Atrocitus, which the Manhunters massacred. Now, while Raius has been depicted as yellow-ish in the past, a clue in the last episode rules that planet out.
[01:22] The way John described the Holocaust here... It was a gas, and when they breathed the gas, they got so fucking scared to the terrified. Sounds entirely different from the massacre of Sector 666. In the comics, the Manhunters descended upon the Sector as an invasion, killing everyone they came across.
[01:38] More importantly, this massacre alerted the Guardians to the Manhunters' ways. So, this would have happened before the Manhunters were shut down and before Zoe came to this planet. That makes me think the Yellow Planet may be unrelated to the Manhunter slaughter as a whole and was just a stop in Zoe's escape plan.
[01:54] Zoe told John that, meaning that she was active after all of the others were decommissioned following their rebellion. She could have come to this planet after the initial massacre. Maybe she had known about this sector from the other Manhunters and chose it as a safe place to lay low from the Guardians.
[02:10] It's possible that she wasn't the one who caused this planet's demise, but was just a scapegoat. What do you know? Well, as I said, the way John described the city's demise isn't very Manhunter-esque. Even in this universe, where the Manhunters are far more nuanced, they still don't kill their prey with fear.
[02:25] The Manhunters have been described as cunning or seductive, but never as instilling great fear. That's why I think the Sinestro Corps would be a better fit. Zoe's business with Anton could have been entirely unrelated to the planet's fallout.
[02:37] Anton obviously felt betrayed by Zoe, but his anger may be misplaced. Zoe even refers to him as much. This guy could just end in angels. While Zoe was willing to go to extreme lengths to protect her town during the Rushville battle,
[02:49] she didn't do so unprovoked. Before 2016, Billy had lived peacefully in Rushville. So why wouldn't the same be true for Anton's world? Just as she let Rushville flourish under her protection, she could have done the same for this planet.
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[04:29] That's any plant, even unlimited. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash screencrush with the link below. Now, back to what I was saying. So, what if Zoe wasn't the brain at all for everything that happened on that world? What if it was actually Sinestro all along?
[04:42] Sinestro. Let me explain. The finale trailer opens with Sinestro saying, Here can be the most powerful force in the universe. A direct nod to his control of the theory motion in the comics.
[04:54] More importantly, it fits how the people of this planet died. John said that they were terrified to death, choosing to jump to their deaths instead of witnessing the visions that they were given. Again, this is unlike anything the Manhunters have done in the past,
[05:06] but it sounds much more like the Yellow Lantern Corps. We're not at that stage yet. I mean, after all, it sounds like Sinestro just escaped, so he wouldn't form the Corps for quite some time. However, what if this world was his first attempt at harnessing the Yellow Impurity?
[05:20] Have they survived now? Well, the Yellow Impurity is another name for the fear entity Parallax, and it's what gave power to the Yellow Lantern Ring. Now, we know this massacre had to have happened before 1986, when Avanthor crashed on Earth while trying to hide Zoe,
[05:33] which means that Sinestro would still have been in the good graces of the Guardians at this time, at least 20 years before his coup. But that doesn't mean that he wasn't already engaging in nefarious behavior. By the time Hal gets the ring and begins training under Sinestro in the comics,
[05:47] The Corrigarian had already been secretly acting as a dictator for quite some time. So it's not out of character for Sinestro to have orchestrated all of this while still performing as a Green Lantern. He could have become aware of Bowie's presence on the planet and made a deal with her.
[06:00] Technology for secrecy. The two do share a common enemy in the Guardians. So it's possible that he could have persuaded or threatened her to help. In Episode 2, Anton said the Manhunters could... Invent technologies for the limits of the planet they inhabit.
[06:14] A skill that would be very useful for someone looking to forge a new power rank. In the comics, the Manhunters are powered by the same energy used in the power batteries. We've seen Hal charge his ring with the decapitated Manhunter's head. Later in the comics, Sinestro even enlists the Manhunters in the Yellow Corps during the Sinestro-Corps War.
[06:30] There, they were powered by miniature yellow lanterns in their bodies. So it's well established that lantern tech and Manhunter tech are interchangeable. After all, they're both Owens. That said, in this trailer, we see an industrial-looking complex with bright blue light coming out of the smokestack.
[06:45] The same blue light we've seen Zoe use to heal John in Episode 5. So what if, instead of the accordions, Sinestro used some of Zoe's Manhunter tech to create the yellow power rank? Even if he did all this in 1986, it still doesn't explain how he got out of prison in 2026.
[06:59] Now while he may have initially had help from Zoe she was long dead by the time he escaped the science cells And that brings me to our other suspected Manhunter Noah What if the Zoe was talking about was this deal with Sinestro The ultimate threat to the Manhunter existence is the Guardians themselves
[07:17] And if Sinestro found a way to create a power strong enough to harm a Green Lantern, and in turn harm a Guardian, Zoe could be storing that information away for later. In a way, that would be her version of the failsafe that Martin had for Hal.
[07:29] If anything happened to him, Hal was given what he needed to know to carry on that Jordan Boy's legacy. the same way that Noah could carry on the Manhunter legacy. Sinestro then says, Maybe you don't have to have died in vain. Presumably talking to the Halogram.
[07:42] Now, last episode, they kept nodding to Hal's time beating up, both figuratively and literally, when the Reigns eventually died. Well, I calculate that we've got a little less than an hour of talk time left. But his next line, Turn away.
[07:54] raises a lot of questions about the Halogram's future. In the last breakdown, we had mentioned how Hal was once turned into a being of pure willpower in the comics. For a while, he was kind of in his own purgatory. He had to focus and will himself into existence.
[08:07] That was until he forged himself a new power ring and was able to reform into a person. I wonder if Sinestro is alluding to something similar here. If he was able to create a new ring using Manhunter technology, it's possible that ring could solidify the hologram as a real person.
[08:22] Even more so when Sinestro says he knows a way, they show Hal with the same mark that Jon had from the Manhunter machine. So it's possible this way he's talking about is through that same healing machine. It does look like he's on the floor of the Macon slaughterhouse,
[08:35] but maybe they also have another Manhunter machine there. And, speaking of that scene, last week we had theorized that it was Billy that Hal was talking to. But I forgot one crucial detail regarding the machine. It needs Manhunter blood for work.
[08:47] So it couldn't be Billy here, but instead it's Noah. And if this is the way, billion, Sinestro was talking about, then this could also be part of the information that Zoe was telling Noah. Hal tells John, He's a very big man.
[09:00] who says, How old you do? which shows how much these two have grown. John went from respecting Hal, yes, but wanting to be nothing like him. He thought that he was impulsive and too brash for the job, and yet here he is asking Hal what he would do.
[09:12] Hal was absolutely right last episode when he said to John, You don't want me, do you? No matter how much John gets irritated by Hal, he's always going to see Hal as his childhood hero. That's why that was our first glimpse of the two of them.
[09:25] No matter what shit Hal has put everybody through, he's always going to be the hero from that TV interview. And no matter how much trauma and development John goes through, he'll still look to his childhood hero for advice. And that advice is...
[09:38] Don't be afraid. To be afraid. The same thing his dad told him all those years ago. You scared? No. It's okay if you are. Now, we touched on it at length in our breakdown, but this Hal Jordan hasn't given in to any anxieties yet.
[09:51] This is a Hal Jordan at the top of his game. not fearless, but still able to confront and conquer those fears. How Tal and John know it's okay to be afraid is something that John never heard in his childhood. Last episode, we saw that John's worst fear was, in fact, his childhood,
[10:06] and not living up to the mythical Green Lantern mantle that was his destiny. In his youth, and even in 2015, John was told to bottle up his emotions, not to feel anything. But, by making John a fearless soldier, his parents inadvertently programmed him
[10:19] the way the Guardians programmed the Manhunters. Howe's advice not only sets Sean up for greatness as a Green Lantern, but in life in general. He's allowed to have emotions, he's allowed to be human, he's allowed to feel fear, as long as he always keeps pushing forward.
[10:32] And unfortunately, his own advice could have helped our Howe back in 2016. A big part of our Howe downfall was the fact that he wouldn name his fears until too late By the time he allowed himself to feel afraid he was too far gone too consumed by the denial almost like a self prophecy Also as for John breaking away from his programming
[10:51] I think something he said in episode six is going to play a huge role in the finale if Noah is the Manhunter. The only bar you need to clear is the one you set for yourself. Nobody else matters. This whole season, there has been a focus on being programmed versus being raised,
[11:04] and how difficult it really is to break free from someone's programming. We saw John and Zoe bond over this, and I think that same shared trauma could save Noah. John's whole arc this season is about breaking the cycle. He broke the cycle of the Lantern Ring.
[11:17] He broke the cycle of the Jordan Boys. And now he's going to break the cycle of programming that he went through in his youth. I think John's humanity could play a crucial role in turning those programs for evil to do good, which could also play a huge role in Man of Tomorrow as well,
[11:30] especially against their upcoming AI alien villain, Brainiac. John then calls Guy back into town again, and is that a power battery next to him? If so, did he somehow get Hal's lantern? In the comics, the lanterns can call it to them at will with the rings, but we know that's not the case in the DCU.
[11:45] So, he would have had to have gotten it from Oa, but we know that John wouldn't do that either. He and the Guardians didn't end on the best terms. Probably doesn't even remember why he wanted to die today. And he did not.
[11:57] Now, we know that Guy got forged a new ring, and presumably a battery as well, like in the comics. So I wonder if John made this battery himself or with help from the hologram. Now, as for him meeting Guy Gardner, I don't see this going well.
[12:09] If John has both the ring and the battery, he's pretty much a Green Lantern for real, and Guy Gardner does not like to be challenged. I imagine this will probably go as well as their meeting in Green Lantern 197 when Guy confronted John for not being a true Lantern.
[12:22] If their interaction does go along those lines, I wonder what this will mean for Man of Tomorrow. Those Lanterns are slated to be in that film as the Green Lantern. So maybe they end up working something out, but knowing Guy Gardner, though, probably not. And the last two shots are of Hal and Carrie, either after she found his body or after she killed him.
[12:39] Now, in our last breakdown, we leaned heavily into Hal's sacrifice of himself, something he's done in the comics, but also something that he admits here. However, before all the evidence and just based on his gut alone,
[12:52] Hal at first thought that Carrie was guilty. Now, two things could be true here. If Noah is a Manhunter, Hal could have found out and, to protect the two, took himself out. Alternatively, to protect her miracle, Carrie shot Hal.
[13:06] That wouldn't be the first time that Carrie pulled a gun on Hal to protect her family either. She did the same back in 2016. Now, while we didn't suspect her at first, it makes sense given her background as well. She was let down by her father.
[13:18] He never really had much protection from his father, so imagine how I feel. Forced to run miles away to start life over. So why would she want to do the same thing to her child? This whole show focuses on parents passing down their sins to their children and stopping that cycle.
[13:32] So Carrie, standing up for her son, would be breaking the cycle of her family trauma, the same way that John's been trying to do for himself. Guys, I can't believe we only have one episode left. It has been so great having a show to theorize about every week,
[13:44] especially one with this many mysteries. Big shout out to Lee Mazio, who secretly lives under our store, who wrote this video. Hi, Lee. Link socials are linked down below. Let us know what you guys think about all this down in the comments below or on our free-to-join Discord server.
[13:58] And if it's your first time here, please subscribe. Smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Aries.