Lanterns Episodes 5-8 Breakdown — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Who may kill Hal Jordan? What is Sinestro's plan? And how much fear should we deal for this zero-colored planet of fear coming up on Lanterns? Welcome back to the Rockstars, I'm Aaron Voss, and here is every shot we know of that is remaining in this season of DC Studios Lanterns,

[00:15] organized episode by episode by when I think it will happen. We are now halfway through the season with the back four episodes remaining, and now I have gone back through every pre-season trailer, next episode promo, behind-the-scenes featurette,

[00:27] to explain over 100 shots that I think are still remaining for this series, and grouped by time period, 2016 vs. 2026 vs. some other time, and by setting and by general context. For this video, I'm going to predict how this is all going to go down,

[00:41] but I'm going to do a favor for all of you spoiler-averse folks and organize this chapter by chapter. So if you only want to get a sense of what I think will happen in episode 5, but if you don't want to know what's going to happen in the finale of episode 8, you can stop watching at that point.

[00:54] Or if you want to skip the episode 5 stuff and skip right on to the end, you have an option to do that too. I'm doing it this way because I love you, especially those of you who support us by grabbing some merch at nerdride.shop. The shirt I'm wearing is this

[01:06] rings weapon shirt, and I really love our supporters who wear our gear out in the world and post selfies and tag us like this guy in our Loki, Obi, we're all gonna die shirt. Hit 10 ADL. You're the man. The last time I moved, I had so many posters that were totally destroyed

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[02:18] Transform your home with Display. Just scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the description below and use code NEWROCKSTAR. Thanks again to Displate for sponsoring today's video. Okay, let's start with the shots that I think will be in Episode 5, titled Lights Out.

[02:31] Redditor JustJohn17 actually edited together a solid two-minute string album trailer footage that, I agree, I think all belongs in Episode 5, coming Sunday, September 13th. Again, spoiler warning if you don't want anyone to reassemble the context of these trailer shots.

[02:44] If you want some less contextual shots for Episode 6 and 8, you can skip to the chapters beyond this one. Okay, from this it looks like episode 5 is going to pick up from Hal jumping out of the rental car and allowing John to crash into the light pole at the end of episode 4. Now there's a trailer shot showing Hal walking back up to that wreckage and checking in on John.

[02:59] Sorry if I'm dead, Junior. I'm going to have to lose you off the game. And then John, with his knee jammed into the glove box, will struggle to get out of the rental car as it catches fire. And then he's going to look out through the flames out the window and see Manhunter Zoe Macon, not dead, standing across the street watching as the entire car explodes.

[03:17] She is wearing the same blue jean jacket that she was wearing when she left John's motel room in episode 4. So, as I pointed out in our episode 4 breakdown, somewhere in the shots of her walking out of the motel room to her truck, she pulled a kind of Texas switch and it was a hologram or some kind of visual decoy that actually drove away in her truck

[03:33] to make Hal Jordan think she was killed by her own space lasers. I actually think she's going to rematerialize from that bracelet left on John's nightstand. There's a shot of Manhunter Zoe in the empty, unused Rushville Hospital,

[03:45] sitting beside what I assume is a heavily burned and bandaged up John Stewart, but then in an extreme close-up of her fingers on his heavily burned eye, a shot that we saw in the recent Episode 5 preview, we see her dropping some of her Manhunter blood on that green eye,

[03:58] presumably healing John Stewart completely here, the way that Manhunter Zoe cured Will Macon's cancer. Now, there are shots from promos where we hear citywide warning to all citizens of Rushville and shots of them arming up with weapons. Let that enter Rushville. It is not a burial.

[04:12] I really think it is not. I really think it is not. I think when word gets out of Anton's group's attack on the town, all citizens of Rushville will be alerted that these alien invaders have come to town to hunt the Manhunter, and they're all being prepared for these walking alien bombs.

[04:26] We actually see another town hall meeting. It's like the one in episode two, but it's a different scene, because now Hal and John walk into the room together and you can see Carrie and Black Hat William Macon Sr together on stage addressing the whole town So if Hal and John are together I kind of curious what the context is here

[04:41] because it seems like they're going to spend a lot of Episode 5 apart, based off of all the other stuff. So who knows, this might also be 10 years later in 2026, because there is also this behind-the-scenes image that shows a super gray Hal Jordan

[04:53] and a 2026 bearded John Stewart alive together in a diner. So there's going to be some scene with them alive together in that time period at those ages. But it's kind of hard to tell because it seems like the people of Rushville never actually age,

[05:05] based off of the nutritional and healthcare privileges provided by the Manhunter. But back to the episode 5 shots, one of those alien bombs, as we see in trailer shots, will arrive at the gates of Macon Ranch with the Study the Past written on the gate.

[05:17] It seems like William Macon Sr. himself will be seen greeting the guy at the gate as William points a gun at him. But we see this guy getting out of his car, and it's like a scene out of Zero Dark Thirty, because boom, the whole area explodes. I was about to say this is going to be the death of William Macon, and he's about to be as overcooked as his ribs are,

[05:33] but I think he actually gets away. By the way, there's also this shot from the Weeks Ahead trailer at the beginning of the season, where it looks like one of Anton's aliens runs directly at the weenie structure on the Macon Ranch and blows up that whole building. But this diner that John called Anton to meet him at, we know from shots that Hal will arrive at this place as a shootout has already taken place.

[05:51] It looks like in this parking lot are going to be a whole bunch of shell casings and a corpse of someone that was dropped outside the door. By the way, this is the diner just outside of town where John Stewart met Zoe Macon back in episode 2. But now in episode 5, based off of some trailer shots inside this diner, Hal Jordan will find more dead bodies and then bubble up with a green shield as Anton's crew opens the machine gun fire on him.

[06:12] And then Anton himself will now step up right to him. I assume here is when we're going to learn that Anton's real identity is Atrocitus from the planet that the Manhunter wiped out. But the reason I think both Anton and Will Macon will survive for a later scene is because another trailer shot shows Anton in Macon's office from episode 3.

[06:28] And remember how in my episode 4 breakdown I pointed out that laser emitter that's on Macon's desk as being the same tech that we see on the wall of the killing floor of the slaughterhouse? Now we see it activate here, aiming a bunch of lasers right at Anton.

[06:40] So is this just going to end in a standoff? Will trying to laser slice Anton like this just blow up the whole ranch house? And then in another shot, we know that Hal Jordan's going to land on the road directly in front of Sheriff Carey, and that she's going to hold him at gunpoint. The best thing you can do for all of us is just go.

[06:54] Trailer shots show the Rushville water tower that Hal and John use as a lookout perch. Two of the support beams will break, and that whole thing is going to collapse. And then in a field, we're going to see Hal facing a swirling darkness, cast by some of Macon's darkness guns we saw in episode four.

[07:08] But Hal, now using a pair of those special goggles, you can see right through this and be able to use his ring, and finally manifest something that's not just a bubble or a dome, a freaking tornado that will suck up one of the explosive aliens and make them detonate high up in the air.

[07:20] This shot looks awesome. Now, if Hal Jordan is a native Nebraskan or just a Midwesterner or someone from the Plain States, I feel like tornadoes would be part of his past. Maybe even something that he feared as a kid. Or some kind of obsession similar to what birds were for Jon Stewart.

[07:35] There's going to be a huge action sequence where we see Hal Jordan in the downtown area of Rushville as trucks come up shooting at him. He uses his ring to disable one truck and take it off the road. But there's a whole bunch of shots of these satellite lasers converging on the front of a building and blasting it.

[07:49] This is not the town hall, because that's the domed building across the street. This might be Will Macon Jr.'s bar that they were in in episode 4 and in episode 1. I mean, we do see Jon Stewart inside of this bar in this footage from episode 5.

[08:01] Either way, it's not a huge downtown area in Rushville. We're talking about maybe a dozen buildings. And then Hal sees the satellite lasers converging on something, and he manifests another huge green dome to block it. So now that we know that this is the Manhunter's technology,

[08:14] tech that she's sharing both with Hector Gutierrez but also keeps on making rants, this must be the Manhunter targeting one of Anton's group, maybe Anton-slash-Atrocitus himself, and then trying to fry him from low orbit, maybe how his blacking efficiency doesn't let the whole town to get caught in Anton's blast.

[08:29] Now again, we know that Jon Stewart will be healed from his wound by Manhunter Zoe, and wearing medical scrubs, break back into that guns and ammo shop from episode 4, and pick up the sniper rifle that he left behind on the counter when he just took the scope,

[08:41] A behind-the-scenes shot shows that Hal will target John when John is wearing these clothes in what looks like Hal Jordan's motel room, as they seem to be fighting over the lantern and the ring. It's going to be a pretty nasty fight. They're going to be smashing through the room, breaking the walls and the furniture,

[08:54] and John at some point will put Hal in a headlock, and it looks like John Stewart's going to completely knock out Hal and leave him unable to get up. John's going to leave with the lantern in his hand, and we're going to see a part of the parking lot motel sign will have been destroyed,

[09:07] presumably by some of those satellite lasers And then we going to see the grisly aftermath of this battle in downtown Rushville A severed human leg and foot two girls crying and then Jon Stewart walking up barefoot through this rubble, holding the lantern as Macon's goons are surrounded by gunpoint.

[09:22] Sheriff Kerry is going to be among them, giving Jon a real stink-eyed stare, and I just wouldn't be surprised if that's where Episode 5 ends. Yeah, trailer footage has shown us a lot of what I think is going to be in Episode 5. So let's now move on to Episode 6. There seems to be some disagreement among fans following this stuff closely as to whether

[09:37] episode 6 or episode 7 will be the Hal Jordan flashback origin episode. Some think it will happen as the ultimate episode of the season, episode 7, but I actually think it's going to be in episode 6. Why do I think that? Well, because according to Wikipedia, episode 6 is being written

[09:49] by Damon Lindelof and Tom King, the first episode that these guys are credited on since the pilot episode. And I think Hal Jordan's origin is a critical part of this series Bible that Damon Lindelof, Tom King, and Chris Mundy developed. I think it's why they reordered the original episode

[10:03] 5, Jon Stewart's origin episode, back to episode 3 to avoid two origin episodes back to back. But who knows? Maybe this Wikipedia listing is wrong, and we won't know until we see Sunday night's episode or episode 6 which episode is which. But here, I'm going to group together all the shots

[10:15] that I think are part of this episode, whether it's episode 6 or episode 7, and for now, let's just assume it's episode 6. There have been some early trailer shots showing the day of Hal Jordan's father's funeral. There's an Air Force flyover as young Hal Jordan sits beside his mother. In the

[10:28] pilot episode, we learn that Hal's father was an Air Force test pilot who died in a crash when Hal was very young. You know what would be really interesting in retrospect? The first episode of any TV show is referred to as The Pilot, but back in the show that you learned the law was first

[10:41] famous for, Lost, the first episode of that show was cleverly titled Pilot, which we actually find out was a bit of wordplay, because the whole point of that episode was to find the pilot in the cockpit of Oceanic Flight 815. What if we look back on that episode and realize that it was really

[10:54] about the pilot, Hal Jordan, or the pilot, his father. Lindelof, I see what you're doing. Anyway, Hal Jordan, of course, said that his father claimed to be fearless, but that he actually did fear something, something that he would not admit to Jon Stewart.

[11:07] Hal also mentioned that his mother died of cancer. My theory was that Hal Jordan's father was an Air Force test pilot in the 1970s who wanted to be a NASA astronaut, but just didn't have the right stuff to do it. But based on trailer shots, these will all apparently be memories

[11:20] that 2026 bearded Jon Stewart witnesses by joining Hal Jordan's Hallowgram, recorded in 2006. So, I think there's going to be an interesting physical memory structure for this episode, whether it's 6 or 7. And among these, I think, will be this grim, industrial-looking location,

[11:34] with a tower venting some kind of blue-colored energy. And what looks like 2006-era Hal Jordan, maybe the Hallowgram, or maybe a memory with that era of Hal himself, faces Al Sinestro, who screams,

[11:46] So, maybe this was a memory from 2006, or maybe it's the hologram in 2026, revisiting the moment in 2016 where Hal Jordan apprehended Sinestro and brought him in after Sinestro's attempted coup against the Guardians.

[11:58] This location could be Oa, and we could be looking at the central battery of Oa right here. I mean, it's certainly grimmer and more cyberpunk-y than I would expect, given the design of the rings and the lantern that we've seen so far on this show.

[12:10] The trailer back from July shows two shots of 2026 bearded Jon Stewart paddling in a canoe across a foggy, stormy lake and singing to arrive to this platform. Though it might also be a location on Earth, but either way, it's going to be part of the Hal Jordan memory episode, I think.

[12:24] So let's move on to the next batch of shots for episode 7, or maybe episode 6. It seems like episode 7, for now, is being credited to Justin Britt Gibson. It's the only episode this season that he's credited on. So whatever episodes these shots are part of, we do know that there are going to be some shots where 2026 bearded John Stewart is back in Rushville.

[12:41] But it's some period of time where it is not snowing. It's not around the time of the discovery of Hal Jordan's body that we saw at the end of the pilot episode. but in this scene, John is going to be facing Will Macon Jr. and punch him in the face. This also appears to be the same episode where John appears beside a lantern signal

[12:55] and where Guy Gardner appears, Nathan Fillion from Superman and Peacemaker Season 2. A tacky lantern signal like this seems like something Guy Gardner would suggest, having gotten the idea from Batman's Bat-Signal in Gotham City.

[13:07] I actually think this is going to take place before the events of 2026 at the end of the pilot episode, maybe back in 2025 when that ring first disappeared off of Hal Jordan and went over to Guy Gardner, which would justify why he has the ring

[13:20] during the events of Superman, which is set in 2025. And I think this will be the episode where we see Jon Stewart in the town jail as Guy Gardner chats with him. He's in his army.

[13:32] Just put you down. First time I met Hal Jordan. He was in jail, too. Finally, we're on to our final batch of remaining shots that we haven't seen anywhere. Olympus and Jeeves will come up in episode 8, the finale, though it's certainly possible

[13:44] that they come up in the Hal Jordan flashback episode which would be either episode 6 or 7 and maybe none of the trailers and promos so far have shown us anything from the finale That would be possible With TV series like this they do tend to edit and finish the effects and audio mixing

[13:56] on the later season episodes while the first half of the season is starting to air. Like, I'm assuming episode 8 won't even be locked until later this month. But the final batch of shots we're going to talk about shows us this yellow-tinted landscape.

[14:08] Whatever this world is, it is arid and dead. There are at least two moons visible in the sky. So from that, we would assume that this is not Earth. In many shots from here, it seems to be just two characters, 2026 bearded Jon Stewart and the 2006 era hologram.

[14:23] But in this shot from the Weeks Ahead trailer, there are definitely three figures here. We know 2026 Jon will be wearing the Green Lantern ring here as he picks up this dried skull. And there's this massive extraterrestrial-looking floating structure above their heads.

[14:38] And everything we can see here is, as Chris Martin would say, it was all yellow. So one theory is that this could be Anton's home planet after what the Manhunter did to it. The skull could belong to one of Anton's race.

[14:51] And this whole structure could be something that the Manhunter built and completely flattened and terraformed the planet. Another theory, though, a theory that I really like, that I don't know if this show will have the balls to go through with, is that this could be the remains of Coast City in Southern California on Earth after that city gets destroyed.

[15:07] And what is overhead is actually the beginnings of the Asian city. arguably what coast city is most famous for comes from 1993 superman number 80 the deadly alliance storyline where cyborg superman and mongol destroy coast city killing seven million people and then

[15:21] converting the rebel of that city to ancient city for their earth war world plan in the pilot episode various shots of coast city were literally just los angeles with the iconic u.s bank building scrubbed out of the shot now again we do see two moons overhead in this other shot so for this to

[15:37] the Earth, they would have had to add a second moon to this shot in the trailer just to misdirect viewers like us. I don't know, I wouldn't put it past them for a twist this big. But the key detail of these shots is, of course, the color. Everything is yellow. Yellow, we have learned, is the color

[15:50] of fear and of the fear entity Parallax. In the Emerald Twilight event, Hal Jordan, grieving over what happens to Coast City, gives in to the fear entity Parallax and lets fear take over his whole body. That could be Sinestro's plan this whole season, to corrupt Hal with fear so that Sinestro

[16:05] can escape and start the Sinestro Corps of Yellow Lanterns. That could be why this series is called Lanterns, not Green Lanterns, as we're going to see lanterns of multiple colors. So, who killed Hal Jordan? Well, if you watched my last lanterns video,

[16:18] maybe that isn't Hal Jordan in that shot, but actually the Manhunter taking his form, while the real Hal Jordan is still alive out there, and he just has a yellow ring. And that could be why we see these two people alive together, sitting in that diner booth in the behind-the-scenes shot from that era.

[16:30] Comment down below with your thoughts on all this, and special thanks to one of our In Our Underground subscribers, Dante for supporting us at the executive producer level. You can get all of our exclusive bonus content by clicking the link in the description below or going to nrunderground.supercast.com. Here's a clip from our recent

[16:42] Monday Know Back episode. A little behind the scenes thing that we're dealing with on YouTube right now is like, you may look at New Rockstars and all the other channels you follow right now and be like, whoa, all these channels are doing huge views. Right now,

[16:54] in the past seven days, past ten days, YouTube changed its view reporting numbers to basically double what videos are actually getting. They are completely inflating and juking the stats. Now, the way YouTube is doing that is

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[17:22] YouTube, that counts as a view now. Whereas before, you would have to tap through a video and watch more than three seconds of it for it to properly count as a view. But if people tap on a video and just watch one second of it and be like, oh, actually, no, I don't want that.

[17:34] Nope, that view counts. Now, that might be dishonest in your opinion, but YouTube is now just trying to compete really with Meta and with TikTok and with Netflix who doesn't report any views at all

[17:46] and just has their kind of shadowy reporting that they do internally into shareholders. You can get that whole episode by going to nrautoground.supercast.com. Big thank you to studio tech Brian Kim, Xerox stars editors Joshua Stephen Hurd and Abby Friel

[17:58] and all of our supporting editors for their work on this video. Follow me at DABot and hit that subscribe button. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye!