‘Lanterns’ Episode 7 Recap: The Road to Hal Is Paved with Good Intentions
HBO’s Lanterns has a problem with fathers. This week’s episode, “The Road to Hal,” spends most of its runtime digging into Hal Jordan’s past, and the result is a flashback that feels less like storytelling and more like a franchise writer’s therapy session. Damon Lindelof, the show’s co-creator, has made a career out of these origin stories, and Lanterns is now officially 0 for 2 at revealing its main characters’ secrets.
The episode introduces Martin Jordan, Hal’s father, played by Jake B. Miller. Martin is a rough-around-the-edges test pilot who gives Hal a speech about a failsafe — a key that Martin entrusts to young Hal. The comparison to adult Hal’s own cosmic-cube vault in a storage shed is heavy-handed even by Lindelof standards. It’s the kind of writing that was fresh twenty years ago, when Lost more or less invented it, but it feels dated now.
Martin’s Crash and the Ball
The flashback centers on a baseball game. Hal gets kicked off his team for refusing to relinquish the ball when he’s pitching a no-hitter, apparently clinging to it even while fighting the whole team. After Martin dies, young Hal tracks the ball down in the field his father made him throw it into and picks it up again. It’s meant to parallel adult Hal’s relationship with the power ring, but the analogy is blunt.
Martin’s death is suicide, and the failsafe Martin gave young Hal contained the suicide note. Hal spent his life covering it up. Martin’s father had killed himself as well, and the episode draws a direct line between the two generations of grief.
Hal’s Duplicate and Sheriff Kerry
The present-day story follows a version of Hal that was backed up in 2006 or so. This Hal is nicer and more cooperative than the usual one, but he’s also distraught to learn he’s been murdered. He’s capable of sincerely praising John Stewart’s accomplishments, something the old Hal never did.
The episode also brings in Sheriff Kerry, played by Kelly Macdonald. She’s hosting a party for her son Noah, whose big decision about which college to play quarterback for is not to decide until he wins the final high school game of the season.
Inside the vault, they find a gun, a poncho, and a big ball of black goop that turns out to be a wormhole/portal thing, directly connected to another one somewhere else in the universe. When they step through, they land on the planet Zoe, devastated by a Manhunter attack. Survivor Antaan seeks revenge.
Zoe’s Devastation
The planet is a wreck. A shattered city floats in the sky above them. The baked desert ground is littered with corpses of people who jumped to their deaths after the Manhunter released a fear gas that drove them all insane. The gas remains in the atmosphere, particularly when it rains, leading John to nearly kill himself at one point while hallucinating his father and his younger self.
Duplicate Hal notes grumpily that this is why older Hal wanted them to bring the damn poncho. The poncho, it turns out, is something older Hal wanted them to have.
The Island of Debris
Hal and John find a boat left behind by older Hal and use it to row across a lake to a distant island of debris. On top of the island flashes some kind of blue-green firelight. In the process, Hal opens up about his family. He knows his father’s crash was suicide because the failsafe Martin told him about contained the suicide note.
The flashback is meant to explain Hal, but it reads as a lecture. The reviewer describes the writing as “dull-as-dishwater cold-open flashback sequences about cool but unapproachably remote dads with mustaches who get in fights with Little League coaches and make you want to please them more than anything but are hurting deep down inside.” That’s a fair description of what’s on screen.
Underplaying the Emotions
The acting saves the episode. Aaron Pierre’s John and Kyle Chandler’s Hal have a knack for underplaying their reactions while making it clear that John and Hal, not Aaron and Kyle, are really doing the underplaying here. They don’t want to let on how moved they are, and that itself is moving.
The scene between Hal’s duplicate and Sheriff Kerry is a highlight. Hal has clearly never been in love before and wants to meet the woman he was finally able to open up to, even about his father. Sheriff Kerry is seeing a dead man, but she’s also meeting a version of him she’s never gotten to know. It’s like magic happening before her eyes.
A Superhero Sci-Fi Space Opera
The reviewer notes that this is a superhero sci-fi space opera, and you can make things as colorful as you want. The washed-out color on Zoe is a disappointment. A shattered city floating in the sky and corpses scattered across a desert should be vivid, not muted.
The devastation makes sense on a large scale, though. The fear gas that drove everyone insane explains why the bodies are there and why the atmosphere is toxic. The rain triggers the gas, and John’s near-death hallucination is a direct result.
What Works and What Doesn’t
The flashback is the weak link. The origin story is overdetermined and obvious. The reviewer describes it as “ham-fisted” and “heavy-handed,” and that’s the kindest way to put it. The comparison between Martin’s failsafe and Hal’s own vault is a joke that’s been told.
But the present-day scenes are sharp. John and Hal argue, but they call each other by name by the end of the episode. John calls the construct “Hal,” something he never did when Jordan was alive. The performance carries the weight of the moment.
Sheriff Kerry’s party for Noah is a detail that adds texture to the story. Her son’s indecision about which college to play quarterback for is a small, human detail in a story full of cosmic stakes. The reviewer praises the scene between Hal’s duplicate and Sheriff Kerry as a scene that transcends its shopworn sci-fi ideas.
The Track Record So Far
Lanterns is now officially 0 for 2 when it comes to flashbacks revealing the secret histories of Hal Jordan and John Stewart. The present-day story, by contrast, remains largely unblemished. The show’s strength has always been its characters, and this episode proves it again.
Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre deliver performances that make the emotional beats land. Kelly Macdonald grounds the story in Sheriff Kerry’s perspective. The episode is a reminder that Lanterns is at its best when it trusts its actors and lets them breathe.
The flashback, unfortunately, is not one of those moments. It’s a heavy-handed bit of business that would have been fresh twenty years ago. In the context of a series that derives its power from lived-in, naturalistic performances, dumping an origin story on top of the characters is like cutting them off at the knees.
This kind of writing was fresh and clever 20 years ago, when Lost more or less introduced it to the pop-cultural lexicon.
The episode ends with Hal and John on Zoe, surrounded by wreckage and searching for answers. Whether the next episode can recover from this clumsy origin story remains to be seen.
For now, the review’s verdict is clear: the flashback is a mess, but the acting is superb. That’s a mixed bag, but it’s the best kind of mixed bag.
Source material: “‘Lanterns’ Episode 7 Recap: The Road to Hal Is Paved with Good Intentions,” Decider.
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