This Lanterns episode 5 review covers “Lights Out,” the hour where the show stops protecting Hal Jordan and lets him become the actual danger in Rushville. It’s the strongest episode of the season for that choice alone, even if John Stewart’s half of the fallout arrives too fast to really land.
Spoiler warning: this review covers the full plot of “Lights Out,” including its ending.
We haven’t watched this one yet; this review is built on cross-checked recaps and published critic reviews rather than a first-hand viewing.
What Happens in “Lights Out”
Zoe Macon, the Manhunter hiding in Rushville since killing Abin Sur, finally shows her hand and turns the town’s own orbital lasers against it. She traps John in a burning car and offers Hal a clean shot at killing him in exchange for his life, and Hal takes the deal.
What follows is a brawl over Hal’s ring at a roadside motel, cut short when an orbital strike forces Hal to burn through what’s left of his power shielding them both. John pins him and physically pulls the ring off his hand, and Guardian Lianna doesn’t stop it.
The real gut-punch comes after. Offered the ring and the oath that would make him Earth’s official Green Lantern, John turns it down flat — “I just felt empty,” he tells Lianna — and walks away from the lantern unclaimed. He still finishes the job on Zoe, though: a sniper shot to the head, then cutting out her crystallized heart as proof of death for the Guardians.
Hal Jordan Was Always the Real Threat
Letting Hal actually try to kill his partner, instead of getting talked down at the last second, is what makes “Lights Out” work. Four episodes of hedging on whether Hal is a flawed hero or something worse finally resolve in the harder, more interesting direction: he’s the second half of this season’s problem, not its backup plan.
Kyle Chandler plays the fight without a shred of the wounded-cop charm the character has leaned on all season, and that’s the right call. It also lands at a moment when the show has real momentum behind it — Lanterns pulled a series-high 10 million global viewers in its first three days after episode 3, per Warner Bros.’s own figures, reported September 2026, so this is a show with a real audience watching Hal’s turn happen in real time.
John Stewart’s Reckoning Deserved More Time
This is the half of the episode Den of Geek’s Joe George pushed back on hardest, calling “Lights Out” “not just the worst episode of an otherwise excellent show, but a worrying sign as Lanterns moves into its back half”. He has a real point about John specifically, even where the episode overall doesn’t deserve that verdict.
The comics version of John Stewart has always been the architect, not the hothead — the Lantern who thinks in structural terms and carries his failures for years, most famously in 1988’s Cosmic Odyssey, where his overconfidence gets a planet destroyed and haunts him for a decade of stories afterward. That’s a character built for slow, earned guilt. Giving him one scene of “I just felt empty” before he walks off the show’s entire premise — becoming Earth’s Green Lantern — skips the work that backstory sets up.
IGN’s Jesse Schedeen saw the same hour and landed somewhere else entirely, calling it “another winner” and writing that “it’s a bleak and very tragic conflict, and ultimately, no one’s hands are clean”. Both critics are responding to the same thing: an episode willing to let its heroes do something close to unforgivable. Where they split is whether the show earned it for John as cleanly as it earned it for Hal.
The Comics Callback: Why “Lights Out” Rhymes With Emerald Twilight
Source-material note: this section covers Green Lantern comics history, not anything stated on screen in the show.
A Green Lantern losing the ring for going too far isn’t a new idea for this franchise — it’s the entire premise of 1994’s Emerald Twilight (Green Lantern #48-50), where Hal Jordan turns on the Guardians and the Corps after Coast City’s destruction and ultimately loses the ring for good. Den of Geek’s own review title, “Emerald Twilight,” is pointing at exactly that parallel on purpose. “Lights Out” isn’t a wholesale retelling — Hal doesn’t go full villain here the way his comics counterpart eventually does — but the show is clearly setting up the same kind of fall, years ahead of schedule and with John standing where Kyle Rayner once did.
Was “Lights Out” a Good Episode of Lanterns?
Yes, mostly. Making Hal genuinely dangerous instead of redeemably flawed is the strongest choice the show has made all season, and it earns the bleakness of the fight that follows. Where it stumbles is treating John’s exit the same way — as a single scene of numbness instead of the slow-burn reckoning a character built the way he is deserves. “Lights Out” is the show’s best hour and its shakiest piece of characterization at the same time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Hal Jordan lose his ring in Lanterns episode 5?
Yes. After a fight over the ring at a motel, John Stewart pulls it off Hal’s hand following an orbital strike that leaves Hal’s power nearly spent.
Does John Stewart become the Green Lantern of Earth in this episode?
No. Offered the ring and the oath, John turns it down, telling Guardian Lianna “I just felt empty,” and leaves the lantern unclaimed.
Who is Zoe in Lanterns?
Zoe Macon is the Manhunter who killed Abin Sur and has posed as a Rushville local ever since. John kills her in this episode and removes her crystallized heart as proof for the Guardians.
Is the Lanterns TV show connected to the Green Lantern comic Emerald Twilight?
Not directly adapted, but critics have noted the parallel: both stories turn on a Green Lantern losing the ring after going too far, which is the defining beat of 1994’s Emerald Twilight.
When did Lanterns episode 5 air?
“Lights Out” premiered Sunday, September 13, 2026, on HBO and HBO Max.
Catch up with our Lanterns episode 4 review, or see the full Lanterns episode schedule and cast guide for where the season goes next.
