James Oconner 
Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
© HBO
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Episode 7 of Lanterns.
With Lanterns heading into its Season 1 finale, the biggest question is still sitting there: who actually killed Hal Jordan? The HBO series has spent most of its first season playing out like a dark murder investigation, with John Stewart trying to figure out what happened to his former mentor while also getting pulled deeper into Hal’s complicated past. It’s a pretty unusual setup for a Green Lantern show, but it has worked because the superhero stuff has mostly stayed in the background while the mystery keeps getting messier.
The story jumps between two timelines. In 2016, we see Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan working with Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart, while the 2026 timeline begins with Hal already dead and John trying to piece together his final days with Sheriff Kerry and the strange “Hal-o-gram.” A number of suspects have already been killed off along the way, which should have made the mystery easier to solve. Instead, Episode 7 somehow manages to make it even more confusing. And now there’s a pretty wild possibility sitting on the table: what if nobody killed Hal at all?
The Suspect Board: Who Wanted Hal Dead?
There have been plenty of people who could have wanted Hal gone. Some of the early theories, though, are already dead in the water. Zoe Macon, the Manhunter hiding in Rushville, Nebraska, is dead, along with William Macon and Antaan. Before the show even premiered, there was plenty of speculation that William Macon could be Black Hand or that Antaan might turn out to be Atrocitus. Neither theory has exactly worked out.
That brings the attention back to the people closer to Hal and John. John himself seems like an obvious suspect on paper, especially after the two get into a physical fight and John breaks Hal’s nose. But that doesn’t mean much when you look at everything John has actually been doing. He’s the person trying to find out who killed Hal, and there’s very little in the story so far that suggests he was responsible.
Noah, Billy Macon’s son, is a little harder to dismiss. There’s an uncomfortable tension whenever he’s around John, partly because Noah knows John killed his grandmother. He doesn’t exactly make his feelings obvious, either, which somehow makes him more suspicious. Then again, Rushville is full of people who had reasons to hate Hal, so Noah isn’t exactly alone there.
Billy Macon had his own reasons to hold a grudge. He confronted John in Episode 6 and blamed Hal for actions that ultimately contributed to his father’s death. And then there’s Sheriff Kerry, who complicates the whole thing even further. She and Hal were once romantically involved, and she later became Billy’s ex-wife. Basically, almost everyone connected to Hal seems to have some piece of history with him.
Did Kerry or Sinestro Do It?
Kerry is probably one of the more interesting possibilities because she was close enough to Hal to know exactly what he was dealing with. If she wanted to cover something up, she would have had the access and the opportunity to do it. That has naturally led to theories that she could have staged the crime scene and made Hal’s death look like a murder. The problem is motive. Lanterns still hasn’t given us a convincing reason why Kerry would actually want Hal dead. Her relationship with him was complicated, sure, but complicated doesn’t automatically mean murderous. Episode 7 does, however, make it possible that Kerry is involved in what happened without necessarily being the person who killed him.
And then there’s Sinestro. He has escaped prison and has been tracked to the alien world connected to Hal’s vault portal, which is not exactly the kind of development that makes him look innocent. Sinestro was also Hal’s old mentor, so his return ties the murder mystery directly into the larger Green Lantern mythology the show has been slowly introducing. That doesn’t prove Sinestro killed Hal. Far from it. But with him back in the story at exactly this point, it’s hard not to keep him somewhere on the suspect list.
The Shocking Twist: Did Hal Jordan Die by Suicide?
Then Episode 7 drops its strangest possibility yet: maybe Hal Jordan killed himself.
When the “Hal-o-gram” interacts with John on the alien world, we learn something important about Hal’s family. Hal had always believed that his father died by suicide, rather than in the plane crash the family had publicly accepted as the explanation. That detail hits differently once John starts looking at Hal’s own death. The obvious question becomes pretty uncomfortable: what if Hal eventually followed the same path as his father?
Under this theory, Hal took his own life and Kerry later staged the scene to make it look like he had been murdered. Suddenly, John isn’t really hunting for a killer. He’s trying to uncover a cover-up that has been sitting in front of everyone this entire time. And that would give the story between Hal and his father an entirely different meaning. Hal spent years carrying the belief that his father had chosen to end his own life, only for his own story to potentially mirror it. It’s a much sadder explanation than a straightforward murder mystery, which may be exactly why the show is putting it on the table this late in the season.
It would also explain why Kerry could be involved. If she loved Hal and wanted to protect the version of him that everyone knew, covering up the truth about his death would make sense. She wouldn’t necessarily be protecting a murderer. She’d be protecting Hal’s legacy.
Heading Into the Finale
With only one episode left, Lanterns has managed to make the Hal Jordan mystery considerably harder to pin down than it seemed at the beginning. There are still several people who could be hiding something, but Episode 7 has also introduced the possibility that the answer isn’t a murderer at all. Noah, Billy Macon, Kerry and Sinestro all have connections to the story that are worth watching, but the suicide theory may be the biggest piece of the puzzle yet. If it turns out to be true, Kerry’s actions would have to be viewed differently, and John’s entire investigation would suddenly take on a much more tragic meaning.
Of course, there’s still one episode left, so the show could pull the rug out again. Lanterns has spent the season giving us clues, killing off suspects and making us rethink what we thought we knew about Hal. Whatever the final answer is, the real question may not just be who killed Hal Jordan. It may be why everyone around him was so determined to hide the truth about what happened.
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