Kyle Chandler Teases What’s Next After LANTERNS’ Hal Jordan Cliffhanger: “It’s an Exciting Poker Game”
Lanterns closed out its first episode with one hell of an image: a dead body, a snowy Rushville, and a future that suddenly looks very bad for Hal Jordan.
At the end of the premiere, the story jumps ahead to 2026 and seemingly reveals that Hal Jordan is dead, immediately throwing a massive mystery over the DCU series. How did he die? Who killed him? And perhaps more importantly, are we absolutely sure the body slumped in the snowy rafters is really Hal?
Don’t expect the series to spend forever crawling toward those answers. Kyle Chandle, who plays Hal Jordan, says Lanterns keeps moving after its opening episode and that viewers are in for plenty of twists as the mystery expands.
Speaking about the premiere reveal, Chandler explained that audiences will ultimately have to decide for themselves what they think they saw.
“I think it turns out great,” Chandler says. “I think there's a lot of different moves in the whole deal. It's an exciting poker game.”
That poker game sounds like it’s only getting started. Chandler also revealed that the cast didn’t have the entire story in front of them when production began, with scripts arriving as they went along.
“We didn't have all the scripts starting out. They started coming in… it's not a slow burn. It goes from one world into another, and grows into that.”
Chandler also warned that “everyone is going to have to watch and find out to make their own decision” about the episode’s big rug-pull.
So while Lanterns has planted a pretty huge question about Hal Jordan’s fate, it sounds like the show isn’t planning to drag its feet getting deeper into the mystery.
Chandler’s description of an “exciting poker game” suggests there are multiple players, shifting pieces, and probably a few things being kept hidden from both the characters and the audience.
We do have one important piece of the puzzle already. The Lanterns creative team has confirmed that Guy Gardner possesses Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern ring during the events of Superman. That raises even more questions about what happens to Hal between the events unfolding in Lanterns and his apparent death.
For now, the circumstances surrounding Hal Jordan remain one of the DCU’s biggest secrets. Episode 1 certainly gives fans plenty to chew on, but Chandler’s comments make it sound like the real fun will be watching the story continually change shape as those answers start coming.
And with Hal apparently dead before we’ve even gotten comfortable, Lanterns has made it pretty clear that anything could be on the table.
Source: GamesRadar+