SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “Lanterns” Episode 5, titled “Lights Out,” now streaming on HBO Max.
This week’s episode of “Lanterns” finally unmasks the Manhunter, who’s been at the heart of the mystery in Rushville throughout the season.
As revealed at the end of Episode 4, the Manhunter is in fact Zoe Macon, played by Poorna Jagannathan. In an interview with Variety, Jagannathan said that she had no idea she was the Manhunter until she got the script for the fourth episode. “Everyone saw it coming except me!” she says with a laugh.
“Obviously, I’m grateful that they didn’t tell me initially, because in my audition I know I would have acted like a robot,” she says.
The episode begins by delving into how the Manhunter holds so much sway over the people of Rushville. We see Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald) years before on the run from some gangsters to whom her father owed money. They track her to the Rushville diner, where Zoe is sitting in a booth by herself. Out of nowhere, she snaps one gangster’s neck and informs the other that he will be going back to his boss and telling him that Kerry is dead.
Kerry is grateful, but obviously scared. Zoe explains that Kerry can have a safe and peaceful life in Rushville, so long as Kerry is willing to protect Zoe when the time comes.
“[Co-creator] Chris [Mundy] and Geeta Patel, the director of that episode, wanted a sense that that scene is emblematic of the contract Zoe has made with every single person in the town,” Jagannathan says. “Her survival depends on you agreeing to your survival. It’s a Faustian play she makes.”
Given that, Rushville goes into high alert, as Zoe knows that Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) and his team will be on their way to kill her. All the citizens arm themselves and prepare for battle.
Hal (Kyle Chandler), meanwhile, has left John (Aaron Pierre) trapped in their car after forcing him into a crash at the end of the last episode. He plans to let Antaan and Will Macon’s (Garret Dillahunt) militia shoot it out while he goes after Zoe to turn her over to the Guardians.
Zoe tracks John down just as the car begins to burn. But rather than save him, she waits for it to explode. Now severely burned and barely alive, John is taken to the local hospital, where he reveals to Zoe that he knows the Guardians are the ones who created the Manhunters in the first place.
Zoe offers John a deal: She will heal his injuries so long as he lets Hal die and tells the Guardians that all is well. “She waits for John to burn, and he is hanging by a thread to life,” Jagannathan says. “What you understand is she waits for people to be at their most vulnerable point, near death — and she comes in to save them.”
On why she believes Zoe wouldn’t have let John die, Jagannathan believes the character understood that having the gratitude and protection of a Green Lantern would be “her crown jewel.”
“She quickly assessed who is her biggest threat,” she says. “She quickly assessed who could be her strongest protector, and it wasn’t Hal — it was John. She sees something in John where she knows that he is going to be the better Green Lantern.”
Antaan and his team reach Rushville, and Hal finds them at the diner. He tells Antaan that Will is the Manhunter, but Antaan is clearly suspicious. Still, they set off for Will’s ranch armed to the teeth.
Back at the hospital, John has agreed to Zoe’s terms, and she prepares to heal him using alien technology. He asks her why she chose the form of a South Asian woman, to which she replies that being an outsider allows her a “higher vantage point” from which she can infiltrate a society.
“My outsiderness over the years has definitely become my strength,” Jagannathan says. “It’s the thing that I bring to the party. So when I read that monologue, I was like, ‘OK, that’s my in.’”
“You just don’t get asked a lot of questions if you are presented as outsider,” she continues. “No one really knows what questions to ask you. You can hide in plain sight, and that’s the tactic she chose in order to come and live on this planet.”
Now fully healed, John deduces that Zoe killed Abin Sur, the Green Lantern who passed his ring to Hal, as he was going to let her go on Earth. But Zoe couldn’t risk Abin Sur one day revealing her location to the Guardians.
While Jagannathan believes that all the characters in “Lanterns” are presented with a wide range of shades of gray, Zoe is ultimately a “victim of her programming” as a Manhunter.
Antaan and his team assault Will’s ranch. He patiently waits inside for Antaan to get there, calling Zoe to thank her for giving him more time to live. Antaan arrives, and Zoe has coached Will to pretend to be the Manhunter to throw Antaan off the trail. But Antaan dispatches Will, and cuts out his heart, proving he is human.
Zoe needs to draw Hal out, so she begins firing space-based weapons onto the town in order to force him to drain his ring’s power. He manages to find her, but she escapes. With his ring nearly drained, Hal has to return to the motel to recharge it.
Once he arrives, John is waiting for him. He brutally assaults Hal as they begin a knockdown, drag out brawl that has been brewing since the season started. John gets the upper hand and nearly takes the ring, before one of Zoe’s satellite weapons blows up half the motel, forcing Hal to use what little charge is left in the ring to protect himself and John.
As the dust settles, John flees, but Zoe comes with a gun to finish off Hal in the rubble. Hal laughs, knowing that if John wanted him dead, he would have done it himself. Suddenly, we see John staring down the barrel of a sniper rifle, which is trained on Zoe. She turns around and looks at John with a softness in her eyes just before he fires.
“John is the only person she has ever encountered that she didn’t predict,” Jagannathan says. “Everyone else has always fallen into line. I think the last look is kind of game-recognized-game. It was a complete appreciation for someone whose sense of morality outdid anything and everything, and ultimately that’s the only thing that could have killed her. Someone who broke the contract, and no one ever has.”
John returns to the motel, takes the ring and lantern from Hal and walks through the rubble of Rushville. He goes to the local bar, where Lianna (Laura Linney) is waiting for him. Though he finally has what he’s always wanted, John walks away from Lianna, leaving the ring behind.