Lanterns Episode 6 brings John Stewart back to the one place he has spent ten years trying to leave behind. Hal Jordan is dead, but his murder gives John a new reason to stay in Rushville and start digging for answers.
Ten years after the disaster in Rushville, John Stewart has built a very different life for himself. He is working as an architect alongside his brother Marcus, and his latest project could be his biggest success yet: underground panic bunkers designed to protect as many as 20,000 people during an emergency. A presentation to potential investors goes well enough to earn John a meeting with a colonel who can approve government funding.
Then his mother, Bernadette, calls and brings Rushville crashing back into his life.
Hal Jordan has returned to town. According to Bernadette, he wants to apologize to John for everything that happened between them. John is already angry that she stayed in contact with Hal while he was in prison, but despite Marcus urging him to leave the past alone, he drives to Rushville.
John finds Hal at the café and immediately asks for an apology. There is only one problem: Hal has no idea what he is talking about. Bernadette lied to get the two men into the same room.
Their reunion quickly becomes another argument about 2016. Hal reminds John that he spent ten years in prison for the Rushville massacre, while John puts the responsibility for what happened squarely on him. Hal also goes after John for refusing the Green Lantern ring all those years ago, arguing that fear was the real reason he walked away from it.
John finally punches Hal hard enough to break his nose. Before leaving, he orders him to stay away from his family. Hal makes one strange request in return: he does not want John telling anyone that the two of them met.
John doesn’t get far before he is called back to Rushville. Hal has been found dead on the bleachers, shot in the head.
Kerry admits that Hal’s return to town was connected to her. Their relationship began through letters while he was in prison, and after his release, he came back to Rushville and stayed. He had also been trying to make amends with the people whose lives were destroyed in 2016, going door to door and offering to help even though nobody wanted anything from him.
John keeps one important detail to himself: he was the person who broke Hal’s nose shortly before his death.
Kerry gives him the keys to Hal’s home, where John finds very little beyond Earl, Hal’s alien plant, and a tripwire attached to a gun at the entrance. Whatever Hal was doing in Rushville, he apparently believed he needed protection.
John is supposed to return home for the meeting that could secure funding for his project, and Marcus is stunned to learn that he is still in town. John promises he will make it back in time, but Hal’s death keeps pulling him further into the past he came there to confront.
The following morning, John accompanies Kerry to Hal’s autopsy. The coroner finds no obvious evidence of another struggle beyond Hal’s broken nose and the fatal gunshot. He appears to have been shot at point-blank range. Blood from his injured nose has been sent to the lab, which creates another problem for John: the results could potentially connect him to the fight shortly before Hal died.
Despite everything between them, John does not want Hal disposed of without ceremony. He believes the former Green Lantern deserves a proper funeral and offers to arrange it.
Another mystery also lies among Hal’s possessions. A key leads John and Kerry to a storage unit containing a large alien vault. It requires Hal’s live voice to open, meaning the recordings Kerry has of him are useless. Whatever Hal put inside remains inaccessible.
John’s time in Rushville gets messier when he activates the Green Lantern beacon in town. The sight immediately angers several locals, including Billy. Their confrontation becomes physical, and John beats Billy and the other men who come after him.
Kerry is furious when she hears what happened. Instead of letting their personal relationship interfere with her job, she arrests John and puts him in jail until he can make bail. That is where Guy Gardner finds him.
John tells Guy that Hal is dead and asks him for an unusual favor. He wants Hal buried with his Green Lantern uniform and original ring. Since Guy received a newly forged ring after Hal’s was decommissioned, John argues that Guy owes him for walking away from the Green Lantern role years earlier.
Guy also brings troubling news of his own. Sinestro has escaped, and Hal had been considered the prime suspect in helping him. Hal’s imprisonment makes that impossible, leaving whoever actually freed Sinestro unidentified.
Guy does not promise John anything before leaving, but he also doesn’t completely dismiss the request.
After John is released on bail, the problems waiting outside Rushville begin piling up. His father’s nursing home has called because he fired a gun on the premises and needs to be picked up. Bernadette has also left a message apologizing for lying about Hal. She only wanted John and Hal to finally settle what had been hanging over them for years.
John turns to his brother Aaron and tells him to collect their father. Aaron initially pushes the responsibility back onto John, but John refuses to take it on and threatens to stop financially supporting Aaron’s music if he will not help.
Before John can move on, another Rushville resident gives him a new reason to worry. Maggie, the young woman who saw him arriving at the café before Hal died, has figured out that John met with him that night. She demands money in exchange for keeping quiet. The amount isn’t random. She considers it what John and Hal owe her for destroying her home during the fight with the Manhunter ten years earlier.
Then it is time to bury Hal. Guy ultimately honors John’s request and arrives with Hal’s uniform and ring. He warns John that the ring is dead before declaring his debt paid and leaving.
Carol Ferris also appears with something Hal prepared himself: his own eulogy. John reads it at the funeral. Hal had written as though his burial would draw an enormous crowd of important people and imagined a future Green Lantern carrying on his legacy. The reality is painfully smaller. Only a few people are actually there to mourn him.
John’s decision to give Hal a proper Green Lantern burial, however, was never entirely about paying his respects. After dark, he returns to the grave and starts digging.
Marcus calls while John is still there, desperately trying to salvage the meeting with the colonel. It is too late. John has missed his chance, and the colonel ends the call. Marcus finally confronts him over what Rushville has done to his life. Ten years have passed, but from his perspective, John is still trapped there.
Marcus warns him that he does not want whatever killed Hal to destroy him too, but John keeps digging. He reaches Hal’s coffin, retrieves the ring, and strikes it against a rock. The supposedly dead ring activates with only five percent of its power remaining, that is enough.
Hal’s consciousness appears through the ring. He is initially confused until he looks down and sees his own body inside the grave.
John may have buried Hal Jordan, but he isn’t finished with him yet. Hal can now help him find out what happened before his death and, potentially, who killed him.
