Lanterns finale underuses Sinestro, sparking Season 2 theories among fans

Fans are dissecting the Lanterns finale, "Dirt and Stars", as it aired just last night. While we discuss John Stewart's status as a new Lantern, some fans also pointed out another controversial aspect of the last episode: the overall short screen time for Hal Jordan's mentor-turned-arch-nemesis, Thaal Sinestro. The character appears in four episodes throughout the entire series.

We meet Sinestro for the first time in the very last scene of the second episode. The show returned to the Sinestro scene from the second episode in the opening minutes of episode 4. We did not see Sinestro until the last scene of last week's episode 7. In that scene, John punches a cloaked figure on a destroyed alien planet.

Sinestro returns in the Lanterns finale:

The series returns to where the previous episode ended with John and Sinestro in the cave. John interrogates Sinestro by drowning him inside the fear-infected water of the alien planet. In this interrogation, Sinestro reveals that he created a lantern powered by fear. John is a bit hesitant to recharge the ring using the new lantern because it could corrupt the ring and, thereby, Stewart himself.

Sinestro requests John, and even the ring's backup consciousness, to take him away from the destroyed planet. But the two leave Sinestro behind in the desolate landscape, as Sinestro screams for Hal's name. This is the last we see of him, as Sinestro does not appear or is not even mentioned after that scene in the Lanterns finale.

Therefore, many fans are disappointed that Sinestro did not have a huge role in the first season of Lanterns. A fan called u/raggedsweater posted this on Reddit, saying:

This post did not get many comments. One fan described the HBO series as "peanut budget":

Another fan discussed the implications of John's Lantern. According to this fan theory, John Stewart's ring is the only one that even has a chance to stand up to Sinestro when he escapes captivity in a future DCU project or Lanterns Season 2:

For the uninitiated, Lanterns ended with John recharging his ring with the fear-powered lantern Sinestro created. Co-showrunner Tom King described John's lantern as "unsanctioned" in a virtual press conference:

"John is not 100% a Green Lantern anymore. He has a Lantern that has a bit of yellow in it. He has a bit of fear in it. It's an unsanctioned Lantern. So he's not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern because he's not like every other Green Lantern. This is an utterly unique creation that has not been given to him, that he is not chosen for, but that he chose for himself. He gets his own unique oath, which seems to line up very much with the lore and where we're going from here."

Is season 2 happening?

HBO hasn't officially greenlit Lanterns Season 2 yet. But co-creator Damon Lindelof confirmed in a recent Collider interview that a second season was in the early stages of development. He said:

"I can only tell you that everybody in the Season 1 room, inclusive of the writers who are working on ideating on Season 2, felt like even though we knew that it was going to be emotionally devastating and/or disappointing and maybe even frustrating, that the worst possible schmuck-baity thing that we could do is show you a pilot where Hal Jordan was definitively dead, and then try to walk it back and say, 'Oh, he was a clone' or 'He's only mostly dead' in the Princess Bride vernacular."

Lindelof further added:

"In terms of like moving forward into subsequent seasons of the show, I swear to you, as I look at you in the eye on Wednesday this 30th of September, I do not know anything about the creative, and I wouldn't want to hamstring those writers in any way for what future storytelling mechanisms they could indulge in. Knowing what the comics have done with Parallax — and Hal, I think, has died at least 3 or 4 times over the course of the canon, and celebrating everything that Kyle did in his performance to get the audience to fall in love with Hal."

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