Lanterns Episode 2 Recap: Everything You Always Wanted To Know

We've never met a Manhunter, and if this week's "Lanterns" drives home any point at all, it's that we never want to. The galaxy's most dreaded creatures are explained in detail during Episode 2, which also gives us a) insight to what the dead guys from last week were doing in Rushville, and b) a sense of how Hal and John will — or won't — work together to figure out whether a Manhunter is hiding out in town.

(Also: If one is, who do we think it is?) Read on for the highlights of the second episode. We're back in 2016 at the motel in Rushville when Hal wakes John up with an ice bucket dumped on his face.

Despite what they learned in the premiere — namely: Aliens on a mission that is the "opposite of peace" are on the way to Earth — Hal has no plan to alert the Guardians, aka the Green Lanterns' governing body. For related coverage, explore our detailed analysis on Technology and Digital Systems.

Key Analysis and Detailed Timeline

Instead, the elder Lantern announces, it's training time: John's going to learn how to fly. "Think flight," is his only instruction, as Hal and John stand in the motel's parking lot. Though John tries mightily, he only manages to create a little green bird that flits around his shoulders.

They table that setback for a moment, because the alien was right last episode: The ring is nearly out of charge. Hal sends John back to his house to grab the lantern so they can juice it up. John arrives at Hal's palatial estate, bird in tow, and quickly locates the lantern's holding container.

It's a portal to another dimension, which is pretty damn cool; John calls Hal so his voice can deactivate the protections on the storage container. After they get off the call, John notices Hal's Green Lantern costume hanging near John is leaving Hal's house when unknown men tase and bind him, then put him in the back of a van.

Broader Impact and Sector Outlook

He fights his way out — and has an epic chase against the flow of traffic on a highway — but eventually he's taken down Next thing we (and he) know, he's being brought before an alien named Antaan (played Antaan explains that there's a type of being called Manhunters that are the worst of the worst of the galaxy.

They existed before the Green Lanterns, they're synthetic creatures who can embed in any species and build impossible tech, and their "justice" involves reigning down destruction on the worlds they inhabit. When the Guardians seemed to leave Antaan's world, one secretly stayed behind, wearing the guise of Antaan's people "while he quietly engineered a holocaust." Antaan then apologizes for what's coming next, "but you need to see," and then othesrs hold John down while they put something that looks like a ray gun to his temple.

The device downloads directly into Stewart's brain the horror of what Manhunters did to Antaan's people; John shakes, screams, drools, and cries, devastated As the men cut off John's restraints, Antaan continues the story. Hal Jordan demonstrated up after all of Antaan's people were massacred, and he took the Manhunter into custody, saying he'd be executed.

But Antaan suspects that the Manhunter is still alive and living in Rushville — his team were the aliens killed at the football stadium — and the fact that Hal demonstrated up soon after they passed away leads him to think that Hal is protecting the creature. But wait, there's more!

Antaan and his men can't get into the town without being detected, so he tasks John with identifying the Manhunter.

"Because it took human form, it can be killed as a human," he says. Uh, OK? Oh, and John has to have the creature pinned down within 48 hours.

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While John is gone, Hal attends a town meeting. Billy sits with him, letting him know he got the bar brawl charges dismissed. Then after generally being a disruptive nuisance during the proceedings, John heads to the morgue, where he steals the bodies of the four men killed in the matter at the football field.

In a gorgeous bit of physical comedy, Hal wrestles the corpses into a Toyota Camry and drives to the field, where he hauls them through what looks like a metal detector a couple of times. Hal realizes that the detectors are actually to weed out aliens, and he guesses that they were put there Kerry confirms it, and though she thinks it's a colossally bad idea, she takes Hal to see Will again.

This time, Macon is much less excited to encounter the Green Lantern, who notes that he hasn't seen that type of alien-detection tech anywhere else in the galaxy. "I want to know what other technology you've got on this compound," Hal demands — right before one of Macon's snipers shoots him. Hal wakes in the hospital.

Kerry is nearby. She doesn't wait long for him to come around before she asks about what's on her mind: Sinestro, the Green Lantern who went bad. Hal tells her he took down Sinestro, who was his mentor.

This sharing of a less-than-awesome time in his life seems to soften tensions between them; the lawwoman and the Lantern make nice. As they leave, Hal notes that the medical facility is empty, and some of its equipment hasn't even been unwrapped yet, which is weird, but Kerry shrugs it off.

When Hal and John next see each other, John gets right down to it: "What do you know about Manhunters?" He explains everything to Hal, including the fact that he was told not to tell him.

In the middle of all of this, Hal notes that John has kept his little green bird alive, despite not wearing the ring. He's amazed; apparently the ability to do so is an advanced one.

Hal probes about why a bird, per se, assuming it means something "pretty deep." But John shuts him down — "it's just a bird," he says, turning it back to green dust — and that's that.

Later, Hal dons his Green Lantern uniform and flies to the intergalactic prison where Sinestro is being held. Hal doesn't waste time, asking about Manhunters the moment he crosses the threshold. "If one still existed, it would be the second biggest threat you're currently facing," Sinestro replies.

"So, why don't you tell me about John Stewart?" Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episode? Will you tune in next week?

Sound off in the comments!