Lanterns Episode 6 closes the 2016 story by showing John Stewart take Hal Jordan’s ring and then refuse the job that comes with it. By the time the wreckage in Rushville settles, the man who was supposed to become Earth’s Green Lantern has walked away, and that leaves the door open for Guy Gardner in Superman.
That is why the episode matters now. Fans looking at James Gunn’s Superman are seeing Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner in full Green Lantern regalia, and this chapter of Lanterns is the bridge between that image and the earlier timeline. The fifth episode does not just move the plot forward; it explains how the ring ends up with someone else after John Stewart turns it down.
The episode puts Stewart through the kind of night that makes a destiny collapse feel earned. Aliens led by Antaan attack Rushville, Nebraska, to bring a Manhunter to justice. Zoe Macon pulls Stewart out of a burning car before the attack, then heals him, only to be revealed as the Manhunter hiding in town. Stewart tries to play along, pretends he will kill Hal Jordan and take the ring, and then fights Jordan brutally at a motel. He is battered but alive when he uses his sniper skills to kill the Manhunter, takes the power ring off Jordan’s finger, and reaches the point where it should all finally click into place.
Instead, the people around him make the moment feel like a setup. Lianna congratulates Stewart in the wreckage of Rushville and tells him the ring looks good on him. He hears manipulation, not support. Stewart had been groomed his whole life for the role of Green Lantern of Sector 2814, but the episode gives him a choice and then strips away any clean version of it. He angrily rejects the power ring and leaves Rushville, turning his back on the future he was meant to inherit.
That rejection is the key to the continuity problem the series sets out to solve. The Guardians no longer want Hal Jordan in the role, and they will need someone else after Stewart walks away. The story says Gardner becomes the third option between 2016 and 2025, which is enough to explain why Superman lands on him rather than on Stewart or Jordan. What it does not show is the actual handoff, or how the Guardians settled on Gardner after Stewart’s refusal. That gap is now the last missing piece between the ruined motel in Rushville and the Green Lantern standing in Superman.
