Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Lanterns’ series premiere on HBO or via HBO Max subscription, so be warned (but not afraid)!Welp, Lanterns kicked off with one hell of a time-jumping doozy, as “Pilot” spanned from John Stewart’s apple-splattering childhood to the year 2016, where the series’ key murder-mystery victim was revealed to be none other than Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan himself. In the flash-forward, John and Sheriff Kerry stand before the semi-frozen Green Lantern, with a bullet hole above his temple and a trail of dried blood down his face. For all intents and purposes, it looks like one of DC’s most popular superheroes is dead!More On LanternsI Could Not Get Over What The Green Lantern's Ring Was Used For In The First Episode's Steamy SceneLanterns Creator On The ‘Rabid Fanbase’ And THAT Trailer BacklashOne Lanterns Star Is Playing Into Fan Theories Instead Of Avoiding Them, And I'd Love If Everyone Did ThisExcept, what if that’s not the case at all? Though certain naysaying viewers have already shoveled their half-thought gripes online, I think it’s worth taking a step back to consider whether co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King would truly axe a top-tier comic icon right out of the gate for a shocking TV ending? I mean…well, maybe. Still, I don’t believe for a second that’s what the all-star writing trio did in the new DC series, and I think it’s all slight of ring…er, hand.(Image credit: HBO)In fact, I think that they gave us the biggest clue possible earlier in the episode to give those paying attention the olive branch of knowledge that the body Kerry shows John isn’t actually Hal at all. In the sequence that takes place just before the jump to 2016, before Hal goes into the interrogation room, he sways the sheriff’s beliefs somewhat by getting John to point out a key detail in this exchange:HAL: Junior, tell the sheriff here how many species currently have the technology to pass as human.JOHN: 14. MRIs, X-rays, bloodwork. Nothing down here can tell the difference. Less than ten minutes of screentime later, "Hal's" corpse appears. I admittedly didn't connect those two moments the first time I watched, as the site of frozen Kyle Chandler threw me harder than All-State quarterback Noah could have. But upon rewatching, John's comment made alarm bells go off in my head. With other creators, that kind of timing might be coincidental, but this kind of plot-layering is something Damon Lindelof and Tom King are known for, so I'm convinced it's intentional. Given that Lanterns will bounce back and forth between 2006 and 2016, it's already known that Kyle Chandler will still be a major presence throughout the rest of the season, where we'll hopefully get to see nods to a pivotal comic moment for Hal, while his complicated history with Sinestro also needs to be explored. So for storytelling purposes, Hal's death could very well be legit without the show losing any steam. But there's no [RING-CENSOR] way that's actually Hal's corpse. This early on, I admittedly don't have any concrete speculation about what alien race might have one of their own pose as Hal. But considering the pilot starts off with him showing back up to train John after essentially disappearing for a couple of weeks, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that Hal set up this whole situation himself for the purposes of fooling some other threatening entity into thinking he's dead. Is it a good time to throw the name Parallax out there?Do you guys agree with me, or do you think that Hal is dead as doornails for sure? Join me in learning more next Sunday when the next episode hits HBO and HBO Max at 9:00 p.m.