A new episode of Lanterns just landed on HBO, and with it a brand new mystery for Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) to solve: just who the hell is the Manhunter hiding out on Earth?

Following that reveal of a dead Hal in the 2026 timeline, episode two takes us back to 2016, when Hal sends John to his house to grab the lantern and charge up their ring. But on his way back to Rushville, John is kidnapped by a group of aliens (disguised as humans) and taken to their leader, Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor).

It turns out they’re connected to the four mysterious aliens killed at the football field in episode one. Antaan tells John about the evil Manhunters, ancient synthetic beings capable of disguising themselves as other species and creating incredibly advanced technology.

In the DC comics, the Manhunters were actually the Guardians of the Universe’s first attempt at creating an intergalactic police force. They eventually rebelled against their creators after becoming increasingly violent, with the Guardians replacing them with the Green Lantern Corps.

Anyway, back to Antaan. He claims a Manhunter secretly lived among his people before turning on them and almost wiping out their entire civilisation. Antaan uses alien technology to force John to experience the horrifying massacre himself.

A Green Lantern later captured the culprit and supposedly took it away to be executed, but Antaan believes it survived and is now hiding in Rushville in human form.

The aliens killed in episode one were actually members of Antaan’s group who had travelled to Rushville looking for the Manhunter. And this presents another problem: because Hal showed up shortly after, he suspects Hal knows about it.

Antaan gives John just 48 hours to identify the Manhunter, warning that his people will take matters into their own hands if not.

Meanwhile, after confirming the alien detectors on the football field were from William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), Hal pays him a visit, believing there may be more advanced technology on his compound.

But his investigation leads to him getting shot for trespassing (he’s not dead, at least not in this timeline). Once reunited, John tells Hal everything he learned from Antaan – and Hal clearly knows more about the Manhunters than he’s letting on.

The episode ends by introducing another major name from Green Lantern lore. Hal travels off-world to visit his imprisoned former mentor Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), hoping he can shed some light on the Manhunter threat.

But Sinestro has something else on his mind, warning that a surviving Manhunter would only be the second-biggest threat Hal currently faces before turning the conversation to John Stewart.

So, we know someone – or something – is apparently hiding out in Rushville. And while episode two deliberately leaves its identity a mystery, Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy just dropped a pretty big clue.

The biggest clue about the Manhunter’s real identity

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Mundy said when the creative team got together to talk about the show’s concept, they considered multiple ideas but ultimately came back to having the Manhunters in Lanterns’ 2016 timeline.

“When we brought in the other three writers and all the assistants who were also in the room, we didn’t know how per se, but we felt like we could locate it and there could be a mystery inside the context of Rushville,” Mundy said.

And here’s where it gets interesting: “It felt like you could have somebody hiding in plain sight and it tied back to the Guardians. And, in some ways, since this was about passing the torch… you could almost see the paper trail.”

Yes, it’s not exactly a confirmation, but the fact that the Manhunter is someone “hiding in plain sight” narrows it down somewhat. Right now, William Macon is the most obvious answer after he installed alien detection tech, has a highly protected compound and shot Hal when he went looking for answers.

But maybe this is a little too obvious. That’s why some DC fans are pointing to his wife Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan).

As one Redditor wrote, “She’s married to William Macon, a deeply xenophobic man who’s terrified of the idea of aliens colonizing Earth. That alone makes me suspicious of her.

“What if William’s paranoia isn’t entirely his own? Zoe could have been subtly feeding those fears for years, reinforcing his worst instincts and pushing him toward seeing extraterrestrials as an existential threat.

“It would also explain why Zoe seems to be driving an even deeper wedge between Hal and John. If she really is a Manhunter, dividing two Green Lanterns makes perfect strategic sense.”

However, another person countered, “I think she’s a red herring personally but we’ll see.”

And there’s an even more interesting theory that would take “hiding in plain sight” to another level: Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald).

“It’s gotta be Kerry,” wrote one Redditor, noting how she said she worked hard to be in charge of the town.

There are a couple of holes in this theory, however. Firstly, in episode two, Kerry reveals that she’s actually from Gotham City originally.

“Why would the Manhunter travel so far away only to return when it had business to do in Nebraska and not Gotham?” asked one fan.

And then there’s the fact that Kerry is present in the 2026 timeline. But one person thinks the idea could still work.

“Only thing I can think of if we follow the Kerry line as a potential suspect… maybe they nail someone in the 2016 timeline and years later, in 2026 when Hal is killed, we find out they got the wrong suspect,” they commented.

In short, until we find out more, we can’t trust anyone in Rushville for the foreseeable. No doubt we’ll get more clues in episode three, which lands on HBO on Sunday, August 30.