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‘Lanterns’ Star Poorna Jagannathan Breaks Down Zoe’s Devastating Episode 5 Twist

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‘Lanterns‘ has spent five episodes carefully building toward a single, devastating reveal, and once it finally arrived, it hit even the actress at its center with genuine surprise. The HBO Max series has kept the true identity of the mysterious Manhunter tightly under wraps since the season began, using it as the driving mystery behind everything happening in the small town of Rushville.

That mystery finally broke open at the end of episode four, revealing that the Manhunter has been Zoe Macon all along, played by Poorna Jagannathan, whose past credits include HBO’s ‘The Night Of’ and Netflix’s ‘Never Have I Ever.’ Speaking about the reveal, Jagannathan admitted she had absolutely no idea she was playing the shapeshifting figure until the script for that fourth episode actually landed in her hands.

“Everyone saw it coming except me!” Jagannathan told Variety with a laugh, adding that she was ultimately grateful production kept the secret from her during casting. She joked that knowing the twist in advance likely would have made her audition feel mechanical rather than genuine.

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Episode five, titled “Lights Out,” dives deeper into exactly how much control Zoe has held over Rushville’s residents over the years. The episode flashes back to Sheriff Kerry, played by Kelly Macdonald, being hunted by gangsters her father owed money to, only for Zoe to intervene, snapping one man’s neck before offering Kerry a permanent, protected life in Rushville in exchange for one condition: that Kerry protect Zoe whenever the moment eventually comes.

According to Jagannathan, that scene was designed to represent something much larger about her character. “Her survival depends on you agreeing to your survival. It’s a Faustian play she makes,” she explained, describing the arrangement as emblematic of the exact same contract Zoe has quietly struck with every single person in town over the years.

That control finally meets its match by the episode’s end, when Zoe tracks down a badly injured John Stewart trapped in a burning car following Hal’s earlier crash, only to let it explode rather than intervene. John survives, severely burned, and later reveals to Zoe that he’s uncovered the Guardians’ own hand in creating the Manhunters in the first place, setting up the season’s brutal final confrontation between them.

Jagannathan described Zoe as ultimately a victim of her own programming as a Manhunter, even while acknowledging the show gives nearly every character genuine shades of gray. Reflecting on the moment John finally turns the tables on her, Jagannathan noted that he’s the one person Zoe never managed to predict throughout the entire series, unlike everyone else in Rushville, who’s always eventually fallen in line with her plans.

She described the final exchange between the two characters as a kind of mutual recognition between equals, calling it a genuine appreciation for someone whose sense of morality proved stronger than anything Zoe had encountered before. For a character built entirely around control and manipulation, that final acknowledgment from her one true match adds real emotional weight to an already brutal episode.

With Zoe’s story now brought to such a dramatic close, ‘Lanterns’ heads into its final stretch with John forced to reckon with everything he’s learned about the Guardians and the true cost of the ring he’s spent the season chasing.

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