Well there is a certain amount of sense to that, that maybe if the lantern is the cause of all this then resetting it and letting it ... boot back up, so to speak, would improve things. It's an interesting experiment and if nothing else Quentin learned the hard way that it doesn't work.

"They must have, they're coordinated enough that they likely have a base of operations where they assemble. Or live. They're smarter than animals, but don't seem to think like people." On the other hand they may communicate via telepathy or a hive mind, but he'd like to go the simple route first of the spirits all being a pack that works together.

And Quentin keeps right on laughing and Kuai is going to find a way out of this because wow is it unsettling. "It's a shame that did not work. It would fix a lot of things if we could control our lanterns in such a way, rather than them controlling us. I wish you luck in the future with.. fixing this."

Whatever this is. Thinking that everything is funny? Laughing at the distress of others? It's potentially the oddest thing the spirits could have done but it's definitely effective in being very weird and creepy. So maybe it was a good attempt on their part.