This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 3.
For its first two episodes, Lanterns has been very much an HBO show and a Chris Mundy show, mirroring the showrunner’s work on True Detective and Ozark. The addition of Ozark star Laura Linney to the Lanterns cast might seem to reinforce that feeling, but episode three, “OutKast,” gives space for the other two creators to shine, Damon Lindelof and Tom King. Part high-concept surreality in the vein of Lindelof’s work on The Leftovers and Watchmen, and part meditation on war-related trauma in which King specializes, Lanterns lets the mystery be for a while to take a deep look into John Stewart.
As such, “OutKast” finally lets Aaron Pierre cut loose, no longer forcing him to keep Stewart’s emotions in check. The result is a complex piece of television that sees Lanterns embracing its sci-fi concepts and using them for rich, humane storytelling.
As Hal has pointed out and Green Lantern readers already know, the ring chooses its wearer, scanning the planet until it finds someone without fear. However, John was specifically chosen by the Guardians, which makes him an unusual case. In “OutKast,” we see how that selection process works. We’re taken back to presumably 1986, the night that Abin Sur crashed in Rushville and the ring eventually chose Hal Jordan. Before landing on Jordan, the ring arrived at the Stewart home and asked John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) if he was afraid. Unlike Hal, the elder Stewart reacted rationally to the presence of a green bubble appearing in his room and levitating him above his bed, answering, “Yes.”
The event leaves John Sr. traumatized and emasculated, forcing his wife Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) to hold the family together. When a Guardian (Linney) arrives at the Stewart house to offer her condolences. Impressed by Bernadette’s temerity, the Guardian floats the idea of training John (played by Jayce Eiland as a boy and Cairo Cash Lee as a teen, both excellent) to be the perfect Green Lantern, stripping him of fear from birth. This training not only leads to the William Tell games that we saw in the pilot, but also creates tension within himself and with his brothers. In particular, being forced to become a fearless soldier, namely a Marine sniper, destroys the gentle, artist inside of John.
For as much as “OutKast” breaks from John’s established backstory in the comics, it does smooth over the character’s development over the years. While he started out as a community activist in his first appearance in Green Lantern #87 (1971), John soon became a sensitive architect, only for the animated series Justice League to reimagine him as a no-nonsense Marine, something carried over into the comics. In “OutKast,” writer Vanessa Baden Kelly and director Stephen Williams find a middle way through those characterizations, making John into a man with a soul of an artist, the demeanor of a soldier, and a longing for connection to his family and Black culture in general.
It’s one thing to write a character with so many multitudes, and quite another to embody it, which makes Aaron Pierre’s work here particularly remarkable. When John reconvenes with the Guardian in 2016, as part of a time-bending interview process, Pierre has space to express his emotions, his frustration with how his life has unfolded and his desire for it to gain meaning by getting the ring long since promised him. We see how John developed his ability to take orders with his interactions with a gruff commanding officer, but we also see his first signs of hating Jordan, when the Green Lantern disrupts John’s mission by capturing his target.
Just as good are the supporting cast, particularly Nicholson and Jones as John’s parents. Through them, we see how John developed the two sides of his personality, albeit in a surprising way. Despite his exterior as a soldier, John Sr. has the sensitive side that makes his son such a great artist, something Nicholson conveys with an expressive face, which seems to be on the verge of tears, even when firing a weapon. Conversely, Jones conveys Bernadette’s genuine care for her family through a steely exterior, one that offsets the nurturing nature one would expect of a mother and teacher.
Thanks to these performances, John Sr. and Bernadette advance a theme that Lanterns has been exploring since its pilot, this question of fear and fate. Social expectations prevent either of John’s parents from being who they want to be, forcing his father to take on some sort of masculinity and his mother to be feminine, despite the fact that the expression doesn’t match either person’s desire and personality. And yet, the parents cannot help but inflict the same on their child, grinding away the person he wants to be in pursuit of the ideal superhero, a Green Lantern.
That’s a bold move, one that we rarely see in superhero stories. Even when it requires some sort of sacrifice for Bruce Wayne to be Batman or Peter Parker to be Spider-Man, their stories tend to frame the moment of putting on the costume as some sort of victory, the fulfillment of identity. Thus far, it doesn’t seem like the same will be true of John Stewart. The ring may very well be his, just as Hal Jordan thinks. But embracing his destiny as Green Lantern may, ironically, be the culmination of John Stewart’s worst fears.
Lanterns airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
Green Lantern Illuminations:
- Great as Linney is, some may be disappointed that we don’t just get a proper on-screen Guardian. But there is comic book precedent for a human-looking Guardian, as Appa Ali Apsa a.k.a. Old Timer or O.T. took on the appearance of an older white man to travel the country with Hal and Oliver Queen in Green Lantern/Green Arrow.
- Speaking of Green Lantern/Green Arrow, The Guardian’s confusion about American racism and our terms for race recalls the infamous scene from issue #76 (1970) by John Stewart’s creators Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams. There, an elderly Black man accosts Hal Jordan and accosts him for helping the orange-skins, the blue-skins, and the purple-skins, but never doing anything for the Black-skins.
- “OutKast” rewrites John Stewart’s backstory, which means that we don’t get his sister Ellie, who has been recently added to the comics as a living hard-light construct. But we also don’t have to deal with the terrible story from Green Lantern #147 (2002), in which John suddenly remembers that he killed his kid sister Rose in a car accident.
- John’s target has the code name Grey Wolf. Grey Wolf is also the name of the Chechen Batman, part of the international group Batman Incorporated, and was first introduced in 2022’s Batman Annual #1 by Ed Brisson and John Timms.
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