HBO Changes Fundamental Green Lantern Canon Rule in Lanterns Episode 7

Bernadette was right: John Stewart has always been special. Earlier this season on Lanterns, John (Aaron Pierre) unconsciously manifested a living bird with a Green Lantern ring. He then maintained that construct after giving the ring back to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). At the time, Hal was impressed, even if he tried to hide it. The bird remained alive when John was knocked unconscious twice, and the bird even fought with the human-looking aliens who abducted him. John later said his abductors called the feat practically impossible.

Ten years later, John Stewart continues to do the impossible.

Note: Spoilers follow for Lanterns episode 7.

Despite spending a decade developing his architectural firm and generally avoiding anything to do with Rushville or cosmic powers, John remains as ideal a Green Lantern candidate as ever. At the end of episode 6, he took the ring off Hal’s corpse, gave it a quick power boost, and used a bit of the energy to manifest the Hal-ogram. This is the digital backup of Hal’s consciousness stored inside the ring. This alone is not all that surprising since viewers have seen the Hal-ogram twice before. What is genuinely shocking in terms of how the Green Lantern powers work is what this projection of Hal is capable of doing. All of this seems to happen because John Stewart is the one wearing the ring.

Episode 7 essentially confirms what John’s bird first suggested. Lanterns has changed a fundamental rule of Green Lantern canon. This version of the DC Universe indicates that John Stewart could be the most powerful Lantern ever.

The Hal-ogram does something Hal Jordan never could

Whenever a Green Lantern loses concentration or removes the ring supplying their power, their constructs disappear. By all accounts, this seems like a hard rule. Yet John’s bird was sustained without a ring to power it, even when he was forcibly knocked out. What is more, the bird was not just a simple object, but an autonomous creature that acted on its own accord. That at least suggests John is able to independently power constructs, and complex ones at that.

Episode 7 removes any remaining ambiguity. Almost immediately, something is a bit off about this version of the Hal-ogram. John’s plan is to use the Hal-ogram to open the vault that Hal kept in a storage unit in Rushville. While driving there after leaving the cemetery, he talks to his brothers on the phone and asks them to wire the money he needs to send Maggie (Toni Gray). The money will keep her quiet about seeing John at the diner the night Hal was killed.

The Hal-ogram refuses to speak once inside the storage unit. The first thing he asks John outside is, “Who’s Marcus?” This confuses John, who does not understand how it heard the conversation. Previous versions of the Hal-ogram seemed like a more straightforward backup. They were chunks of data from 2006 stored inside the ring that could manifest a hardlight construct of Hal to complete tasks. However, that consciousness remained totally ignorant of anything that transpired out in the real world while it was in storage. When the Hal-ogram first popped up in episode 1, he asked John the year. He is not always quietly perceiving the outside world. Things are different now, at least with John, and the Hal-ogram demands to see Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) before he will open the vault.

Later, while driving alone, John sends a call from his mother directly to voicemail. The Hal-ogram suddenly appears in the passenger seat even though John never deliberately summoned him. “The ring manifests whatever the wearer’s thinking,” the Hal-ogram explains. “Ergo, you’re thinking of me.” John is only able to dematerialize the Hal-ogram twice in this episode by focusing on loudly singing OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious,” which proves that mechanism true.

John insists he was not thinking about Hal and orders him to disappear. When the Hal-ogram refuses, John takes off the ring and places it on the truck’s center console. “How are you doing that?” Hal asks, genuinely shocked. “That’s not possible. I don’t know any Lanterns that can do that. Hell, I can’t even do that.”

Hal then gives John the recognition the real Hal never did: “Bravo. Well fucking done, trainee. That’s amazing! It’s goddamn incredible.” Lanterns stops short of ever really explaining what is going on here. According to a version of Hal from 2006, John is doing something seemingly no Lantern has ever done before.

Is John Stewart powering the Hal-ogram himself?

When the Hal-ogram is trying to convince John to bring him to see Kerry, he estimates that with the ring low on power they have about one hour of talk time remaining. He might be exaggerating to pressure John into cooperating, but if that is true, Lanterns makes it seem like the Hal-ogram appears active for far longer.

He accompanies John through multiple drives around Rushville, stands beside him near Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern beacon for a chat, and even meets Kerry inside Rushville High School. John and Hal then return to the storage unit, open the vault, examine its contents, and take the portal made of black goo to the old water tower. They travel through it to an alien planet that is the homeworld of Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor).

Once there, Hal remains continuously manifested as he and John hike across the wasteland, row across a lake, and approach the isolated facility where Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) has been hiding. Either John and the Hal-ogram totally forgot that the ring was running out of juice, or they realized that John must be the one supplying the power. Whatever the explanation, none of this is normal, even by cosmic Green Lantern standards.

While John rows across the water after banishing the Hal-ogram by singing, the fear-inducing substance that led Antaan’s entire race to commit suicide causes John to hallucinate. When John falls into the water, the Hal-ogram manifests and pulls him back onto the boat. A digital backup stored inside a decommissioned and nearly dead ring has somehow become an autonomous hard-light being capable of monitoring its surroundings and protecting the man sustaining it.

Just like the little green bird, the Hal-ogram is an entity that exists totally independent of John, despite being intrinsically connected to him. Is it possible that John just accessed the blueprint of Hal within the ring and created something else entirely with his own willpower? As of right now, John seems less interested in actually becoming the Green Lantern than he does in solving the mystery of the previous one’s death. With only the finale left for Lanterns, it may be time for John to finally embrace his power for good, especially because he is destined to become the most powerful Green Lantern of them all. Tied up with that might be some kind of explanation of how and why John Stewart is able to break all the rules.

Lanterns is streaming on HBO Max.

Source: Polygon