Full spoilers follow for HBO’s Lanterns Episode 3.
This week’s episode of Lanterns, “OutKast,” really packs a wallop, detailing as it does the pretty messed-up origin story of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Whereas most comic-book heroes usually just have a dead relative or two to deal with on the journey to becoming super, in the HBO series’ take on John, the road to being a Green Lantern is paved with… your parents shooting apples off your head.
Those parents, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and Bernadette (Nicole Ari Parker), were of course deeply affected by what could’ve been when John Sr. was offered the Green Lantern ring but passed it up out of fear, leading to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) claiming the ring instead. But their reaction to that – which is to put the young John Jr. on a merciless path to becoming a GL by wringing all sense of fear out of him – is pretty messed up.
I spoke to Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy about where the idea to revise John’s origin came from and how it evolved into conditioning him in this manner as preparation for his destiny as a Lantern.
“We hit on that pretty early,” Mundy explained. “We didn’t hit on the entire framework of the storytelling in Episode 3 [right away], but we did on the thing that John’s dad could have been Hal, and how many others there were. We would always just refer to it as he was bubbled – that John Sr. was bubbled. And then when the Manhunters came into the story, we talked a lot about how they were these entities that just solved trolley problems all the time, so they were programmed to be a certain way.”
We were like, ‘Well, what’s the difference between being programmed and being parented so hard?’
A trolley problem is, according to Merriam-Webster, a thought experiment “about a fictional scenario in which an onlooker has the choice to save 5 people in danger of being hit by a trolley, by diverting the trolley to kill just 1 person.” Essentially, it’s Spock’s “the needs of the many” scenario. What sacrifices are acceptable and in which situations? This was key to figuring out John Jr.’s origin.
“[The Manhunters] were so good at it that it was too scary to the Guardians,” continues Mundy, “and they were terminated. And then we were like, ‘Well, what’s the difference between being programmed and being parented so hard?’ And the conversations just started converging and it felt really natural.”
So from there, getting to the William Tell of it all wasn’t that difficult. And the idea of John Jr. having to take the ultimate step into eradicating his fear by shooting an apple off of his mother’s head… Well, that came early in the process as well.
“Obviously shooting the apple off his head was in the pilot,” said Mundy. “The very first day in the writer’s room, Vanessa [Baden Kelly], who ended up writing Episode 3, John’s origin episode, is like, ‘Well, I’d like to see a scene where he shoots it off his mom’s head.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh, that’s great. We don’t know how it fits.’ But it was literally day one. So we were always kind of chasing it.”
The idea of the parents trying to make what they perceive to be a better life for their son is in a way a skewed take on the American dream, and it’s clear that concepts like this are laced throughout Lanterns, as show where notions of colonization and the “other” are also prevalent.
“The things I like best are talking about a lot of that kind of stuff without being pedantic or without preaching about any of it,” said the showrunner. “[Those ideas are] putting people in situations and they’re talking about some things, but they’re not preaching. And hopefully we weren’t preaching, but all that stuff is in the mix of what we were putting out there.”
What do you think of John Stewart’s new origin story? Let’s discuss in the comments, and be sure to check back next week for more on Lanterns.
Talk to Scott Collura @scottcollura.bsky.social, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!
