SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 3 of “Lanterns,” now streaming on HBO Max. From the series’ opening scene, “Lanterns” sets up John Stewart’s (Aaron Pierre) calling to one day step into his own as Green Lantern. But it’s not until Sunday’s episode that we learn just how long John has been preparing and training — at the direction of his parents — to one day take Hal Jordan’s (Kyle Chandler) title.
It’s the moment John has been waiting for all his life — the moment he gets to prove exactly why he is worthy of the ring. The episode cuts back and forth between John’s tense interview and his upbringing, revealing how John was conditioned to be fearless from a young age. The flashbacks show how desperate his parents become after John Stewart, Sr. (J.
Alphonse Nicholson) is tested by the Guardians in the middle of the night, ultimately failing to become Green Lantern because he shows fear. Investing in John’s future is how the family finds salvation. As the son of somebody who had real potential to become Green Lantern, both John’s father and Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones), his mother, recognize that if they do everything in their power, John will be the perfect candidate.
In order to test him during his childhood, his parents do everything from shooting an apple off his head to leaving him stranded in a dangerous part of town, forcing John to fend for himself. They also lie, and tell him that the Guardians are always watching over him through birds. Knowing how everything John has done in his life has been with the goal of one day becoming Green Lantern, including joining the Marines and isolating himself from other people in his life, informed how Pierre played his budding dynamic with Chandler from the beginning.
Jones wanted to show that despite her stern attitude with John and forcing him to grow up, her love for her child always comes through. At one point, Bernadette even tells him: “Sometimes, a Black man has to raise his own hand. Doesn’t mean you’re not good enough, doesn’t mean you’re not better.
It just means they don’t see us.” “The importance of having no fear in a society, and also being a person of color in this country, fear is instilled in our ancestry as well,” Jones says. How do we extract that for him to become the Green Lantern?” Nicholson adds: “It’s real, man. Yeah, I know we all want to escape from it but sometimes those questions need to be addressed even in our fictional worlds, right?
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