Lanterns Broke John Stewart’s Comic Canon. And It Worked.

Last week I stayed quiet about the third episode of Lanterns for a very good reason.

Compassion.

It turns out that I am a deeply empathetic individual, and I felt that the comic-book community had already suffered enough.

A few days earlier, I had written a piece about Lanterns, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and the ongoing war between two kinds of nerds.

The basic argument was pretty simple.

I do not particularly care if a movie or television show changes something from Issue #147 of a comic book.

Tell me a good story.

Make me believe it.

If you have to move some furniture around to make a character created 50 years ago work in a modern television drama, move the furniture.

Then I watched Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.

And, annoyingly, the comic-book nerds made a pretty good point.

That show works largely because it understands exactly what The Big Bang Theory was, exactly what its fans loved about it and exactly how far it can stretch that universe without snapping the thing in half.

I had underestimated the importance of that.

So I did something extremely generous.

I admitted I was wrong.

Sort of.

I gave the nerds a point.

The exact spirit of the conclusion was basically, “Fine. You win. See you after Lanterns next week.”

Then Lanterns Episode 3 came out.

Oh, you poor bastards.

John Stewart Was Never Supposed to Be This

I am not a comic-book aficionado.

This has been established.

If you want somebody who can tell you what happened in Green Lantern #87 from memory, there are approximately 400,000 YouTube channels available to you.

I had to look it up.

DC’s own history of John Stewart says the Guardians introduced him as a relief Lantern. After Guy Gardner was injured, Hal Jordan was instructed to meet and train John as Earth’s replacement substitute.

John eventually became a full-time Green Lantern, but that came later.

Lanterns looked at that history and apparently said:

Nah.

Episode 3, “OutKast,” rebuilds John Stewart’s relationship with the Green Lantern Corps from the ground up.

Before Abin Sur’s ring ever reaches Hal Jordan, the show reveals that it first seeks out John Stewart Sr.

The ring asks him one question:

Is he afraid?

John Sr. says yes.

And the ring moves on.

John’s mother, Bernadette, immediately sees the problem with this system.

How exactly is it fair to demand absolute fearlessness from a Black husband and father living in America, with a family he has very legitimate reasons to be afraid of losing?

She actually confronts one of the Guardians about it.

The Guardian later tells Bernadette that whatever the ring saw in her husband was part of his genetic makeup.

And that is where things get nuts.

Bernadette and John Sr. begin raising their son with one very specific goal:

If the ring ever comes back, John will be ready.

They school him separately.

They tell him the birds around their house are watching him for the Guardians.

They repeatedly test his ability to control fear.

His father even shoots an apple off his head.

This is childhood trauma as superhero job training.

And it is a radically different path to John Stewart becoming Green Lantern than the one DC originally gave him.

The people making the show know that.

There it is.

That tiny little acknowledgment.

The show knows.

Of course this is ridiculous.

These are two grown men investigating murders in Nebraska with an alien ring that can create giant glowing machinery out of thin air.

You do not have to pretend that isn’t funny in order for the dramatic parts to work.

In fact, Lanterns is getting better because it seems increasingly comfortable admitting it.

And Now the Damn Show Is Getting Really Good

This is the part I did not expect.

I think Lanterns is becoming a really good television show.

Not a really good Green Lantern show.

Not “good for a comic-book adaptation.”

Just good television.

Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler have figured out a rhythm together.

The mystery keeps getting stranger.

The John Stewart story suddenly has some real weight behind it.

The show is allowing itself to be funny.

And the relationship between John, Hal and the Guardians is turning into something much more complicated than I expected when this whole thing started.

And America certainly seems to be sticking around.

According to Warner Bros. Discovery figures reported by TheWrap, Episode 3 reached 10 million viewers worldwide and 7 million in the United States during its first three days, both increases from the premiere.

The episode also pushed #Lanterns into X’s U.S. Top 10 for 11 straight hours, including eight hours at No. 1.

As of Sept. 6, Lanterns has also spent 23 days in JustWatch’s U.S. Top 10 television chart and has already reached No. 1.

People are watching this thing.

And I get it.

Because four episodes in, I am not watching Lanterns so I can make fun of Green Lantern anymore.

Okay.

I am still doing that.

Obviously.

But now I actually want Sunday night to get here so I can find out what happens next.

That is a problem.

So Where Does That Leave the Great Nerd War?

I still think the comic-book people had a point about comic book adaptations: Canon matters. History matters.

The things people love about these characters matter.

If you throw all of that away because some producer thinks he can improve something he never understood in the first place, you usually wind up with garbage.

I concede the point.

It remains on the board.

Comic-book nerds: 1.

But Lanterns just took a fundamental part of John Stewart’s comic-book history and substantially rewrote it.

Instead of simply becoming Hal Jordan’s relief Lantern, this John Stewart was raised from childhood to believe the job was his destiny.

The change ties his story into fear, race, family, expectation and the question of whether he earned something Hal simply received.

And I think it produced the strongest episode of the series so far.

Then Lanterns followed it with an episode that got more comfortable laughing at its own ridiculous mythology while somehow making me more invested in that mythology at the same time.

So.

Fine.

I guess that is one point for breaking comic canon.

Comic-book nerds: 1.

Breaking canon: 1.

Nobody kiss my ring yet.

We still have four episodes left.