Lanterns is coming into the again half of its season, bringing us again to the present-day timeline of 2026, ten years after Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) fought an enormous battle in opposition to the Manhunter, Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan). That battle left the city of Rushville, Nebraska, destroyed; most of the townspeople lifeless, and the Manhunter (a savior who protected the city) lifeless. It additionally made the Inexperienced Lanterns pariahs, deepening the thriller of who killed Hal Jordan.
In Episode 6, “Dangerous Optics”, we study extra about what John Stewart has accomplished in his time since strolling away from the Inexperienced Lanterns. Many followers had been questioning if the present was going to honor the lore round John Stewart’s character and his skilled arc, and certainly we bought that: John turns into a famend architect, and never simply any architect: his works is devoted to defending folks from the type of threats the we’ve seen within the DCU.
Lanterns Reacts to James Gunn’s Superman & The Suicide Squad
The opening of Lanterns Episode 6 sees John Stewart taking a pivotal enterprise assembly along with his brother Marcus, shortly earlier than studying that Hal Jordan is lifeless. The assembly is a gross sales pitch for his architectural masterpiece: a collection of panic rooms which might be sufficiently big and geared up to carry hundreds of civilians. What John wants is sufficient cash to construct a community of packing containers, in order that whole cities can mount viable civilian protecting measures when metahuman or alien assaults happen.
To drive the purpose residence, John references the incident in Metropolis the yr earlier than – a direct reference to the third act occasions of James Gunn’s Superman, the place Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) by chance created a dimensional rift that just about swallowed Metropolis. John additionally asserts that ought to one other large starfish crawl out of the ocean, his panic rooms will be capable to stand up to that, too. This can be a reference to Gunn’s different huge DC film, The Suicide Squad, which remains to be thought-about a part of the DCU mythos. That movie ended with the alien creature Starro escaping from years of confinement and working amok within the South American firm of Corto Maltese, possessing lots of of civilians attempting to flee with parasitic drones. The presentation ends with John providing some private testimony about his temporary time as a Inexperienced Lantern, and the carnage that occurred through the Battle of Rushville.
What’s attention-grabbing about Lanterns‘ model of John Stewart is that he’s utilizing his structure expertise amost as a rebuke of superhero tradition. It speaks to his disillusionment with the Inexperienced Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan, and his coaching course of that he now sees superheroes and their actions as being simply as threatening as the villains they face. The scene doesn’t press that time residence very firmly (but), however the embers of that anger are smoldering – as we shortly discover out when John leaves the assembly to satisfy up with Hal, and finally ends up breaking his nostril.
It’s additionally a really well timed and handy method for Lanterns to settle lots of the questions that DCU followers have been asking because the premiere episode. That has primarily involved addressing how this very completely different type of DC superhero collection syncs up with Superman, Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad and the remainder of the DCU. Now we not solely know that reply, however we have already got a really intriguing basis for John Stewart, who’s already set to return face-to-face with Superman in Man of Metal.
Lanterns airs on HBO and streams on HBO Max.