Last week, I highlighted how it was interesting and unexpected that Lanterns elected to separate both Hal Jordan and John Stewart so early on in the season. Episode three must’ve anticipated this reaction and said, “hold my beer”, giving us a flashback-heavy episode that provides us with a lot of backstory for John. Told non-linearly over multiple different periods in time, we got some much-needed answers and context for John’s role as a Lantern in training.
Lanterns’ third episode dials the clock back and gives us a lot of focus on John Stewart, how he was chosen to be a Lantern, why, how he ended up getting discharged from the military, his interview process for the job, and most importantly, his family dynamic. When John was a baby, the Guardians came to the Stewart residence and asked John’s father if he was afraid. Of course, an alien lifeform entered a black man’s house in the mid 2000s with three children; yeah, he’s going to be afraid, and they moved on until they found Hal Jordan. But the Guardians ended up paying John’s mother, Benadette, a visit some days later and, thankfully, convinced her that her husband wasn’t losing his mind. But she also committed herself fully to training John to become the next Green Lantern.
So by age five, they started his training proper for the Lantern Corps by instilling in him a life of learning to not be fearful. A Lantern costume and a gun were his present that year, and the beginning of the apple drill down started. Honestly, child services need to look into this residence. They have parents shooting apples off a kid’s head, the same kid shooting apples off of his mother’s head, the parents leaving John alone in the roughest parts of town and forcing him to walk home. It’s a gruelling and pretty miserable existence for a child, and honestly, it’s a small miracle John isn’t disturbed as an adult. They may have good intentions by raising their child to be a superhero that will be a beacon for humanity and the celestial beings, but they’re also just totally unhinged.
All this is framed against John’s interview process with one of the Guardians, played here by Laura Linney. She reveals that she’s not going to be Hal’s backup, but rather, his replacement. It’s implied that the Guardians may not be so thrilled with Hal’s devil-may-care attitude, getting directly involved in human affairs rather than extraterrestrial ones, and that he has become a loose cannon that needs to be replaced. So John knows that he’s there to essentially usurp the ring from Hal, but whether Hal has put two and two together remains a mystery.
It is a bit frustrating that, with this non-chronological storytelling, the episodes so far have left us off on some pretty big narrative points (Hal’s murder and Hal meeting Sinestro) and haven’t followed up on either one. But we did get a compelling look at an obsessed and unhealthy family upbringing, one that reframes John’s actions from earlier in the season. So while it may not have been the episode I was expecting, it was still a well-written, well-acted episode that put character first, and I’m never going to complain about that.
Also, yes, there are two OutKast tracks that play in this episode, justifying that episode title.
