HBO’s Lanterns closed out its first season Sunday, Oct. 4, with Jon Stewart (Aaron Pierre) finally accepting the role of Earth’s Green Lantern, much to the chagrin of Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion).
After solving the mystery of who killed his estranged mentor Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), Jon summoned Gardner to Rushville, Nebraska to propose a take-it-or-leave-it arrangement with the Guardians. Moving forward, Mr. Stewart will be the sole Lantern of Earth, beholden to his own rules via the unique lantern forged by Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), while Gardner takes the rest of Sector 2814. Guy doesn’t think much of this plan, but can’t do anything until taking it up to the big-wigs on Oa.
And given that he won’t be answering to any higher power, Jon creates a own custom oath that takes his own fear into account:
“In brightest day, in darkest night, I’ll embrace my fear. I’ll do what’s right. I choose this ring. I choose this fight, in service to this lantern’s light.”
Lanterns Co-Creators Explains Jon Stewart’s New Green Lantern Oath
“What we see at the end is that John is not 100 percent a Green Lantern anymore,” series co-creator Tom King explained at an Oct. 2 press conference, according to TheWrap. “He has a Lantern that has a bit of yellow in it, has a bit of fear in it. It’s an unsanctioned Lantern, as Guy says. He’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern because he’s not like every other Green Lantern.”
He continued: “You’re always standing on the shoulders of these giants, and so you constantly have to pay respect to them, and acknowledge them almost like they’re your ancestors. But part of that legacy for the people who have touched Lanterns, from [Gil] Kane to [Steve] Englehart to Alan Moore to Geoff Johns, is all those people brought something new. All of them brought something special. None of them were like, I just want to copy the person before me and reiterate it. So to honor that legacy, you have to honor that creativity and push the ball a little further.”
Co-creator and showrunner Chris Mundy emphasized that this oath reflects Jon’s path toward Green Lantern status in the show, which marked a major deviation from his comic book origins.
“The ring didn’t choose him, he was interviewed,” Mundy said. “He was raised for it. He was having to choose this thing, then he decided not to do it, and then decided that he needed to do it on his own terms…We wanted [the oath] to be true to the original and respectful of the original…but we also wanted to tweak it to talk about the themes that we talked about, and fear.”
Stewart is slated to make his big screen debut next July in James Gunn’s Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow.
All eight episodes of Lanterns season one are now streaming on HBO Max.
