Lanterns are hunting for Manhunters as fans hunt for Easter eggs.
DC Comics diehards had plenty of references to uncover during the Aug. 23 episode of HBO’s Green Lantern adaptation, as Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) investigate their midwest murders.
SYFY Wire is breaking down all the deep-cuts and nods to comic book lore from episode two “Trust Fall.”
Who Are The Manhunters?
We now know a rogue Manhunter with ties to Hal’s past is at the center of his and John’s ongoing investigation in Rushville, Nebr.
While created by the same Guardians who founded the Green Lantern Corps, Manhunters are notorious for wreaking havoc across the universe.
As John learned from the shadowy outlaw aliens who abducted him, they have a score to settle with the shape-shifting robots that gained sentience and went on an interstellar killing spree before being eradicated.
“They were brutal. They were deceptive. They carried out what they called justice,” Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor) explained to John. “And then, as mysteriously they arrived, they were gone. At least we thought they were gone.”
Antaan threatened to wipe Rushville off the map if John doesn’t uncover the extra-terrestrial menace, who came into town around the same time Hal took over as Green Lantern from Abin Sur.
Who Is Mogo?
Lanterns established Hal lives in Coast City, where John is sent to retrieve his mentor’s lantern. And it was an illuminating errand.
Indeed, in order to grab the lantern from a pocket dimension, Hal needed to provide the voice-protected password: “Mogo doesn’t socialize.”
The magic phrase is well-known to longtime Green Lantern readers, since it’s also the name of a 1985 comics story penned by Watchmen author Alan Moore. A full-blown planet, Mogo’s size made his Lantern abilities more powerful than most.
Elsewhere at the house, John walked by a photo that makes Hal out to be more of a Harry Potter fan than he let on.
After Hal discovered an undercover alien by learning they didn’t know Hogwarts, John learned Hal was at the premiere of The Deathly Hallows—Part 2.
“There were varying degrees of comic book knowledge inside the [writers’] room, but there was universal knowledge of Harry Potter,” co-creator and showrunner Chris Mundy revealed to SYFY Wire at the show’s premiere. “It’s still a language that everyone speaks.”
In fact, these may not be the last Harry Potter references this season. “There’s three that I can think of off the top of my head,” Mundy added, “and there might be more.”
Outside of Hal’s pad, John also met Earl, a man-eating plant that adds even more intrigue to Hal’s three-decades stint with the Green Lantern ring.
While Earl seems straight out of Poison Ivy’s lab, like many of Lantern’s potential Easter eggs, the series stopped short of confirming a direct link that comic book fans would immediately recognize. And that appears to be by design.
“The fundamental idea is: make the show accessible,” co-creator Damon Lindelof shared with SYFY Wire at the premiere. “But what are the things that we would want to see if we weren’t making the show and make sure they’re in there.”
Despite joking he’d been read the Riot Act in regards to spoilers, Lindelof added, “If you made a list of the five things that you would expect to see in the first season of a show called Lanterns, all five of them will be there.”
Lanterns drops new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
