“Oh. No, I know exactly why me.”
Well, Sinestro did want Hal to tell him about John Stewart. He got his wish.
We took a little bit of a detour this week. Instead of anything involving the Manhunters or Hal Jordan’s murder, the focus was on John and his origin story. While I enjoyed this deep dive, I was also a little frustrated. I had gotten invested in our plot. We already didn’t see anything from 2026 in the last episode. How long until we actually get to go back to that?
Maybe it would hold together better as a binge. I don’t know. As it stands, the structure of how the show has worked so far feels very disjointed.
But on to the episode itself.
We got a lot of information that definitely recontextualizes what we have seen so far, especially with how John reacts to Hal. He’s not John’s childhood hero. He is the man that John has been raised since infancy to one day replace, and the man who absolutely derailed his military career on a drunken whim.
Even if John says that he doesn’t hold a grudge against Hal… how do you not? Granted, it seems like John doesn’t resent the people in his life nearly as much as he probably should, but still! Hal is the reason why John was isolated in his own home, unable to meaningfully connect with his brothers, actively discouraged to connect with his culture in any meaningful way. He had to listen to piano music instead of rap music. He had to be so perfect and so “acceptable” that no one would have a chance to use his skin color against him.
John was specifically raised to be a Green Lantern. That wasn’t a surprise. You don’t shoot apples off your son’s head for no reason. The idea that John Sr. had been a candidate but was afraid also wasn’t a surprise.
That his mother, Bernadette, was the one who pushed the training the hardest was a surprise. There had been no indication of her presence back in the pilot, but she was the one who really drove everything. She was the one who pushed John Sr. to recreate William Tell. She was the one who insisted that John get out of the car. She was the one who actually talked to Lianna and stood her ground even as her entire world got turned upside down.
Formidable is right.
And also maybe more than a little unhinged? That’s probably not the right word for it, but I’m struggling to come up with a better one. Obsessive, maybe.
I am sympathetic to both her and John Sr. If a powerful alien came to my home late at night and strongly implied that my infant son was going to become a superhero as long as I raised him right, then I can definitely see a path where I do everything in my power to ensure that that future happens.
Especially when my husband was passed over because the test was biased against him.
There is certainly a difference between asking a family man with his infant son right next to him if he was afraid versus asking someone who has no family and seemingly no real friends, either. There’s a difference between being dragged out of your bed and being asked that question when you’re already awake. And that’s before you bring race into it.
I suppose that the real question is: What makes a good Green Lantern? So far, the recruitment has centered around a lack of fear. That isn’t what powers the rings, though. The rings run on willpower. Arguably, being afraid and yet choosing to do it anyway (aka actual courage and bravery) would make someone far better suited than the recklessness that comes with genuine fearlessness.
Which then begs the question: How good of a Green Lantern is Hal Jordan? The Guardians certainly seem displeased with him (although I’ll go more into that later.) But let’s put that aside for now and just focus on what we’ve seen of his actions on Earth. Sure, he’s been a jerk. Brash. Very willing to just bulldoze his way over any obstacle. But he’s also been shown to be intelligent and intuitive. Hal isn’t an idiot. In Rushville, he does seem to be good at the job.
Getting drunk at a strip club and deciding to blow up a retreat, grab an international terrorist, and drop him off at Guantanamo Bay seemingly on nothing more than a whim is a little out of line with what we saw. On one hand, he neutralized someone dangerous that John was literally minutes away from killing. On the other, he not only caused an international incident, but he also dropped him off at Guantanamo Bay of all places. That feels un-superhero-like.
Lianna said that their standard test was ill compatible with humans, which really just made me wonder how different humanity is from the rest of the galaxy. Do no other species grow attached to their families, their mentors? She made it sound like Hal’s continued affection for Sinestro was a fundamental and inconceivable flaw. But that’s just being human. Even when someone hurts you, even when someone does something horrible, a part of you will still love them.
Laura Linney did such a great job as Lianna. There was something about the angle in which she held her head that was just so fundamentally alien. This was a being that truly had no way of understanding or empathizing with how humans worked. Like sure, you can just give someone a massive diamond and they will have no problems turning that into cash. She didn’t even understand the difference between raising someone and programming them.
Programming is a technical term. It completely removes free will. A program cannot act outside of itself. It cannot violate its parameters. It can only do exactly what it was told. There are certainly moments where John comes off as programmed, especially as a Marine. He was in those woods for nine months, completely alone, because his orders were to eliminate his target. It didn’t matter how long it took. He was going to follow orders. He sat in that chair in that office overnight without doing anything more than unzipping his coat because he was told to wait there.
And yet, there are still moments where John pushed back and exerted his own desires and will. He continued to draw throughout childhood, despite his parents discouraging it. He told his mother that he hates cheeseburgers instead of continuing to accept the reward they’ve always given him. He insisted on shooting the apple off of his mother’s head instead of his father’s. Despite everyone’s best efforts, he still carved out a space for himself.
And, oh, isn’t this all the more relevant given the fact that the Manhunters are synthetic and therefore programmed?
It really did feel like Lianna wanted a robot, someone that she could control and that could follow orders, and she nudged Bernadette just enough to ensure that John would be as close to one as they could get. Because there’s no real reason why Hal’s successor had to be human. They could have rigged it so that he was far away from Earth whenever it came time to turn over the ring. The Stewarts were an opportunity.
The sad part is that John’s upbringing was unnecessary. I have no doubt that he would make a great Green Lantern even without all of the abuse that he went through. His artistic talent, the very thing that his parents pushed aside for almost his entire life, is the same thing that lets him visualize constructs so well. He made a working watch in his very first attempt.
It makes his inability to fly last time make more sense too. There wasn’t anything concrete to create. Just an impulse. An action. It’s a very different thought process from how we’ve seen him use the ring otherwise. It also explained why he created a bird of all things.
I don’t know if the Guardians were really watching him or not (or if they were, it was only through that one blue jay) but birds have been a constant in his life. It made me want to go back to the first episode and see if there were any noticeable birds hanging around. I’ll have to keep an eye out in the future.
Random Thoughts
“OutKast” is a fun episode title with dual meaning. Yes, that’s the artist of the song John rapped, but he’s also been an outcast his entire life.
The Janus advertisement behind John felt way too prominent to not mean anything.
I’m a little surprised that Sinestro and what he did is as widely known on Earth as it is. Sure, John theoretically had access to classified information, but Kerry was able to Google him in the last episode too.
I wonder how many people the ring asked before it got to Hal. Lianna seemed to imply that John Sr. wasn’t the only one suffering from ill effects. And that implies a lot too, right? There’s certainly a difference between getting your second pick versus getting your tenth.
How did their neighbors never call the cops on John Sr. shooting at John? Seeing the line of bullet holes as he grew taller was cool, though.
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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.
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