Entertainment
HBO’s ‘Lanterns’ Episode 3 Officially Changes Everything You Thought You Knew About John Stewart
Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 3.
HBO’s Lanterns is in full swing after dropping quite a few twists that could have massive ramifications James Gunn‘s DCU. This week’s “OutKast,” though, rather than continuing to lean into the 2016 mystery in Rushville, Nebraska — or even what happens to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) there ten years later — pivots in favor of exploring the origins of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). While being interviewed by one of the mysterious Guardians of the Universe (Laura Linney), with the expectation of replacing Hal as Green Lantern, it’s even revealed that John’s own father, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson), was considered by the ring but failed the test when it was given to him. As it turns out, it’s not the first time a Stewart family member gets passed over in favor of Hal, and “OutKast” confirms why John might be carrying more than a little personal resentment toward the man he’s supposed to both learn from and supplant one day.
Ahead of premiere, Collider spoke with Lanterns writer and co-executive producer Vanessa Baden Kelly about some of the most pivotal scenes and themes in “OutKast,” including tackling its non-linear storytelling structure, the significance of that recurring bird imagery for John, why she drew comparisons between Lanterns‘ Stewart family dynamics and King Richard in the writers’ room, what that final exchange between John and Hal sets up heading into the show’s main storyline next week, and more.
COLLIDER: In approaching something that is very much a character spotlight for John Stewart, which aspects of his backstory did you know you wanted to make sure you included, and what did you feel you had more freedom to play with or change?
VANESSA BADEN KELLY: I’ll start by saying that by having Tom King and Damon Lindelof in the room, with Tom King offering so many Green Lantern books, those conversations are really robust because many of us were more casual Green Lantern fans. Some didn’t know anything about Green Lantern. So getting that in-time reaction to, “Oh, no, that doesn’t change. That is who John Stewart is,” was really important because sometimes things might feel up for grabs that aren’t up for grabs. You have to have people who have been reading the comics since the 1970s to be able to say, “No matter what, every iteration has that.”
So we knew, obviously, that he was always going to be a serviceman. We knew that we wanted to continue to make him an architect, because we felt like it was really important to show that he was this 360-degree human being — he could be this very precise Marine sniper while also simultaneously being this incredibly precise artist. We really thought it was very important to keep him from Detroit, because we felt like him growing up in a majority-Black city actually speaks a lot for the character and what he saw, what he grew up seeing, who his parents were, what he experienced.
Then after that, it kind of felt like, “Let’s just see.” So we would throw things at the wall and kind of see what stuck. Sometimes, Tom would be like, “Hey, that’s pretty good,” and other times he’d be like, “It’s just not going to happen. Sorry, that’s never going to work.” I think where we ended up with John was a place that all of us felt was both respectful to the canon while simultaneously being a fresh take and a more human, grounded version of who this character would be in a modern time. Tom seemed pretty pleased with that, and I felt like, for me, that was the barometer for where we should hit John’s backstory as it pertains to comic book fans.
There’s a really distinct non-linear structure in this episode. It’s set within the conceit of John’s interview with the Guardian, but it jumps around through formative experiences in his childhood, as well as his time as a sniper and his time at art school. Did that present a challenge in how the script came together, or was it fun to piece together how all those beats would line up?
KELLY: We knew that we… not even wanted, we had to show the backstory that we had crafted for John. It was not going to be done any justice if we just talked about it. You were going to have to see it. But a childhood spans a really long time, so we knew in some way we were going to have a backstory episode. We knew in some way we were going to have an episode that was entirely dedicated to how John got here, but we weren’t exactly sure how we were going to string all of it together.
First, we knew that we were going to show those parts of his childhood, and then we were working through what parts we felt were the most important, considering we had 30 years of childhood to cover. Then we had the idea to string those stories together using the bookends, and throughout, of Laura Linney interviewing him for this job, which also gave us the backstory of how he was not chosen by the ring, but instead was kind of chosen at birth and prepared for this. We were working through a lot of that.
Damon, Chris [Mundy], and I sat in what we call The Garage. It actually is a garage, but it’s like the back area of our writing room where we put everything on the board. We were just talking about how we felt like something needed to buoy the story, not necessarily just so there would be an action sequence, but something where we could just get into John’s internal in a way that didn’t feel like it was going to be a lot of exposition, but almost the inciting incident. What is the thing that just started this shit? And we came up with the idea of the sniper story, of Hal taking the opportunity for John to have one of the greatest feats of his Marine sniper career.
Once we had those three lines, braiding it became very easy, because you’re like, “How do they all line up? How do they all fit together?” And then we went back in and kind of reworked how and what Laura was talking to him about. Essentially, what’s under the Guardian’s questions, what she ultimately says at the end is, “Would you be comfortable replacing Hal Jordan?” But what she’s poking at prior is, “Do you respect him? Do you like him?” And she’s thinking in her mind that because Hal became the Green Lantern, that is the reason that John would be so willing, emotionally, to replace him. That was the creation of John as a trainee of the Green Lantern program from childhood, but really, John’s frustration happens as an adult when it’s like, “You keep doing this to us. Maybe the first time wasn’t your fault, but the second time is.”
‘Lanterns’ Writer Vanessa Baden Kelly Explains the Meaning Behind Bernadette’s Kitchen Speech
“What Bernadette was pointing out to them is, ‘You guys don’t take any care in learning the differences of the people that you’re asking for this.’”
One thing this episode emphasizes is that the Green Lantern selection process has the potential to be traumatic for any prospective candidate, and the Guardians, as extraterrestrial beings, don’t really know how to handle it. There are a lot of great scenes between Jasmine [Cephas Jones] and Laura in this episode, and the one that really hit for me is the conversation after Laura’s character reveals herself in her true form, in the kitchen. I was curious about what you wanted to hammer home via that exchange, because Bernadette has to be the one to point out to the Guardian that asking a Black man in America if he’s afraid is a very different question than it would be for someone of a different race.
KELLY: The thing that I would always say in the room is that if the ring wasn’t sexist, Bernadette would have been chosen, because she really is just the most fearless of everybody. For me personally, as a writer, and I feel like most of the writers’ room would probably agree, this idea of willpower and overcoming fear is so different depending on where you stand. You can be terrified walking in your neighborhood every single day, and yet still you walk. And then somebody else can come in and have no fear whatsoever because they don’t know what your neighborhood is like. So the Green Lanterns, it’s not that they don’t have to be afraid; it’s that they have to have the ability to overcome fear, but that is a trauma thing. If I have seen somebody get robbed on the same block every week, it’s hard to overcome fear of that block because I have a different perspective on it than somebody new here.
What John Stewart represents and what he’s represented since he made his debut in the DCU in the ‘70s is an extraordinary bravery that I personally, and maybe biasedly, feel is more brave than any other Green Lantern, because every single thing in his world, both intergalactic and terrestrial, is fucking terrifying! It is terrifying, and he is able to overcome that fear and wield that ring.
So, what Bernadette was pointing out to them is, “You guys don’t take any care in learning the differences of the people that you’re asking for this. So, yes, you got a shit face for this job, and it’s clear you don’t like him, but here’s why you don’t like who you got — because you’re actually not picking the bravest people. You’re not picking the people with the sharpest moral compass or with the most valor. You’re picking the people dumb enough to not be scared.”
What me and my family are doing, what Black people are doing all over the nation, what people of color are doing all over this world are showing what fearlessness really looks like. It was really important for me to show her, tell Laura that, but it was also important for me for that to land on Laura. Laura doesn’t kick back. The Guardians don’t say, “You’re wrong. We know everything.” They’re just like, “We had no idea. Earth’s kind of a shitty planet that we don’t really pay that much attention to. Now that we know, let’s try to do things a little bit differently.” And so in some ways, these two women, as we do, come together and are just like, “Let’s try to correct what this program is inherently getting wrong.”
Bernadette is the one who really takes charge of what she refers to as “conditioning,” but in the same vein, John Sr. says he’s worried their son could grow up to hate them. It feels like subtle foreshadowing. What did you want to emphasize about John’s relationship with his parents, and by the time that he sits down for the interview, what did you want to come across about how he really feels about them, years removed from when this training began?
KELLY: You will see how their relationship plays out throughout his adult years, but one of the things that I would keep harkening back to in the room is the film King Richard. It was really interesting because I have an almost 11-year-old, and when that film came out, I thought it was a really beautiful tribute by two daughters to their father. Regardless of how I felt about anything, those daughters hold their father up here, and they believe that they would not have been where they were had it not been for him, and they made a film to highlight that. So many people, I would read, and especially in mom groups and mom chats and things of that nature, were just like, “There’s two superstar daughters, and we’re focusing on the dad? We’re focusing on the man?” And it was really interesting to me because I don’t know if it’s cultural, I don’t know if it’s socioeconomics, but there is a tradition, especially for Black folks, to really honor the things that are our parents, in quotations, “had to put us through” to be able to get to a certain place or a certain level of success in our lives.
As a millennial, as somebody who lives in the Instagram therapy space, obviously I’m not doing the exact same things that happened with me with my son, because we’ve learned and we’ve evolved, and we understand that there are things that probably were a little more dramatic than needed to be. But I do still recognize that the spaces that my son has been allotted because of my career or his dad’s career do require him to show up differently than his peers do. There are things that we have to discuss, and ways that we have to be, and rules that we have in our house that his peers think are too harsh. Putting that up against a John Stewart of the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, who’s just been born and his parents are still at that time, what I really wanted to press on was this idea that although what they did, I wouldn’t do, and I think many of us would not do, given where they were growing up, much like Richard Williams, given what they had seen, given this crazy traumatic event that they had just been through, they were like, “Even if my son hates me for doing what I’ve done to him, he will grow up to have a different outcome than I will, and he can go use all that money from that outcome to pay for therapy, because at least he’s not stuck on this block. At least he’s not stuck in these streets.”
And again, there’s a lot of other things he could have done. He could have been a barber and been just fine, but for them in that moment, given what had just happened, that’s what they deemed best. It’s not my job to really judge characters. That’s what those characters decided to do, and that’s what they did. We can judge them if we want to, but as a writer, I’m not going to judge them. In writing them and in the conceptualization of who they are and what that family was doing, we just wanted to present this idea, like Earl Woods, like Richard Williams, like Jalen Brunson’s dad, like all of these people who, in the beginning, did things that we would be like, “Are you fucking insane?” Did it work? And what about it worked? And how did that make them more exceptional than the people around them?
Vanessa Baden Kelly Discusses the Significance of ‘Lanterns’ Recurring Bird Theme for John Stewart
“That is incredibly powerful, which we see on Hal’s face in Episode 2, but we learn here that it’s powerful.”
The bird imagery comes back as a sort of throughline in this episode. It starts with John’s parents telling him that birds are what the Guardians are using to track his progress, and later, his mom admits they lied about that. But it stands out even more in the wake of the previous episode, in which John uses the ring to create the bird and preserves the bird with sheer fortitude. How did you want to use that running current through the episode to give new dimension to what we saw last week?
KELLY: So in some ways, the bird of Santa Claus, right? We tell our kids, “You have to be really good because Santa is watching.” Or even any religious dogma. “You can’t do that because Jesus is watching.” It’s like that. Hal doesn’t have that growing up. None of the other Green Lanterns have that growing up. They just get to approach the world in whatever ways they were raised, and that’s what they do. But John subconsciously has always had to believe that whatever he’s doing is being watched, and he always has to be great, and he always has to be perfect, and there always has to be precision.
So in many ways, although it was kind of messed up, his parents having told him that lie and him having believed that birds were watching him everywhere he went is what made him the powerful Green Lantern that he is, because he has this ability to have his subconscious going at all times. It probably is also going to send him to therapy, but he has that there constantly. So, without a ring, in some cases being knocked out cold, he is able to keep in the back of his subconscious that there is a fucking job to do. That is incredibly powerful, which we see on Hal’s face in Episode 2, but we learn here that it’s powerful. That’s what they read up about. They learned how to train him to be a Green Lantern by learning how to keep the subconscious in control.
Where did the idea come from to set John’s interview in the abandoned mall? Did you consider any other locations before landing on that one?
KELLY: We did not consider any other locations, but we did talk a lot about where we thought it could be. For us, we were just trying to think of a place, and it’s going to sound so terrestrial and silly and easy, but we were just trying to think of a place where people could be coming and going, and it’s a little weird, but not crazy weird. However, nobody else would be there to see what was going on or to hear what was happening.
For me, I’m a huge shoe person, like I have a kajillion sneakers, and so I was like, “An old Foot Locker!” and it just kind of stuck. But really, it was just more of a function of the story. You see people skateboarding, teaching their kids to drive, doing all kinds of silly stuff around abandoned malls, and so it wouldn’t necessarily be the weirdest thing if you saw a car parked outside of an old mall, but there’s not going to be a ton of people in there wondering what this very strange group of people are doing in some back room.
‘Lanterns’ Episode 3 Officially Explains the Root of the Tension Between John Stewart and Hal Jordan
“For John, there’s a deep anger more than anything, and I think that anger is probably not just pointed at Hal, but at the entirety of it all.”
John’s dishonorable discharge is directly tied to Hal intervening in the Gray Wolf mission, because the government needs a fall guy. How did you want that part of John’s backstory and any feelings that he might still have around it to play into the dynamic that we’re getting in 2016? Regardless of what John tells the Guardian, there’s no way that isn’t going to inform that relationship.
KELLY: I think the Guardians know that, as well, even though he’s not saying it. The thing about that mission is that John got hurt. John got abandoned. John was isolated. He’s always been isolated, but in a way that he’s never been isolated before. And he really had his John Sr. moment, which is, “I did everything fucking right, and he still swooped in.” On the one hand, you know your dad, and you understand that your dad’s great love for his family and his worry about what would happen to his family kept him out of the running for Green Lantern before. So now we’ve devised this plan to make sure that would never happen again, that nobody could steal this from you — and Hal did. He managed to do it, and it’s all because of his frivolous hubris. Like, “He just swoops in with no regard for anything else, but I have to be buttoned up. I can’t be with my brothers. I can’t go to school like everybody else does. I can’t do anything to get the job that you get to do mindlessly.”
For John, there’s a deep anger more than anything, and I think that anger is probably not just pointed at Hal, but at the entirety of it all. Like, “I lost so much to do what he’s never going to have to do. I’m mad at parents, I’m mad at systems,” but it’s all being pointed at Hal.
I think the scene we wrote for John and Bernadette in the bedroom, when she hands him the art school acceptance letter, is the first time that we hear John be like, “Fucking Hal Jordan.” It’s like the first time that he’s kind of letting out some of his own frustration. And I think one of the beautiful things in that is the way that Jasmine plays the other side of it, which is, “We’ve been being disappointed by the Guardians and Hal Jordan for so long that we are at the point where we’re a little flippant. We know it’s going to be you eventually, and when that time comes, we’ll lock back in. But right now, go be happy, because this motherfucker is going to do this until they say he doesn’t.” But John is just coming to the personal realization now. It’s no longer this tale of what happened to his father on the night when he was six months old. Now it’s a thing that has personally happened to him, and he’s like, “Fuck this noise.”
The very last scene of the episode does close the loop on the interview, but Hal is already at John’s parents’ house before he can tell them the good news. Their interaction in the driveway takes a very sharp turn because Hal just drops his facade and tells John he doesn’t need a sidekick or a backup. How did you want that exchange to set the tone for viewers heading into next week’s episode, back with the mystery in Rushville?
KELLY: When we pick up on the mystery in Rushville after Episode 3, the last thing that Hal will have just heard is that John Stewart is the biggest threat to him. And so the whole purpose of this episode is to explain how and why, and the most direct answer is that John is, in fact, Hal’s replacement, which we kind of already know at this point. What it sets up for us emotionally is that he’s Hal’s replacement who also doesn’t like him, and for very astute reasons.
Now, we’re returning to this kind of buddy-cop drama where we have a very deep understanding of why these two guys don’t necessarily care for each other. Hal is so vocal that we know why he doesn’t like John, but now we have how deeply ingrained John’s distaste for Hal is, and now we’re thrusting them back into this 48-hour mission where they have to trust each other completely, or basically an entire city will be wiped off the face of the earth. We now have this setup for how intense their distrust is, and we’re going to be asking the question: what do they do to build on it? That’s exactly what the episode is about. How do they fall in love when they actually don’t like each other? It’s very How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
New episodes of Lanterns premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
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