Lanterns Episode 3 steps away from the mystery surrounding Hal Jordan and goes back to 2016 to explain how John Stewart became a Green Lantern in the first place. And it turns out his connection to the Corps started long before he ever wore the ring.
John arrives for an interview with one of the Guardians after jumping through a portal and landing inside what appears to be an abandoned shopping mall. He is told to wait in an office, and he does exactly that. When the Guardian returns the following day, John is still sitting where she left him.
He already knows far more about the Green Lanterns than she expects. He knows who the Guardians are, that they created the Green Lanterns and that one of them recently died. More importantly, John knows why he has been brought there.
His story actually began when he was a baby.
Years earlier, a green light appeared to John’s father, John Stewart Sr., and asked him whether he was afraid. He answered yes. Hal Jordan eventually became Earth’s Green Lantern instead, and John’s father spent years believing that one answer cost him the ring.
Bernadette, John’s mother, initially thought her husband had imagined the encounter. Then one of the Guardians came to their home and confirmed that it had really happened.
The Guardian explained that the ring’s method of choosing a human had been imperfect. When Bernadette challenged the way her husband had been judged, she was also told that whatever qualities the ring had identified in him could have been passed down to their son. John might eventually have his own chance. There was one condition: he had to be raised without fear.
John’s Entire Childhood Was Training for the Ring
That possibility takes over John’s childhood. His parents tell him about his intended future when he is five years old and begin preparing him for it. He learns to shoot, goes through increasingly frightening exercises and grows up believing that fear is something he has to eliminate if he wants the Guardians to choose him.
It also explains something we saw much earlier in Lanterns: John’s father shooting an apple from his son’s head. It wasn’t an isolated incident. It was part of years of training designed around the idea that John could never show fear.
Bernadette keeps trying to contact the Guardians as John grows older, but they don’t respond. John knows they were told that “birds” would be watching over him, and his mother continues to believe the Guardians are keeping an eye on his progress even when she can no longer reach them. She eventually admits that she lied about still being in contact with them, but remains convinced that they know who John is and are watching him.
And now we know why a bird is the first thing John creates when Hal asks him to use the ring in Episode 2: birds have been connected to the idea of the Guardians watching him since he was a child.
John’s childhood leaves him isolated, but it also shapes the person sitting across from the Guardian during his interview. He follows orders. He doesn’t panic. And when she starts asking about his military career, another part of his past comes into focus.
John had been an accomplished sniper before receiving a mission to assassinate a target known as Gray Wolf. He was sent to the Kamchatka Peninsula and told to wait for the opportunity to kill him. John waited nine months. When the opportunity finally came, Hal Jordan unexpectedly arrived first.
Hal Jordan Cost John His Military Career
Hal didn’t kill Gray Wolf. Instead, he protected him, destroyed the compound, and took him into custody.
That created a major problem for the government. Hal had acted after learning Gray Wolf’s location through information disclosed by the Deputy to the Defense Secretary, and his intervention also caused destruction on Russian territory.
Someone needed to take responsibility, so John did.
Instead of exposing what had actually happened, he accepted the blame and was dishonorably discharged from the military. It cost him the career he had built, even though Hal was responsible for disrupting the mission. Back home, Bernadette refuses to let him give up. She applies to art school for him, pushing him toward something else he has always been good at.
That unexpected change eventually puts John back on the path his parents had spent his entire childhood preparing him for.
At art school, John is invited to audition for a special project. He is first asked to draw a building entirely from memory. Then he is handed a Green Lantern ring and asked to recreate one of his parents’ watches. He does it.
The recruiter tells him that they have been following his progress and that he is finally ready for his interview. John is presented with a strange portal and told to jump through it. he doesn’t hesitate. And that’s how he ends up falling onto those mattresses at the beginning of the episode.
The Guardians Never Intended John to Be Hal’s Backup
Once John finally tells the Guardian what happened during his military mission, she asks the obvious question: does he resent Hal? John says he doesn’t.
Even after losing his career because of him, John believes Hal was simply doing what he had been ordered to do. The Guardian then gives him a piece of information that changes that assumption completely. Hal wasn’t following orders.
The Guardians had repeatedly told him not to interfere in matters on Earth, and he ignored them. That leads to the real reason they want John.
Hal believes John is being brought in as his backup. The Guardians have something very different in mind. They want John to eventually replace him.
John is asked whether he can accept that arrangement. For him, the answer is simple: if those are his orders, he’ll follow them, so he gets the job.
John rushes home to tell his parents, only to discover Hal already sitting with them. Hal acts friendly at first and asks his new protégé to take a walk with him. Once they’re alone, his attitude changes.
Hal doesn’t want a backup, and he knows John is ultimately after the same ring. He tells John that the only way he’ll ever get it is over his dead body.
Then, almost comically, he tells him that training starts Monday and flies away.
John watches him leave as a bird lands nearby. After everything Hal just said, John looks at the bird and decides that Hal must like him.
Knowing where Hal’s story eventually leads gives that first meeting a very different weight. John has just been secretly chosen as his replacement, while Hal has unknowingly told him exactly what it would take for John to inherit his ring.
