Damon Lindelof apologizes to Green Lantern Corps. for off-color joke from 2024

In darkest day and blackest night, the Green Lantern Corps. takes its colors very seriously, and so do its fans. Last week, comic book legend Grant Morrison, perhaps diving down one of those YouTube rabbit holes we’re always hearing about, published a screed about a 2024 episode of the Lovett Or Leave It podcast featuring Damon Lindelof. At the time, Lindelof had just been announced as the co-creator of Lanterns, HBO’s long-in-development Green Lantern show. Joking around on the pod, Lindelof crossed a line when he said the production dropped the “Green” from the title because “we all agreed Green was stupid, so now it’s just Lanterns.” Perhaps if Lindelof had attributed the decision to a Sean Parker special (“Drop the Green. Just Lanterns. It’s cleaner.”), maybe Lindelof could have avoided Morrison’s rage. “TV writer/producer Damon Lindelof’s comments notwithstanding, the ‘Green’ in ‘Green Lantern(s)’ green is not ‘stupid,’” Morrison wrote. “Why does a writer attach himself to this kind of narrative if he thinks it’s fundamentally ‘stupid’?”

“Does Lindelof imagine it makes him seem less nerdy?” Morrison continued. “It’s a bit too late for that, so what’s it all about? The only people who give a fuck about the Lanterns TV series are Green Lantern fans. Why alienate them at the start? That feels more like ‘stupid’.”

Now, as he has done many times before in his career, from Prometheus to Lost to Watchmen, Lindelof has irritated his target audience and wants to make good. Posting on Instagram, Lindelof reasserted his love for the character, comics, and show, while also noting that he “made a dumb joke on a comedy podcast.”

“I have upset Grant Morrison, which means I have now pissed off MOST of the brilliant British/Scottish comics writers that I grew up idolizing,” Lindelof wrote. “I’m not going to bob and weave about context, the joke was dumb, the fandom is not. I owe them an explanation and a genuine reflection of my actual feelings.”

More importantly, green is Lindelof’s “lifelong favorite color and I have a questionnaire that I filled out in third grade to prove it. Green is fucking awesome.”