John Stewart’s origin deepens Lanterns’ portrait of real world superheroing

And so Hal Jordan got the ring. And John Stewart’s family was left to cope with the fallout from coming so close. It’s a bold move, showing that Hal and John’s destinies are entwined more than we thought. (and embroidered with perhaps one coincidence too many, as we’ll see.) It also allows Aaron Pierre to lay down some of the cards he’s been holding so close. John’s stoic willingness to put up with Hal’s dismissive bullshit wasn’t just John the Marine following protocol—John Stewart has been biding his time since he was that baby, watching his father fail at a test he’s been trained all his life to pass.

The episode plays out as flashbacks within a two-hander, Pierre and Linney’s interview elaborating on John’s clipped answers about the long and traumatic journey that brought him to that room. We see how Hal’s emergence as Earth’s first Green Lantern ate away at John Sr., his upright pride crumbling into drunken obsession until he shoots out the family’s TV when Hal makes his public debut. And we watch as John’s mother Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) not only talks her unstable husband down (expertly emptying the bullets from his gun), but sets out the terms under which she will continue living with him and their three children. 

Race was central to all nine episodes of Lindelof’s Watchmen, the intersection of unthinkable power and America’s still-disfiguring taint of bigotry running thoughtfully through the narrative. Lanterns attempts to speak its piece largely in one family’s story, in one episode, and sometimes the strain shows. There’s a prosaicness to Bernadette’s lecture to her faltering husband as she spells out how their model family “didn’t break down every stereotype and conquer every fear” for them to stumble now. 

But Bernadette’s steely determination is, in Parker’s uncompromising performance, the backbone of John Stewart’s origin story. While taking out the trash, Bernadtte is confronted by Linney’s Guardian with an apology for John Sr.’s failure and a consolation diamond as big as a doorknob. Shs then sits the powerful alien down at her kitchen table, and tells her visitor the flaw in the Guardians’ entire plan. 

“Do you know how unfair it is to ask a Black man on Earth if he’s afraid?,” Bernadette asks, eliciting another telling head-tilt from Linney. As comics fans remembered the moment we heard about Manhunters, these Guardians aren’t as infallible as they like to imagine, and Bernadette, just as she had with the man she loves, refuses to allow outside factors to question the excellence she knows her family embodies. “We’re terrified daily of persecution and still show up, sometimes better than everyone else around us,” Bernadette schools the puzzled alien, concluding disdainfully, “Even in space, you don’t see us.”

Brokering a deal for the infant John to take up Hal’s mantle when the time comes, Bernadette convinces John Sr. that they will raise the infant John without fear, a trait their older children already know too well. “He’s gonna hate us, Bernie,” the uncertain John replies, looking at the boy. “So be it,” says Bernadette.

And so John Stewart is raised to be a Green Lantern, his childhood marked by the sort of tough love that any outside observer would see as abuse. Apart from John Sr. shooting apples William Tell-style off the growing John’s head (the trail of bullet holes on the garage a horrifying parody of the pencil marks tracing a child’s growth), the Stewarts leave their youngest son in a rough part of town in the middle of the night and tell him to make his way home, much to the horror of his uncomprehending older brothers. The adult John only tells his interviewer plainly, “It’s human. We love the people that raised us. Even if they’re crazy.” 

So this, finally, is Lanterns’ John Stewart. Not merely an eager but patient superhero trainee, enduring his mentor’s old school cowboy antics as he waits his turn. But a vehicle for others’ obsessions, guided and groomed to replace the cocksure holder of a ring he doesn’t truly deserve. When the Guardian asks him pointedly if he’s comfortable knowing that his job is to take the ring from Hal Jordan, the ex-Marine responds simply, “Are those my orders? Then it doesn’t matter if I’m comfortable with it.”

We see just how seriously John takes that mindset in the extended flashback to the fateful mission where the expert sniper is sent into the Russian wilderness for months to track a target, only for a drunken Hal to swoop in and kidnap the oligarch target with a destructive flash of green. John just as stoically accepts the dishonorable discharge necessary to cover the military’s ass, and, as he sits across from the being with the key to what he’s been taught is his destiny, he exhibits a cold determination that, in a lesser twist, would mark him out as Lanterns’ villain. 

But we’ve seen John buck his promise to the alien Manhunter-hunters not to tell Hal what’s up. And we’ve seen the young John scurry to hide his drawings from his mother, his artistic soul refusing to knuckle under completely to his parents’ plans for him. And how the straitlaced young John revealed his secret knowledge of profane rap lyrics, to his brothers’ shocked delight. And we recall how it was young John who first suggested the William Tell trick—and how an older John demanded that his mother allow him to shoot the apple off her head to prove himself when she doubted him.

There’s a stubborn, prickly nobility lurking inside John Stewart that hints there’s more to him than following orders. As his supposed superhero mentor slights him at every turn and an uncomprehending alien cabal blithely assumes they know his heart, Aaron Pierre imbues John’s wall-like exterior with intriguing textures. And the episode’s title, embodied by the closing choice of Outkast’s “Gasoline Dreams,” underscores that there’s a lot more going on inside John Stewart than anybody imagines. 

Stray observations

• • There’s another applicant exiting the Guardian’s makeshift office when John enters. I’ve freeze-framed it a dozen times and damned if it doesn’t look, in an admittedly fleeting glimpse, like Charlie Cox. Which would be appropriate. 
• • Linney’s Guardian explains that Lanterns are chosen because of their “genetic makeup,” vaguely defined terms that veer uncomfortably close to midichlorian territory. 
• • Linney is just terrific, channeling the Guardians’ inherent contradictions with a benign smile curling with just the perfect tinge of condescension. When someone successfully puts a kink in her confidence, Linney allows for the tiniest of pauses as the Guardian does the math. 
• • In flashback, we watch Linney’s Guardian reveal her true form to the unimpressed Bernadette. She’s blue, but toweringly tall, thus sending continuity cops into a tizzy. 
• • Bernadette indeed tried to cash in that diamond, which, John tells the unapologetic Guardian, provoked a visit from the police. 
• • Carrying on with the everyday reality of superheroes in this world, John states that he heard about Sinestro and Hal’s relationship on the news. 
• • He also offers up sympathy over Sinestro’s killing of one of the Guardians, a gesture Linney’s alien greets with subtle surprise. 
• • We find out that John’s bird construct last episode stems from his mother lying that birds were the Guardians’ spies, reporting back on his battles against fear. Caught, Bernadette tells the young John simply, “[Hal] was privileged enough in this life that he didn’t have to know fear,” concluding, “Sometimes a Black man has to raise his own hand.”
• • John’s artistic nature blossoms in a post-discharge stint at art school where he’s initially recruited by the Guardians with a test using the ring to imagine a perfect replica of the inner workings of his father’s watch. Watchmen fans feel the echoes. 
• • I’m sure Bernadette’s aphorism, “Courage is fear that’s said its prayers” sounds meaningful, but a little too tidy. 
• • The final scene sees Hal introducing himself and John’s new role to the impassive John Sr. and Bernadette, his folksy charm running up against all the things we know and Hal does not.