The phrase “all will be revealed in time” has never applied to any story half as well as it does to Lanterns. The latest addition to the new DC Universe is the poster child of obfuscation: its head-scratching changes to the origins of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), for example, have unfurled bit by bit, episode by episode. It wasn’t until Episode 3 that we learned why John’s father (J. Alphonse Nicholson) was shooting apples off his head in Lanterns’ first episode. As for the question that audiences have been asking since we met Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) in Superman — why isn’t John Stewart Earth’s Green Lantern? — well, Lanterns has taken its sweet time answering it.
This week’s episode finally addresses John’s GL status (and more) with a doozy of a lore drop. Not only does it acknowledge John’s privilege as a light-skinned Black man in America; it also delivers one more twist in his journey to inherit the GL ring. We finally know why Guy Gardner is Earth’s one-and-only Green Lantern by the time Superman takes place, but it only brings up more questions about John’s post-Lanterns fate.
