*Spoiler*
It would appeared that surprising twist within HBO’s Lanterns series was revealed, and takes Jame Gunn’s (Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad) DC Universe in whole new direction. According to Sreenrant, in the final scenes of the eight episode, it was seen that John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre (Old, Krypton) was created and spoke his own oath of being one of the emerald knights, deviating from the comic lore stating,”In Brightest Day. In Darkest Night. I’ll embrace my fear. I’ll do what’s right. I choose this ring. I choose this fight. In service to this lantern’s light.”
Reported in an interview with Screenrant’s Andy Behbakht, Pierre along with Kyle Chandler (Bloodline, Anniversary) and the series showrunner Chris Mundy (Ozark, Criminal Minds) give a breakdown on the route and the difference stating,”I know Justin, one of the writers, was like, well, we’re not re-writing, we’re remixing it, but I think the idea was we sort of were taking a look back at what we had done with the season, and so John’s path was not the normal path, like, he was… the ring didn’t choose him, he was interviewed, he was kind of raised for it.”
Reported by Screenrant, Mundy, King, and Lindelof gave their own statements on the series future and the twist with John starting off with,”what we see at the end is that John is not a hundred percent a Green Lantern anymore, he has a Lantern that has a bit of yellow in it, has a bit of fear in it, and it’s not, you know, it’s an unsanctioned Lantern, as Guy says.”Mundy goes to say about how they felt on the twist” I think at a certain point, you end- you end writing a season, you- you have a split second to look back on what you built and what was important inside of it, you hope, you know, you hope people will like it, and it was our way to reflect what we built.”
Lastly, Lindelof give his perspective on series finale twist,”it was one of those things, and- and Tom actually offered a lot of great insight, where he was saying, well, look, you know, every… there are all these alien species out there who have to recite the oath, but they don’t speak English, and some of them don’t even have site, and so when they talk about something ‘black as night’, they don’t even… that- that’s what they live in, perpetuity, and so, there’s a lot- there’s a lot of wiggle room for translation.”
According to Screenrant, in the end, he thought, “It just felt right, and we understood that it’s probably going to be the- the thing that, like, the fandom… divides the fandom, etc. But, again, you- you just have to honour the characters at the end of the day, and it felt like it was a good thing, and obviously, Aaron’s performance speaks for itself, so.”
All episodes of Lantern’s first season are available to stream on HBO Max, with the series being green-lit for a second one which is slated for a 2027’s release. The future of the series could showcase additional members of the Green Lantern Corp or the other color lanterns as well.