Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Lanterns Season 1, Episode 8!
Lanterns has ended its eight-episode run on HBO, with the finale addressing some of the show's most burning questions. How and why does Aaron Pierre's John Stewart become a Green Lantern? Is Kyle Chandler's Hal Jordan truly dead, and who killed him? We finally have our answers in what turned out to be a somber but enjoyable finale episode.
IGN attended a press conference where Pierre, Chandler, and executive producers Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King spoke more about these key developments and the challenges of crafting the series. Why give John his own Green Lantern oath? Does Hal actually love John? Read on to learn more about the big twists from the Season 1 finale.
Lanterns Season 1 ultimately culminates with John Stewart embracing his destiny and becoming a Green Lantern. However, he does so strictly on his own terms. John wields Hal's old ring and pairs it with the fear-infused Lantern Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) forged for Noah (Shea Pritchard). He's a strictly unsanctioned Lantern who effectively blackmails his way into taking jurisdiction of Earth from Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion). And to reflect this unique status, John activates his ring by uttering his own oath:
Why introduce a new Green Lantern oath? How do these lines better reflect John's character at the end of Season 1?
"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," Mundy told press. "The ring didn’t choose him, he was interviewed, he was kind of raised for it. He was having to choose this thing, then he decided not to do it, and then decided that he needed to do it on his own terms. We wanted it to be true to the original and respectful of the original, but his version is rooted, obviously, in the OG version of it, but we also wanted to tweak it to talk about the themes that we talked about, and fear, and make it be a choice that he was choosing this thing and not something he was like, 'I’m doing it because my parents want me to do it, or I’m doing it because these things.' So, I think at a certain point, you end writing a season and you have a split second to look back on what you built and what was important inside of it, you hope people will like it, and it was our way to reflect what we built."
Lindelof added, "When you watch the totality of John Stewart’s story, it’s really hard to get to the end of it and say that he is in alignment with the Corps, with the Green Lantern Corps, and Lianna, and everything that it stands for, and for a man who pledged his loyalty to the military, to his parents, [that's his] idea of saying, 'I’m kind of beyond doing that for other organizations, and in order for me to formulate an oath, it has to be on my own terms and in my own way.'"
"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. It’s an unsanctioned Lantern, as Guy says," King said. "And so, he’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern because he’s not like every other Green Lantern. So, just like a Yellow Lantern says something different, or a Green Lantern says something different, or an Orange Lantern says something, this thing that John is, this utterly unique creation that he has not been given to him, that he is not chosen for but that he... chose for himself, gets its own unique oath, seemed to line up very much with the lore and where we’re going from here."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/lanterns-season-1-interview-oath-finale-hal-jordan-killer
