Why They Changed John Stewart’s Origin Story

“We hit on that pretty early,” Mundy explained. “We didn’t hit on the entire framework of the storytelling in Episode 3 [right away], but we did on the thing that John’s dad could have been Hal, and how many others there were. We would always just refer to it as he was bubbled – that John Sr. was bubbled. And then when the Manhunters came into the story, we talked a lot about how they were these entities that just solved trolley problems all the time, so they were programmed to be a certain way.”

A trolley problem is, according to Merriam-Webster, a thought experiment “about a fictional scenario in which an onlooker has the choice to save 5 people in danger of being hit by a trolley, by diverting the trolley to kill just 1 person.” Essentially, it’s Spock’s “the needs of the many” scenario. What sacrifices are acceptable and in which situations? This was key to figuring out John Jr.’s origin.

“[The Manhunters] were so good at it that it was too scary to the Guardians,” continues Mundy, “and they were terminated. And then we were like, ‘Well, what’s the difference between being programmed and being parented so hard?’ And the conversations just started converging and it felt really natural.”

So from there, getting to the William Tell of it all wasn’t that difficult. And the idea of John Jr. having to take the ultimate step into eradicating his fear by shooting an apple off of his mother’s head… Well, that came early in the process as well.

“Obviously shooting the apple off his head was in the pilot,” said Mundy. “The very first day in the writer’s room, Vanessa [Baden Kelly], who ended up writing Episode 3, John’s origin episode, is like, ‘Well, I’d like to see a scene where he shoots it off his mom’s head.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh, that’s great. We don’t know how it fits.’ But it was literally day one. So we were always kind of chasing it.”