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Full spoilers follow for HBO\u2019s <\/strong>Lanterns<\/strong><\/u> Episode 3.<\/strong><\/p>\nThis week\u2019s episode of Lanterns, \u201cOutKast,\u201d<\/u> really packs a wallop, detailing as it does the pretty messed-up origin story of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Whereas most comic-book heroes usually just have a dead relative or two to deal with on the journey to becoming super, in the HBO series\u2019 take on John, the road to being a Green Lantern is paved with\u2026 your parents shooting apples off your head.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nJohn Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and Bernadette (Nicole Ari Parker)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Those parents, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and Bernadette (Nicole Ari Parker), were of course deeply affected by what could\u2019ve been when John Sr. was offered the Green Lantern ring but passed it up out of fear, leading to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) claiming the ring instead. But their reaction to that \u2013 which is to put the young John Jr. on a merciless path to becoming a GL by wringing all sense of fear out of him \u2013 is pretty messed up.<\/p>\n
I spoke to Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy about where the idea to revise John\u2019s origin came from and how it evolved into conditioning him in this manner as preparation for his destiny as a Lantern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hit on that pretty early,\u201d Mundy explained. \u201cWe 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 \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
We were like, \u2018Well, what’s the difference between being programmed and being parented so hard?\u2019
\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nA trolley problem is, according to Merriam-Webster<\/u>, a thought experiment \u201cabout 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.\u201d Essentially, it\u2019s Spock\u2019s \u201cthe needs of the many\u201d scenario. What sacrifices are acceptable and in which situations? This was key to figuring out John Jr.\u2019s origin.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The Manhunters] were so good at it that it was too scary to the Guardians,\u201d continues Mundy, \u201cand they were terminated. And then we were like, \u2018Well, what’s the difference between being programmed and being parented so hard?\u2019 And the conversations just started converging and it felt really natural.\u201d<\/p>\n
So from there, getting to the William Tell of it all wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s <\/em>head\u2026 Well, that came early in the process as well.<\/p>\n\u201cObviously shooting the apple off his head was in the pilot,\u201d said Mundy. \u201cThe very first day in the writer’s room, Vanessa [Baden Kelly], who ended up writing Episode 3, John’s origin episode, is like, \u2018Well, I’d like to see a scene where he shoots it off his mom’s head.\u2019 And we’re like, \u2018Oh, that’s great. We don’t know how it fits.\u2019 But it was literally day one. So we were always kind of chasing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\nThe idea of the parents trying to make what they perceive to be a better life for their son is in a way a skewed take on the American dream, and it\u2019s clear that concepts like this are laced throughout Lanterns, as show where notions of colonization and the \u201cother\u201d are also prevalent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe things I like best are talking about a lot of that kind of stuff without being pedantic or without preaching about any of it,\u201d said the showrunner. \u201c[Those ideas are] putting people in situations and they’re talking about some things, but they’re not preaching. And hopefully we weren’t preaching, but all that stuff is in the mix of what we were putting out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you think of John Stewart\u2019s new origin story? Let\u2019s discuss in the comments, and be sure to check back next week for more on Lanterns.<\/em><\/p>\nTalk to Scott Collura <\/em>@scottcollura.bsky.social<\/em>, or listen to his <\/em>Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3<\/em>. Or do both!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>Full spoilers follow for HBO\u2019s Lanterns Episode 3. This week\u2019s episode of Lanterns, \u201cOutKast,\u201d really packs a wallop, detailing as it does the pretty messed-up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1767,1175,9856,29223,1199],"class_list":["post-81079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-changed","tag-john","tag-origin","tag-stewarts","tag-story","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}