HBO Just Officially Changed a Fundamental Rule of Green Lantern Canon

Ten years later, John Stewart continues to do the impossible.

Despite spending a decade developing his architectural firm and generally avoiding anything to do with Rushville or cosmic powers, John remains as ideal a Green Lantern candidate as ever. At the end of episode 6, he took the ring off Hal’s corpse, gave it a quick power boost, and used a bit of the energy to manifest the Hal-ogram, the digital backup of Hal’s consciousness stored inside it. This alone is not all that surprising since we’ve seen the Hal-ogram twice before, but what is genuinely shocking in terms of how the Green Lantern powers work is what this projection of Hal is capable of — and it all seems to be because John Stewart is the one wearing the ring.

Episode 7 essentially confirms what John’s bird first suggested: Lanterns has changed a fundamental rule of Green Lantern canon indicating that, in this version of the DC Universe, John Stewart could be the most powerful Lantern ever.

The Hal-ogram does something Hal Jordan never could

Whenever a Green Lantern loses concentration or removes the ring supplying their power, their constructs disappear. By all accounts, this seems like a hard rule. Yet John’s bird was sustained without a ring to power it, even when he was forcibly knocked out. What’s more is that it wasn’t just a simple object, but an autonomous creature that acted on its own accord. That at least suggests John is able to independently power constructs, and complex ones at that.

Episode 7 removes any remaining ambiguity. Almost immediately, something is a bit off about this version of the Hal-ogram. John’s plan is to use the Hal-ogram to open the vault that Hal kept in a storage unit in Rushville. While driving there after leaving the cemetery, he talks to his brothers on the phone and asks them to wire the money he needs to send Maggie (Toni Gray) to keep her quiet about how she saw John at the diner the night Hal was killed.

Image: HBO

The Hal-ogram refuses to speak once inside the storage unit, and the first thing he asks John outside is, “Who’s Marcus?” This confuses John, who doesn’t understand how it — or he? — heard the conversation. Previous versions of the Hal-ogram seemed like a more straightforward backup, a chunk of data from 2006 stored inside the ring that could be used to manifest a hardlight construct of Hal to do things. But that consciousness remained totally ignorant of anything that transpired out in the real world while it was in storage. When the Hal-ogram first popped up in episode 1, he asked John the year, so it’s not like he’s just always in there quietly perceiving the outside world. Things are different now, at least with John, and the Hal-ogram demands to see Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) before he’ll open the vault.

Later, while driving alone, John sends a call from his mother directly to voicemail. The Hal-ogram suddenly appears in the passenger seat even though John never deliberately summoned him. “The ring manifests whatever the wearer’s thinking,” the Hal-ogram explains. “Ergo, you’re thinking of me.” (Twice in this episode, John is only able to dematerialize the Hal-ogram by focusing on loudly singing OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” — which proves that mechanism true.)

John insists he wasn’t thinking about Hal and orders him to disappear. When the Hal-ogram refuses, John takes off the ring and places it on the truck’s center console. “How are you doing that?” Hal asks, genuinely shocked. “That’s not possible. I don’t know any Lanterns that can do that. Hell, I can’t even do that.”

Hal then gives John the recognition the real Hal never did: “Bravo. Well fucking done, trainee. That’s amazing! It’s goddamn incredible.” Lanterns stops short of ever really explaining what’s going on here, but at least according to a version of Hal from 2006, John is doing something seemingly no Lantern has ever done before.

Is John Stewart powering the Hal-ogram himself?

Image: HBO

When the Hal-ogram is trying to convince John into bringing him to see Kerry, he estimates that with the ring low on power they have about one hour of “talk time” remaining. He might be exaggerating to pressure John into cooperating, but if that’s true, then Lanterns sure makes it seem like the Hal-ogram appears active for far longer.

He accompanies John through multiple drives around Rushville, stands beside him near Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern beacon for a nice chat, and even meets Kerry inside Rushville High School. John and “Hal” then return to the storage unit, open the vault, examine its contents, take the portal made of black goo to the old water tower, and then travel through it to an alien planet we learn is the homeworld of Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor).

Once there, Hal remains continuously manifested as he and John hike across the wasteland, row across a lake, and approach the isolated facility where Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) has been hiding. Either John and the Hal-ogram totally forgot that the ring was running out of juice, or they realized that John must be the one supplying the power. Whatever the explanation, none of this is “normal,” even by cosmic Green Lantern standards.

Image: HBO Max

While John rows across the water after banishing the Hal-ogram by singing, the fear-inducing substance that led Antaan’s entire race to commit suicide causes John to hallucinate. When John falls into the water, the Hal-ogram manifests and pulls him back onto the boat. A digital backup stored inside a decommissioned and nearly dead ring has somehow become an autonomous hard-light being capable of monitoring its surroundings and protecting the man sustaining it.

Just like the little green bird, the Hal-ogram is an entity that exists totally independent of John, despite being intrinsically connected to him. Is it possible that John just accessed the blueprint of Hal within the ring and created something else entirely with his own willpower? As of right now, John seems less interested in actually becoming the Green Lantern than he does in solving the mystery of the previous one’s death. But with only the finale left for Lanterns, it may be time for John to finally embrace his power for good — especially because he’s destined to become the most powerful Green Lantern of them all. Tied up with that might be some kind of explanation of how and why John Stewart is able to break all the rules.

Lanterns is streaming on HBO Max.