UPDATE: After the finale, Tom King says Hal Jordan’s killer walking free was a big debate in the writers room.
Lanterns writer Vanessa Baden Kelly says Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan is written with “racist tendencies,” and that the Episode 3 line fans blew up over meant exactly what they thought it meant.
The writer and executive producer went deep on Hal during an appearance with Justin Britt-Gibson on The Ringer’s Midnight Boys podcast.
“I can look at Hal’s microaggressions and still be like, yeah, he’s got some racist tendencies, because he’s a man of a certain age that grew up in a certain time and place,” Baden Kelly said. “But I also feel like he probably f**ks aliens in other places and doesn’t feel like he’s… he’s non-discriminatory. And both things are true.”
‘That’s Exactly What He Meant’
Baden Kelly wrote Episode 3, “OutKast,” the episode that set off the loudest fan backlash of the season.
She said the blowup caught her off guard.
“I thought that people were going to go apes**t about parental abuse,” she said. “I never for one moment thought that it was going to be about race. I was like, it’s a Black Green Lantern. Of course we’re going to talk about race.”
The writers room gathered at her house the night the episode premiered, and she said she started having a panic attack right before it aired. Co-creator Damon Lindelof texted her: “Hey, I just want you to know tonight is about to change your entire life.”
As for Hal’s “Midwest Huxtable” line, she confirmed it landed exactly as written.
“I loved that the response to the Midwest Huxtable was what it was, cuz that’s exactly how I intended it to be,” Baden Kelly said. “That’s exactly what he meant.”
‘I’m Making Him A 60-Year-Old Dude’
Baden Kelly said fans asked her why the show made Hal a racist.
“They’re like, why you making him a racist? No, I’m making him a 60-year-old dude,” she said. “I think that he is in the way that 60-year-old white dudes from the south can be, but wouldn’t think they are, because they golf with a black dude who they f**king love and would leave money in their will to.”
“I’m from the south. I’m from Florida,” she continued. “I grew up around a lot of white people who would probably use the n-word amongst their peers and then also turn around and defend you in something. It’s just not cut and dry.”
Audiences refusing that read wore on her: “For the audiences to sometimes not be able to hold that both things are true was really difficult for me.”
It’s not Baden Kelly’s first viral comments about the show. She previously told Collider she repeatedly said in the writers room that the Green Lantern ring is “sexist.”
In the same interview, the writers revealed the 2024 DNC shaped the Hal and John story and that John Stewart’s backstory was rewritten over Aaron Pierre’s skin tone.
This is the version of Hal Jordan that James Gunn says he has watched 500 times.
