UPDATE 8/31: The backlash has erupted â fans and Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver are torching Episode 3 after James Gunn called it “one of the best.” Full reactions here.
UPDATE 8/30: Episode 3 is out, and it’s full of even more divisiveness. Full review here.
UPDATE 8/27: The numbers came back. Episode 2 beat the premiere’s chart peak and passed House of the Dragon on HBO Max.
UPDATE: The same episode also goes full frontal. Hal drags naked alien corpses through the stadium’s “metal detectors,” which turn out to be alien detectors. And for the record, James Gunn is head of DC studios, approves and watches everything, and is listed as “Executive Producer” on Lanterns.
Lanterns Episode 2 picks up the John Stewart affair from the premiere and turns it into a diner conversation about white men.
Four mentions in one scene.
“How’s your white man?”
African American John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) sits down with Indian-American Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan), the married woman he slept with in Episode 1 and the wife of white dude Garret Dillahunt’s William Macon, the rancher with a militia operating off his compound.
John says he wouldn’t have slept with her if he’d known she was married. Zoe says she’s glad he didn’t know.
Then he tells her, “respectfully,” that her husband is “pretty f-cking weird.”
Zoe agrees. “Deeply so.”
Her explanation for him: “White men have the privilege of being eccentric. White men with money? They can do whatever the f-ck they want. Play cowboy, build castles.”
John’s read: “some deeply weird white man with a savior complex.”
And Zoe’s parting question: “Hey, how’s your white man?”
She means Hal Jordan.
“Play Cowboy, Build Castles”
Episode 2 puts that thesis in a character’s mouth.
William Macon is the wealthy rancher with the land, the guns, and the compound. He’s the Yellowstone archetype, the rich cowboy patriarch Sheridan built television’s most-watched drama around.
Lanterns explains him as a symptom. Rich, white, therefore weird, therefore free to “play cowboy” and “build castles.”
The show’s hero diagnoses him with a savior complex. His own wife, who says she loves him, files his whole personality under white privilege and cheats on him.
Even the hypothetical other wife gets a shot: Zoe notes Macon could have picked “some blond bimbo from Texas” as his arm candy instead.
That’s John Dutton, as seen by the people making DC’s Green Lantern show. Or better yet, Tommy Norris’ wife or daughter.
And the company buying Warner Bros. Discovery is the one that pays Taylor Sheridan (who’s still at Paramount with the current TV series and the upcoming COD movie).
Hal Jordan Is Now John Stewart’s “White Man”
The other white man in the scene is the one with the ring.
“How’s your white man?” Zoe asks. John laughs and answers the question instead of correcting it.
Hal “wanted me out the way,” he says, so “he sent me to fetch his things.”
The Silver Age Green Lantern, one episode after a bullet in the forehead set Green Lantern fans off, is now the guy sending the black rookie on errands, and the guy John is “trying to figure out if I can trust.”
Zoe’s advice: “If you have to ask the question, then you already know the answer.”
Shots fired
So the live-action partnership fans waited years for gets reduced to racial shorthand, and the veteran is set up as the man who can’t be trusted.
It tracks with everything the premiere established.
As we covered, Lanterns introduced John as the guy sleeping with another man’s wife and Hal as a broken-down old white dude marked for death.
Episode 2 keeps the affair going as a plot point and stacks the “white man” framing on top. We also get alien white dude shlongs. Not fooling.
The writing belongs to Damon Lindelof and Tom King, with Gunn “off doing Superman“ during development and, per Kyle Chandler, a season that went to camera without all eight scripts.
Now the numbers get their test.
The premiere pulled 9.3 million viewers, Episode 2 is the first look at how many come back, and the cast already says it’s “at peace” if Season 2 never happens.
The show that spent its premiere mocking Sheridan country just spent its second episode telling that audience exactly what it thinks of the white men who live there.
