UPDATE 9/10: The real test came back — Episode 4, the first hour people chose to watch after this fight, matched the premiere’s chart peak as Lanterns took back-to-back weekly No. 1s on HBO Max.
UPDATE 9/4: The writer has answered the backlash — Vanessa Baden Kelly tells THR the debate went to plan and asks angry fans to stick with the season.
UPDATE 9/3: The Green Lantern nobody got to see keeps showing up online — Kilowog and Tomar-Re concept art from the canceled space series has surfaced, days after Justice League artist Jerad Marantz posted his Snyderverse Hal Jordan designs and fans piled into the comments.
UPDATE 9/3: The official numbers landed and they went up — Episode 3 drew 10 million viewers worldwide, a series high. Though everyone watched before the backlash started, so Episode 4 is the real test.
UPDATE 9/3: The chart verdict is in, and the backlash didn’t move the numbers — Episode 3 held Lanterns at series highs as the show won its first week on HBO Max.
UPDATE 9/2: The fight has moved to the people who made it. A Lanterns star tied Episode 3 to Kamala Harris, and DC’s own podcast host is telling fans Hal Jordan is “canonically” racist.
UPDATE 8/31: After “OutKast,” the 2011 movie is aging better by the hour — we owe Ryan Reynolds an apology for Green Lantern.
James Gunn spent Sunday hyping Episode 3 of Lanterns before it aired.
“Episode 3 of #Lanterns airs tonight at 9pm on @hbomax. Don’t miss this one! One of the best,” Gunn posted on X.
Then the episode actually aired.
The fan reaction to “OutKast” has been brutal — easily the worst of the season so far — with viewers torching the John Stewart origin episode over its handling of race, its treatment of Hal Jordan, and an hour plenty of them simply found boring.
As laid out in our Episode 3 review, the August 30 episode ditches the show’s present-day story entirely for a flashback origin: John’s parents conditioning him from birth to become a Green Lantern, the Guardians’ failed recruitment of John Stewart Sr., and the reveal that Hal Jordan wrecked John’s military career and family before the two ever met.
‘Worst episode of television I’ve ever seen’
The instant reactions on X set the tone.
“That might’ve been the worst episode of television I’ve ever seen,” posted one viewer, in a reaction that spread across Green Lantern fan accounts and racked up nearly 70,000 views.
Even fans who loved the first two episodes turned on this one, with one writing that if Episodes 1 and 2 were 9/10s, “Episode 3 is a legit 4/10.”
Another summed it up with: “Yawn. What a snoozefest” — after first calling it “one of the most racist episodes of television” they had ever seen.
Others called the episode “another waste of time,” labeled it a momentum killer, and said they’re done with the series entirely.
‘Hal Jordan has White Privilege’
The scene drawing the most fire comes when John’s mother tells Laura Linney’s Guardian that Hal Jordan gets to live without fear because he’s a white man, while their family has to live with fear because they’re Black.
“Wait, wait wait a minute. Wait a minute did John Stewart mother Just literally say that Hal Jordan was f–king privileged like are you serious?” posted The Casual Reviewer account.
“Tonight I learned that all it takes to be a Green Lantern is White Privilege. I brightest day, in whitest night….” added Salty Nerd’s Matt Kadish.
“Lanterns just went with Hal Jordan has White Privilege,” wrote another viewer, while one more mocked the episode’s premise: “How dare the Guardians of OA not know the struggles of Black people in the 1990s. How dare they!”
One run-down making the rounds called the episode “DEI,” “political and mean spirited and definitely anti-family,” said John’s parents “abused John until he no longer feels fear,” and predicted the series “will fail” for serving up more “woke slop.”
John’s parents took heavy fire of their own, with viewers describing them as narcissists who stole their son’s childhood to prove a point. As one fan put it: “I liked it better when I thought he didn’t have a mom.”
It’s a continuation of the same thread from Episode 2, where John and the sheriff talked about each having their own “white man.”
Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver blasts the episode
The backlash isn’t limited to fan accounts.
Ethan Van Sciver — the artist behind Green Lantern: Rebirth and the Sinestro Corps War era that rebuilt Hal Jordan into one of DC’s biggest franchises of the 2000s — torched the episode to his followers.
“This was a terrible episode, filled with clumsy race s–t and absolutely inhuman family behavior. None of it was believable or relatable, all of it was psychotic and weird,” Van Sciver wrote. “We must stop allowing this.”
“I’m going to ignore all of it. All of it was stupid, and I am mentally retconning it,” he added, continuing that he did like “the final scene of Hal pretending to be nice.”
Gunn and the critics are watching a different show
The disconnect couldn’t be sharper.
While the fan reaction burns, the shill reviewers are calling it one of the best episodes, and Gunn is out front calling it one of the best of the season.
The episode’s defenders are firing back as well, dismissing its critics as “racist frat white fan boys” and “weird snowflakes,” turning the reaction into a full-blown online brawl.
CBN readers know where we stand: superhero fatigue is a myth. Audiences don’t reject superheroes, they reject bad content. And right now, a very loud chunk of the Lanterns audience is saying that’s exactly what Episode 3 is.
Lanterns continues Sundays at 9pm on HBO and HBO Max, with five episodes left in its first season, so don’t expect the controversy to cool off anytime soon.
