UPDATE: Another Lanterns writers room clip is going viral, with Tom King explaining why Hal Jordan’s killer goes free in the finale.
The writers of Lanterns say the Hal Jordan and John Stewart dynamic came straight out of the 2024 election.
Writers and executive producers Vanessa Baden Kelly and Justin Britt-Gibson broke down the show on The Ringer’s Midnight Boys podcast, and clips from the interview are circulating on X, with the top post sitting at 80,000 views.
‘The Generational War’
The writers said the Hal and John relationship was built on what they called “this sort of generational war that we’re in.”
“You’re looking at your elders, you’re like, when are y’all going to give us some space?” one of the writers said. “Name an industry and I’ll tell you somebody who’s frustrated that they’ve hit a ceiling because somebody else won’t get out of the way.”
That thinking became Hal Jordan.
“What does it mean when you are the superhero and have been the superhero for decades and you’ve been holding on to this sort of legacy, and then all of a sudden this young guy comes around,” the writer continued.
“Young and black,” came next, the two trading lines. “And handsome, and strong, and confident. It’s threatening.”
“And fearless, of course. That’s threatening. That’s so much about the conversation we wanted to have.”
‘Is It Going To Be Kamala Or Is It Going To Be Biden?’
The writers then named the real-world moment behind it all.
The room was deep in talks about “replacement,” asking “when do you bow out gracefully? How long do you hold on?” as the 2024 Democratic National Convention approached.
“Right as we were having the conversation, we had already started talking about it and breaking it, the Democratic National Convention was coming up,” the writer said. “That’s when we were trying to figure out who is going to be the front runner here. Is it going to be Kamala or is it going to be Biden?”
“It just amplified what we were already talking about,” the writer continued. “We would talk in depth about what that looked like for both parties, what that looked like for our show, what that looks like in politics, what that looks like in our industry.”
“And really we just extrapolated characters that we knew in real life and dumped it into those guys.”
The same interview has Baden Kelly saying Hal Jordan has “racist tendencies” and revealing John Stewart’s backstory was changed over Aaron Pierre’s skin tone.
Baden Kelly previously told Collider she repeatedly called the Green Lantern ring “sexist” in the writers room.
James Gunn says he has seen Lanterns 500 times. The finale streams October 4.
