{"id":1034286,"date":"2026-08-31T04:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T04:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1034286\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T04:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T04:39:17","slug":"lanterns-episode-3-hbos-show-nails-the-black-american-experience-in-unexpected-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1034286\/","title":{"rendered":"Lanterns Episode 3: HBO\u2019s show nails the Black American experience in unexpected ways."},"content":{"rendered":"

This article contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 3, \u201cOutKast,\u201d of Lanterns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lanterns<\/a>, HBO\u2019s new series adapting DC\u2019s Green Lantern comics, has been unfolding like a narrative set of Russian nesting dolls, wherein one mystery always leads to yet another and every character\u2019s background is shrouded in secrecy. This is why, three episodes in, we\u2019re only now getting the origin story of the show\u2019s unflappable co-lead, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), a former U.S. Marine and Green Lantern\u2013in\u2013training to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), the jaded, virid hero currently tasked with protecting Earth from alien threats. Sunday\u2019s episode of Lanterns plays a pivotal role in peeling back the show\u2019s exterior of puzzles and spandex and deftly approaches a more jagged topic: John\u2019s reality as a Black superhero in training, whose life has been shaped by an immense pressure to defy the world\u2019s racial expectations. This pressure is placed on him by his parents, characters who are approached here with a great level of nuance and care.<\/p>\n

In Episode 3, titled \u201cOutKast,\u201d written by Vanessa Baden Kelly, Lanterns reveals that John\u2019s father, John Stewart Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson), was asked by the Guardians of the Universe to be Green Lantern before Hal Jordan. We see the extraterrestrial presence kidnap John Sr. in a green bubble and ask him the one question needed to pass the test: \u201cAre you afraid?\u201d John Sr. replies honestly: Yes, he is. That spells the end of that possibility, and on top of everything else, no one believes John Sr.\u2019s claims that an alien kidnapped him, least of all his wife, Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones), causing him to begin devolving mentally. It\u2019s not until an unnamed member of the Guardians (played by Laura Linney) arrives in front of Bernadette to apologize for any \u201cemotional turmoil\u201d caused by the Lantern initiation process that Bernadette believes her husband. But she also immediately begins to feel cheated. Bernadette grills the Guardian: \u201cDo you understand how unfair it is to ask a Black man in America if he\u2019s afraid?\u201d She continues, \u201cWe are terrified daily of persecution and still show up, sometimes better than everyone around us. Did you know that?\u201d When the Guardian replies that she did not know that, Bernadette quips: \u201cEven in space y\u2019all don\u2019t consider us.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Sam Thielman
\n HBO\u2019s Great New Show Takes a Character With an Embarrassing History and Makes Him Fascinating
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

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But, the Guardian hints to Bernadette, even if her husband didn\u2019t make the cut, her child could be a candidate to replace the current Lantern, when the time comes. Bernadette\u2019s resentment toward the Guardians passing up John Sr. for the job drives both of them to believe in that promise; as Bernadette tells her husband: \u201cWe didn\u2019t break every stereotype and face down every fear for you to be penalized because you\u2019re scared to leave the people that you love.\u201d From then on, the couple ruthlessly \u201cconditions\u201d John, their youngest son, to become \u201cused to fear\u201d in an effort to turn him into a nearly inhuman shoo-in for the role. This preparation involves training John as an expert sniper, but also as a target, tasking the child to stand still while his father shoots apples off of his head with a gun, and making him do the same to his parents. John is obliged to sleep in a separate room from his older brothers and forced to walk home from unfamiliar, potentially dangerous neighborhoods when he\u2019s barely a teenager. He is asked to sacrifice his interest in drawing, his relationship with his brothers, and his capacity for emotions, all so that he can, eventually, become the next Green Lantern and prove that Black people should no longer be left out of conversations of capability and power and renown.<\/p>\n

This dream, though, is eventually revealed to be something of a sham. John becomes a Marine, but winds up dishonorably discharged from the military for a mistake everyone knows he didn\u2019t make. Later, he is told by the Guardians to, in practical terms, shut up and follow orders. And, on top of that, the job of Green Lantern isn\u2019t even all that great. It doesn\u2019t pay well, and, as Hal\u2019s trainee, John is affronted by the superhero\u2019s mediocrity\u2014which actually caused John\u2019s dishonorable discharge\u2014yet subjected to his lackluster teachings. John\u2019s parents reared their son to take on an honored role, but for what? At the end of the day, John realizes, he is still meant to answer to a dubious group of beings that couldn\u2019t care less about him beyond what he can do for them. He\u2019s been weighed down by the enormous psychological and emotional burden of his parents\u2019 expectations all his life, for little more than the same old crap.<\/p>\n

This harsh revelation gets at the fallacy and the pressure of \u201cBlack excellence,\u201d an idea often used to describe a Black person breaking barriers or achieving a set of accolades that even their white counterparts find impressive. Yes, Black successes should be celebrated, and the notion that Black people can be great should be a given, not an idea we have to fight for. But, in a world where other people from various backgrounds get to be mediocre, fail upward, or show imperfections, so, too, should Black people. We should be allowed that same grace without suffering what feels like life-ending, or career-disrupting, repercussions. Great shouldn\u2019t be the only thing Black people are allowed to be, especially when that is a humanly impossible achievement, and particularly when that status of great or excellent that we\u2019re trying to attain is defined by the groups who fail to acknowledge us, anyway.<\/p>\n

Lanterns tackles this sharply. Notably, John\u2019s parents specifically strive to make him something that is a little less than human. As viewers, it\u2019s hard to watch this young child (played by Cairo Cash Lee) be separated from the people he loves and the activities he cherishes. It would\u2019ve been all too easy to merely cast blame on John\u2019s parents, or approach them with uncomplicated resentment, especially considering John\u2019s parents are fully aware of the sacrifice they\u2019re asking of a son who is too young to consent to it. \u201cHe\u2019s gonna hate us,\u201d John Sr. says, to which Bernadette replies, \u201cSo be it.\u201d But John doesn\u2019t, and neither does the show. Lanterns makes you understand that John\u2019s parents made what they felt was the best choice for their family, driven by an exasperation with surviving under the threat of persecution and consistently being perceived as inadequate while doing it. As Bernadette tells John Sr., \u201cWe can\u2019t raise three boys and believe that no matter how good they are, they get looked over.\u201d To Bernadette, everything began \u201cfalling apart\u201d on \u201cthe night they rejected\u201d John Sr., and it\u2019s telling that she sees that incident as a rejection and not a failure of her husband, that she knows that the Guardians\u2019 test was not one that considered the totality of their experience.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Sam Adams
\n It Got Exploded, Pummeled, Anviled, and Left for Dead. But Now It\u2019s Back to Life, and It\u2019s a Delight.
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

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    By withholding from assigning total and straightforward blame, Lanterns is able to fully consider what it would look like if a Black parent dedicated their child\u2019s life to making them the undeniable best, the epitome of Black excellence, even in a supercharged world. It\u2019s ultimately a misguided decision, sure, but it was born out of a deeply justified feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Though John Sr. and Bernadette\u2019s pursuit ultimately feels ill-advised, we\u2019re only able to reach that conclusion about the fallacy of Black excellence because we understand why John\u2019s parents would do that in the first place. The only way to deconstruct our staunchest cultural ideas is with the nuance of having empathy and understanding regarding where those ideas came from in the first place.<\/p>\n

    John\u2019s story is a tough one, but it echoes the real-life Black American experience in more ways than you might have come to expect from a show that could have been about little more than guys flying around in green Lycra. Seeing the internal politics of Black parenthood folded so well into a series about larger intergalactic politics is not such a huge surprise, once you remember that Lanterns co-creator Damon Lindelof also made Watchmen, which similarly pulled off a tough balancing act<\/a>. During a panel at San Diego Comic Con, Pierre, who gave a heartfelt speech about the significance <\/strong>of John Stewart<\/a>, a key Black hero in the DC comics, said: \u201cMy hope is that when folks watch this, they watch it and they feel a tangible relatability.\u201d For Pierre, that means embodying John\u2019s \u201cheart\u201d and looking up to the role of Green Lantern as John Stewart befits it. But maybe, for the rest of us, it means unlearning the harsh expectations the world has unfairly placed on us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 3, \u201cOutKast,\u201d of Lanterns. Lanterns, HBO\u2019s new series adapting DC\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1034287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[18549,14345,171,5560,6176,57083,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1034286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-black-americans","tag-comics","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-race","tag-superheroes","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117188281564029016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1034287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}