So I’ve been watching the last week of online discourse surrounding the finale and frankly the entire first season of Lanterns and one thing I’ve gotten from it all is that some of y’all belong in Rushville. Some of y’all are so in love with the idea of someone telling you what to do, think and feel that you have a visceral reaction when you see someone both in real life and in fiction decide that institutions might not have all the answers. They might not be perfect and sometimes, you can survive without them.

Now I normally don’t weigh in on online discord. I tend to stay in my own lane and talk about things that I like. One of the main reasons is because I don’t always know if I’m contributing to an actual discussion or if I’m feeding the rage bait trolls thirsty for engagement. I have honestly spent days deleting comments on other videos about Lanterns because I went to previous videos and saw that their only contributions to any discord is to be the contrarian that gets rage comments and engagement and that doesn’t interest me.

But I am going to give my two cents on what I took away from the Lanterns series as a writer, reviewer and general fan of the Green Lantern characters from the time I was a kid.

There are a lot of people who are upset that the series is not what they feel a representation of a green lantern series should be and they are absolutely right. Unfortunately, they failed to realize that the series isn’t a green lantern story, which is why it is called Lanterns and not Green Lanterns. It was never about the lantern. The lantern is a tool. It’s a MacGuffin to give the characters something to both tempt and motivate them but it has little to no meaning to the actual story other than what it does in the story as something to get, something to use, something to protect and something to earn. It’s a thing, same as the rings that are charged by it. The story of Lanterns, in my opinion, is about institutions and whether those institutions are worth protecting and fighting for.

Institutions

Zoey, the Manhunter. If there’s one glaring example of a corrupt institution at work, it’s Rushville itself and how its people so willingly chose to turn over their town to Zoey. Zoey, and by extension her family, became the institution in Rushville. She used her technology to prolong the lives of the people of the town making them dependent on her and ensuring that they would willingly lay down their lives to protect her. Their mass submission to Zoey and William ultimately led to the destruction of the town as Zoey sacrificed the townspeople to protect herself and did so without hesitation.

The citizens of Rushville became part of the institution when they decide that they wanted the technology, prosperity and health the Manhunter provided and all she wanted in return was protection and none of them questioned why she needed protection or from what. They were willing to lay down their lives for an alien that gave them things they wanted. That’s what institutions do ultimately. They make you dependent on them while demanding more and more from you in return.

The second biggest institution in the series is the Guardians of the Universe themselves. The Guardians are the ultimate example of an Institution in both this series and the comics. They are emotionless creatures who have appointed themselves the authority over every other civilization in the universe. Notice how I said “appointed themselves”. These aliens decided that they were going to be the arbiters of justice in the universe and no one questioned it. They decided how they were going to provide and maintain order and no one objected. Instead, all of those sectors turned over that authority to the Guardians boosting and legitimizing the institution to the point where they could do no wrong.

And believe me, they did a lot of wrong.  It’s a central conceit of the comics that even as a fan, I always had a problem with especially when the breath of the Guardians multiple mistakes are uncovered.

Before the Guardians created the Green Lantern Corps, they created the Manhunters to police the universe. When that experiment resulted in an atrocity (and for those who know ball Atrocitus) what did the Institution do to protect itself? It covered it up. They wiped out all information about the Manhunters, rewrote history and altered the memory of anyone who came close to finding out the truth.

Or how about imprisoning a cosmic entity of fear in the very power battery you use to power the rings of your core. I guess no one in the institution thought it might be a good idea to tell their agents that there is an impurity in your rings that makes you vulnerable to the color yellow and it’s our fault because we shoved a pissed off fear demon into the central battery.

Or maybe creating a Third Army because you failed with the first one because of their lack of emotion and failed with the second because they were too independent thinking so you make a third one that strips its victims of free will and emotion while making them obedient slaves.

Anyone else find it interesting that all of these things were created by the “good guys” who appointed themselves and their institution as guardians. It’s almost seems like institutions with no oversight and answerable to no one are inherently corrupt.

Hal Jordan, in the Lanterns series, is probably the best example of the corruption of the institution in that he turned over his entire existence to it in order to find a sense of purpose. After securing the position, Hal excelled at the job of being the Green Lantern of Earth but also still retained a level of independence that put him at odds with the institution he served. Where the tragedy comes in is that even in his independence, he still sought the approval of that institution because he never developed an existence beyond it.

You can see it in the way he lives his life in the series. He lives in a giant mansion, alone. He has no meaningful relationships outside the plant and all of the things he did in service to the Guardians gained him nothing in the end and he starts to realize that when he’s partnered with John. Hal is not dumb. He knows that the Guardians want to replace him and he also knows that John is qualified, but he is so afraid of his life not mattering in the long run, that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get back into the good graces of the institution that is actively trying to replace him. He doesn’t want to stop the Manhunter in Rushville out of any sense of morality. He thinks bringing the Manhunter in will show the Guardians that he still has value.

In the end, he’s so broken by his desire to remain a part of the institution that he will sacrifice anyone and anything to do so and he learns the hard way that ultimately, it doesn’t matter. It’s what makes his words in his eulogy even more sad because all he wanted was to matter, but he had almost no one in his personal life that he mattered to. He turned over his entire life to the persona of being a Green Lantern and the institution that created it.

Look, I can’t stand Guy Gardner. I think he’s a terrible character and is indicative of the white male power fantasy. He is literally the definition of hurt people hurting people because his growing up in an abusive home and becoming a green lantern is the equivalent of a guy growing up in an abusive home and then becoming a cop instead of going to therapy. You have an unhealed person with unresolved personal issues given authority, a weapon and little to no oversight and I’m supposed to believe that is a hero.

But even I am willing to argue that Guy Gardner is as much a victim of the institution of the green lanterns as Hal Jordan was. In Superman, Guy is part of the Justice Gang and shows up to stop a monster rampaging through Metropolis. He’s a hothead and a jerk, but that’s about it. He doesn’t stand out and that’s part of the problem. He doesn’t want to stand out. He wants to be seen as a hero on Earth, but I guarantee you he doesn’t do anything to rock the boat when it comes to the Guardians. Even in the movie, he had to almost be shamed into doing the right thing when it actually mattered.

Both in the movie and the series, Guy is concerned with the optics of how something looks. He follows orders. He doesn’t question or challenge the institution and that’s what they like about him. He is allowed to become a brand rather than a person and that brand is a PR gimmick that the institution uses to cover up its own failures.

Guy Gardner is becoming so institutionalized by the Guardians and the brand of being the Green Lanter that he is in danger of not only becoming Hal, but something worse because he doesn’t question the institution. He is afraid of it.

So now let’s get to John Stewart.

Hal Jordan chose to be the Green Lantern after the death of Abin Sur. Guy Gardner was chosen to be the Green Lantern after John Stewart rejected it. John Stewart was never given a choice. John was groomed from infancy to be the Green Lantern. His father’s failure to take on the mantle and the Guardians lackluster understanding of humanity gave his parents the impetus to decide who and what their son was going to be and their acknowledgement of his future resentment of them doesn’t make up for the fact that they still chose his life for him and pushed him into something without his consent.

What’s interesting about John’s journey throughout the series is that he is pushed by all of these institutions in different directions and his discoveries about them change him as a person. The main reason those things change him is because he finally sees what those institutions are doing to him and he overcomes the fear of them in ways Hal, Guy, Kerry and everyone else couldn’t.

John Stewart was groomed from the time he was an infant to be the Green Lantern. His parents made that decision for him and changed their entire lives to make sure that it happened. The created a smaller institution strictly for John and in the process they stripped away his agency, his dreams, his choices and ultimately his ability to feel safe with them. It’s evident in his calling his mother by her first name or sending his brother to get their father. The institution succeeded in creating someone worthy of being a Green Lantern, but it failed in making John Stewart a whole person.

Next came the military. After being brought up in one institution, he then joins another institution in order to get the additional training necessary to become part of the third institution and what does that get him? He becomes a valuable asset tasked with a dangerous mission. He follows orders. He does what he’s told and right at the moment his mission should culminate in success, it gets screwed up by Hal Jordan and John Stewart has to take the blame for it. Ultimately ending up being discharged from the institution of the military dishonorably. Another institution that failed John Stewart.

Finally we get to the Guardians.

John Stewart has been groomed his entire life to become a Green Lantern. Every lesson, every instruction. Every move his parents made was to make sure that John Stewart was worthy in the eyes of that institution and they even told him that he was being watched by them to ensure that he always acted without fear.

When he finally gets assigned to Hal Jordan as his backup and replacement, he sees first hand what being a Green Lantern under the guardians actually does to someone. He sees how desperate and broken Hal Jordan has become. He discovers that the Guardians are responsible for the Manhunters and covered it up. He sees how quickly they will discard Hal Jordan and give him the mantle and all he has to do is take it. Being outside the institution gives him the perfect vantage point to discover the cracks within it, the corruption at the heart of the lengths the guardians will go to protect it.

He is consistently tempted with the power the guardians offer and it isn’t until he finally accepts that every institution he has trusted has failed him and others that he finally decides to reject it and make his own path forward.

Institutions can be forces for good in the world, but more often they are breeding grounds for corruption and the people inside of them are usually their first victims. I think one of the biggest through lines of the first season of Lanterns is that John was headed towards being a victim of those institutions from the time he was a child and seeing the corruption those institutions created gave him the strength of will to reject them and forge his own path as a hero.

I want to know what you think. Let me know in the comments below.

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