HBO Officially Changes a Fundamental Rule of DC Superhero Canon

John Stewart’s impossible construct reveals just how powerful he could become on Lanterns and beyond

In 2014’s Justice League: War, heroes including Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash unite to defend Earth from an invasion led by Darkseid. Batman and Green Lantern are among the first to stumble into an uneasy partnership. As they pursue an alien through Gotham’s sewers, Hal Jordan spends much of their first conversation flying behind Batman and showing off. When he finally lands, the Dark Knight casually slips the ring from Hal’s finger. The green costume and powers immediately disappear. He regains his Green Lantern powers only after summoning the ring back to his hand.

Adapted from Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s 2011 Justice League #1, the scene is a funny distillation of both characters. Hal is powerful and cocky. Batman is observant enough to identify and steal the source of that power within minutes. It also dramatizes one of the Green Lantern mythology’s basic rules: The ring transforms willpower into physical hard-light constructs, but a Lantern has to be wearing the ring to wield that power.

HBO’s Lanterns just pushed that rule to its apparent limit — and potentially set John Stewart up to become the most powerful Green Lantern in the DC Universe.

Note: Spoilers follow for Lanterns episode 2.

In Lanterns episode 2, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) maintains an intricate, autonomous construct while separated from the ring and after repeatedly losing consciousness. The Green Lantern comics contain a handful of comparable feats, but they usually involve veteran Lanterns, unusual rings, or cosmic transformations. John accomplishes it after just two months of training, which already makes him seem like a prodigy among the Corps.

Despite the fact that John has been training with Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) for two months when Lanterns begins, he still hasn’t learned how to fly. The episode opens with John’s first flight lesson (although Hal selfishly just wants John to fly so he can retrieve the lantern they need to recharge the ring). Hal doesn’t have much good advice to give other than, “Think ‘flight.’” On John’s second attempt, instead of taking to the skies, he conjures a small bird. Hal reacts with an incredulous, “What the fuck is that!?” He’s shocked, even confused — because that’s not really supposed to happen.

The constructs created by the vast majority of Green Lanterns are hollow: bubbles like the one Hal used to contain the explosion at the end of episode 1, big fists, simple shields, etc. According to DC’s official description of John Stewart, however, he’s unique among Lanterns: “A former architect, Stewart creates his power ring constructs differently from his fellow Lanterns, as they are never hollow,” it reads. “He always builds them from the inside out, down to the last nut and bolt — the result of his keen architectural mind.”

Lanterns doesn’t present John as an architect, but he does have artistic inclinations. It’s easy to miss, but while Hal is interrogating the alien at the end of episode 1, John makes an incredibly detailed sketch of him in a matter of minutes.

Even this early in his career as a Lantern, John designs things “down to the last nut and bolt.” In this case, however, it’s a living construct that behaves just like a real bird. That’s incredibly advanced, even if Hal refuses to acknowledge it. If anything, it makes Hal angry, perhaps jealous, as he sends John on an airplane flight to collect the lantern. “And one more trainee exercise: Take that bird with you and bring it back alive!” Hal says. “You lose concentration, it disappears. It disappears, you fail.”

Even though John gets knocked unconscious (twice) and nearly dies evading his alien kidnappers later in the episode, the bird persists. When John finally meets their leader, Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor), he calls it a “wildly impressive construct” and is surprised that John is able to do this despite not wearing a ring.

After John returns to Rushville and delivers Antaan’s ultimatum to Hal — that they have to identify the Manhunter within 48 hours — John drops a bit of a bombshell. “They said to create a living thing, let alone keeping it alive while not wearing the ring, is so advanced that it’s practically impossible,” John says. “But I figured that couldn’t be true, because you would have at least given me a hoo-rah.” Hal gives him the hoo-rah in a moment that feels like the first real start of these two beginning to trust and respect one another.

Hal also asks about the bird, suggesting that it must “mean something pretty deep” because John brought it to life with his subconscious. John brushes it off, saying it’s “just a bird.” Then, to prove the point, he crushes it in his hands, turning the bird back into cosmic green dust.

John has accomplished similar expert-level feats in the comics, although only after becoming far more powerful than an ordinary Green Lantern. In Philip Kennedy Johnson and Montos’ Green Lantern: War Journal, John creates Ellie, a sentient construct modeled on his late sister that can think and act independently while he is elsewhere. But he was only able to do this after absorbing a primordial cosmic entity called the Godstorm which effectively elevated him to the status of a cosmic god.

Yet on Lanterns, John’s untapped potential is already reaching levels that should be totally impossible. What’s that going to look like when he finally puts the ring on for good?