Three episodes in, and already HBO’s Lanterns needs its creative batteries recharged. That’s not a great sign. With its clichéd alien visitor, preposterous origin story, and domineering mother who’s somehow more cartoonish a character than the pink guy named Sinestro, this flashback-heavy episode feels like a major misstep. 

For one thing, it needlessly complicates the Hal Jordan/John Stewart relationship. It turns out that the men have been intertwined for decades, in a way that strains credulity even on a show about space cops with magic rings. We learn that John’s father, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson), was passed over for selection as Green Lantern because he told the inquiring ring “yes” when it asked if he was afraid. This sends him into an obsessive tailspin of alcohol-fueled resentment.

A visiting member of the Guardians of the Universe, played in human form by Laura Linney, shows up some time later. She offers John’s mother Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones) a diamond the size of a mandarin orange to make up for their pain and suffering. (In a thread of dialogue reminiscent of one of comics’ more infamous attempts at addressing racism via superheroes, Bernadette laments that even from outer space, Black people aren’t truly seen.) But the Guardian also lets on that John Sr.’s positive genetic characteristics plus Bernadette’s own formidable nature might make their youngest, John Jr., an ideal candidate one day…provided he has no fear. This, Bernadette believes, will heal the family and give John Jr. a future.

What follows is a supervillain origin story in superhero origin story form. Bernadette takes point on drilling young John into a fearless man-machine, giving him a gun at age 5 and encouraging him and his dad to play William Tell. (Their neighborhood seems extremely chill about repeatedly shooting at your child’s head in broad daylight, leaving your garage riddled with bullet holes.) Bernadette lies to John that she’s able to contact the Guardians, and that birds report back to them. This last bit, at least, gives John his lifelong love of our feathered friends.

The final test is for John to shoot an apple off his parent’s head — not John Sr., with whom he chickens out, but his mother, whom he chooses instead. This time it’s her turn to show fear, and you kinda feel like it’s long overdue by this point, since fear gives her character a much-needed second dimension. 

After that it’s off to the Marines, where he becomes a sniper entrusted with black ops assassinations. Just when he’s about to complete a mission that has required him to stay parked in one place in the woods for nine months, Green Lantern Hal Jordan shows up, capturing the guy himself and scorching acres of Russian forest in the process. (Apparently he heard about the mission while getting drunk with a general at a topless bar.) John winds up accepting a dishonorable discharge under the pretense that the target’s capture was John himself acting against orders, so that the superhero’s involvement in American foreign policy will remain a secret. 

One life-altering event caused by Hal Jordan I can accept. Two is pushing your luck a little.

Anyway, showing a third dimension at last, John’s mother enrolls him in art school for reasons that are never made at all clear. If his artistic talent was a waste of time for him to pursue when he was a kid, what’s changed now that he’s lost his job as a button man for United States government?

At any rate, it’s at school that he’s finally approached by the Guardians and brought, via black hole and a plummet into a pile of mattresses in the middle of a dead mall, to his job interview with Laura Linney’s character. (Turning the cosmic into the quotidian in this way feels very 2010s, and not in a good way.)

Now yet another complication is added to the John/Hal dynamic. It’s not enough that John is living the dream his father lost out on in Hal’s favor. It’s not enough that John lost his job as a Marine sniper because of Hal’s impetuousness. It’s not enough that Hal is an asshole boss who treats John like dirt because he’s paranoid about being replaced. It’s that Hal is right to be paranoid, because the Guardians have had enough of his bullshit and really do want John to replace him, not serve as backup. 

So when Hal starts off their relationship by spoiling the surprise for John’s parents and telling John he’ll get the ring over his dead body…I mean, can we even blame him? He’s got a point! 

There are a few promising developments in this episode, beyond the OutKast on the soundtrack. We now know that Sinestro, the pink guy with the mustache in the cosmic prison, was Hal’s mentor, that Hal loved him, and that he went rogue and killed one of the twelve Guardians who rule the universe. This is why a Guardian has come to Earth to oversee the replacing of Hal Jordan rather than simply let a ring decide, as is custom. (She doesn’t mention anything about Manhunters, it should be noted.)

And even though it retroactively justifies a lot of Hal’s behavior, I really like the idea that goody two-shoes John Stewart — a vegetarian who always obeys both his parents and his Uncle Sam — is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, out to take the job of the man training him. Given his dispassionate reaction to everything (well, everything but Poorna Jagannathan’s character), this extra layer of emotion is a necessary one. His artistic talent provides a similarly welcome distinguishing characteristic.

But man, do they lean hard on Hal being the root of all John’s problems, like Lex Luthor blaming Superboy for his baldness, only for real. Hal’s responsible for John’s emotionally abusive childhood. Hal’s responsible for the ignominious end of his military career. Hal’s not just his teacher but his next target, more or less. Meanwhile, John’s flatly written parents appear to make no distinctions between resilience in the face of racism, fearlessness at the barrel of a gun, and sociopathy behind the trigger of one. It really is a supervillain origin story more than it is a superhero one.

Maybe all this will be explored. Sinestro did say that John Stewart is a threat to Hal Jordan, implicitly to his life, one even greater than the genocidal Manhunter. And he is a trained killer with a lifetime of reasons to hate Hal Jordan and orders to take his place. I just don’t feel like John Stewart, Supervillain is where this show is ultimately headed. But he’s taken on that kind of baggage, and I worry it will weigh the whole show down when it should be reaching escape velocity. 

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.