Are John Stewart's parents caring, dedicated individuals who are doing what they believe is best for their son, or selfish sociopaths who willingly put their child in danger because they can't live with the fact that John Sr. was too afraid to claim the ring when the Guardians originally selected him as Earth's Green Lantern before moving on to Hal Jordan?
How you happen to view these characters will obviously vary from person to person, but how the Lanterns creative team is attempting to depict Bernadette and John Stewart Sr. has become a major talking point among viewers.
John Jr (Aaron Pierre) does make it clear to Laura Linney's Guardian that he knows his folks are "crazy" at one point during the most recent episode, but is this really how they are supposed to come across?
Actress Jasmine Cephas Jones certainly doesn't seem to view her character in a negative light.
"She is a Jill of all Trades, just like so many mothers are," she said in a recent interview with The Knockturnal. "To me, when I read this episode, this is a love letter to the unsung hero of the mother. And especially black mothers and making the possible out of the impossible. She is the superhero without the cape. The biggest thing is her deciding to, in that moment, take the power back for her and her family. And in order to do that, she has to make some really, really hard decisions, but we wanted to make sure that she’s not going complete psycho. We still see why she’s doing it and still showing love to her family and her sons. So that was really important as well."
Bernadette may not have gone complete psycho, but there is probably a good reason for the Guardians not choosing her to be a Green Lantern - beyond the ring being sexist, of course.
At any rate, HBO Max seems to be leaning into the discourse with the following video.
Backlash aside, Lanterns is going from strength to strength when it comes to viewership.
According to Variety, episode 3 averaged 10 million viewers globally and 7 million viewers in the U.S. after three days of viewership. This marks a series high for the DC Studios/HBO Max show (the pilot episode has now attracted more than 20 million viewers worldwide), which ranks among the top five series launches in the platform’s history.
HBO in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. The pilot episode is co-written by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, who are co-creators for the series. Mundy serves as showrunner. The first two episodes are directed by James Hawes, with Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Alik Sakharov also tapped to direct. The series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, James Gunn, Peter Safran, King, Ron Schmidt, and Hawes. Based on the DC comic characters from Green Lantern.
The series stars Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Laura Linney, Jason Ritter, Ulrich Thomsen, Nathan Fillion, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
The series follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.