Is John a Yellow Lantern now? Creators confirm his ‘unique’ role after the Lanterns finale

*Warning: Spoilers ahead for Lanterns episode 8*

The ending of the Lanterns finale leaves John Stewart in a very different position than any of us expected: he’s effectively Earth’s Green Lantern, but he’s rejected the Guardians’ authority and is charging the ring with a yellow-tinted lantern created by Sinestro. 

John (Aaron Pierre) is able to put all the pieces together on how Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) died, learning that Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) did it to protect her son Noah (Shea Pritchard) – who is, in fact, half Manhunter.

Earlier on in the finale, while on Antaan’s destroyed home planet, Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) admits to John and Halogram that Noah broke him out of Spazkaban because he’s the only person to have killed a Guardian. But more concerningly, Noah got Sinestro to make him an unsanctioned lantern. 

When John returns to Earth through the portal, Noah’s there waiting for him. He punches John and takes Hal’s ring, only to then hand it back. Clearly, Noah has been at odds with his Manhunter programming and asks John to kill him out of fear he won’t be able to overcome it. But John refuses, instead trusting Noah to choose his human conscience. 

This leaves John with the ring and the newly forged lantern. At the end of the finale, John calls Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) and tells him that he’s going to be the Lantern for Earth, while Guy can handle everywhere else in the cosmos. 

It’s quite the turnaround given he rejected the Guardians’ position as Green Lantern a decade ago. But this time, it’s on his own terms. “Think of me as an independent contractor,” John says. “No Guardians, no Corps.”

He then makes a new oath (more on this shortly) and charges up the ring, before flying off, ready for his new position as Earth’s Lantern… but that leaves one big question. 

Is John Stewart a Yellow Lantern now?

The short answer is no, John isn’t simply a Yellow Lantern. Instead, the creators describe what he’s become as an “utterly unique creation” – one who isn’t “100 percent a Green Lantern anymore” either.

It’s easy to see why there’s confusion. In the DC Comics, Yellow Lanterns wield the yellow light of fear and are most closely associated with Sinestro and his Sinestro Corps, while Green Lanterns draw their power from will. 

John’s new setup combines elements of both, which we see when John inspects the forged lantern. He notices the yellow streaks through it, created by contamination of fear from the water and air on Antaan’s planet. 

Also, John acknowledges fear in his new oath. “In the brightest day, in the darkest night, I’ll embrace my fear, I’ll do what’s right. I choose this ring, I choose this fight, in service to this lantern’s light,” he says as he charges the ring. 

And it’s for this reason some viewers were left wondering what this makes him. As one Redditor asked, “Is he a green lantern? Yellow lantern? Just lantern?”

This is something the co-creators addressed in a press conference ahead of the Lanterns finale, with Chris Mundy saying (via The Hollywood Reporter) that they were “crazily nervous” about John’s revised oath. 

But writer Justin Britt-Gibson added, “We’re not rewriting it; we’re remixing it.” Plus, Damon Lindelof pointed out everything that had been set up to this point, with John having to spend his whole life serving his parents, the Guardians, the Marines and the Green Lanterns Corps – now, he gets to serve on his own terms. 

Tom King then explained, “John is not a hundred percent a Green Lantern anymore. He has an unsanctioned lantern that has a bit of yellow and a bit of fear in it. So he’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern – just like a Yellow Lantern or an Orange Lantern says something different. 

“John is this utterly unique creation that he chose for himself. So getting his own unique oath seemed to line up very much with the lore and where we’re going from here.”

Interestingly, this is a big reason for the DCU show’s title. Speaking on the official Lanterns podcast, King said, “There is some Geoff Johns in that because that lantern is not a pure green lantern. There’s streaks of yellow in it.”

“What you hit on at the beginning of all those different colours have different notes, part of that is right in there,” he added, to which Lindelof chimed in, “That’s why it’s called Lanterns.”

What does this mean for Lanterns season 2?

At the time of writing, Lanterns season 2 hasn’t officially been confirmed by HBO, but the creators are already thinking about where John’s new position could take him next.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly after the finale, Mundy was specifically asked whether John can technically still call himself a Green Lantern. “A little bit,” he replied, adding that it is “definitely something that could be addressed if and when the show moves forward.”

“We thought of him as being Green Lantern of Earth, but of course he’s more or less blackmailing the Guardians at the moment,” Mundy continued. “So it’s both an empowered and precarious situation all at once.”

In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter in August, Mundy explained, “We feel good that we told the story in season 1 well. The question is whether [season 2] is a story people are interested in. 

“If that’s the case, then we’ll get to do another one. We’ll tell it in a slightly different way, so that it feels fresh, with characters you know and care about. We’re about six weeks into laying out a season, and then we’ll talk to folks about it really soon.”

But season 2 isn’t the only place we’ll see what comes next for John. Aaron Pierre is officially reprising his role in James Gunn’s upcoming Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow, which means the version of John who appears in the movie will be the one we just left at the end of Lanterns. 

Pierre has already filmed the movie, telling Games Radar that spending 106 days playing John on Lanterns allowed him to arrive on the Man of Tomorrow set with “a deep understanding of who my man John is.”

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Featured image credit: HBO