Lanterns Creators Break Down Major Green Lantern Twist In James Gunn’s DCU

WARNING: This article includes MAJOR spoilers from Lanterns season 1, episode 8.The DC Universe drops a major new twist in James Gunn’s superhero franchise.

As the DCU’s Chapter 1: “Gods and Monsters” continues to expand on DC Studios’ live-action reboot, 2026 brought a bigger spotlight to the Emerald Knights, with the Lanterns TV show on HBO. Since August, viewers have been following the great journey of Hal Jordan and John Stewart, taking several unexpected turns along the way.

ScreenRant’s Andy Behbakht recently participated in the Lanterns season 1 finale conference where Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, along with showrunner Chris Mundy, and executive producers Tom King and Damon Lindelof, broke down the events of episode 8. As the final installment of the first season saw John make his own oath as an Emerald Knight, it brought a major change to the comic canon, with him uttering these words:

“In Brightest Day. In 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.”

Mundy began by sharing when they knew that they were going to give John his unique oath that both reflected his character arc and tied to the Green Lantern Corps going forward.

He stated that “I would say we didn’t… that’s one that we did not know until very late, that was really as we were breaking the finale, that decision, that idea came up. And yes, of course, we were crazily nervous. I mean, I think- I think the key to us… and it’s funny because we kind of wrote it as like everyone kind of threw out various lines, I don’t know who’s are who’s at this point when we kind of put them all back together. I know Justin, one of the writers, was like, well, we’re not re-writing, we’re remixing it, but I think the idea was we sort of were taking a look back at what we had done with the season, and so John’s path was not the normal path, like, he was… the ring didn’t choose him, he was interviewed, he was kind of raised for it.”

The showrunner elaborated how John “was having to choose this thing, then he decided not to do it, and then decided that he needed to do it on his own terms. And so, it- it felt… We wanted it to be true to the original and respectful of the original, but his version is rooted, obviously, in the OG version of, but we also wanted to tweak it to talk about the themes that we talked about, and fear, and make it- make it be a choice that he was choosing this thing and not something he was like, oh, I’m doing it because my parents want me to do it, or I’m doing it because these things.” For Mundy, he felt that “I think at a certain point, you end- you end writing a season, you- you have a split second to look back on what you built and what was important inside of it, you hope, you know, you hope people will like it, and it was our way to reflect what we built.”

Lindelof elaborated on his perspecive about how they got to this point for John in the Lanterns finale, saying that, “Yeah, and I guess I would just echo that when you- when you watch the totality of John Stewart’s story, it’s really hard to get to the end of it and say that he is in alignment with the [Corps,[ with the Green Lantern [Corps,] and Lianna, and everything that it stands for, and for a man who pledged his loyalty to the- to the, you know, to the military, to his parents, that like this idea of saying “I’m kind of beyond doing that for other organisations, and in order for me to formulate an oath, it has to be on my own terms and in my own way.”

He stressed that, “again, echoing Chris, we were definitely nervous and scared about doing it.” Lindelof clarified that “it was one of those things, and- and Tom actually offered a lot of great insight, where he was saying, well, look, you know, every… there are all these alien species out there who have to recite the oath, but they don’t speak English, and some of them don’t even have site, and so when they talk about something ‘black as night’, they don’t even… that- that’s what they live in, perpetuity, and so, there’s a lot- there’s a lot of wiggle room for translation.”

According to the creative, who is no stranger to the world of DC, after running HBO’s Watchmen TV show, it was “more importantly, I think that, circling back to some of the things that Kyle and Aaron were saying about fear and- and how the show deals with fear, like we started to say, if we’re not afraid of doing an idea, then we probably shouldn’t do it.” Lindelof admitted that “We are… We have the baton, we are wearing the ring for this period of time, we get to make a season of this show, who knows what happens next, but if we’re not taking risks, and you can’t take a risk for risk sake, it has to be earned, and the way that it’s earned is the character starts to tell you what they will do and won’t do before- before the actor even gets to put on the costume of the character and make it their own.”

In the end, he thought, “It just felt right, and we understood that it’s probably going to be the- the thing that, like, the fandom… divides the fandom, etc. But, again, you- you just have to honour the characters at the end of the day, and it felt like it was a good thing, and obviously, Aaron’s performance speaks for itself, so.”

Finally, King also chimed in about the DCU’s newest Green Lantern, saying that “Chris and Damon spoke beautifully to the philosophy and thought behind it all. I’ll talk about the merit of it all. And, yeah, like Damon said, there’s a whole Alan Moore, Bill Willingham story where sort of Lantern has to make an oath, and that started. And for more modern readers, Geoff Johns done this thing with the spectrum of Lanterns that sort of each colour of Lantern had its own oath.” For them, he felt that “what we see at the end is that John is not a hundred percent a Green Lantern anymore, he has a Lantern that has a bit of yellow in it, has a bit of fear in it, and it’s not, you know, it’s an unsanctioned Lantern, as Guy says.”

According to the DC Comics scribe, who is bringing his Mister Miracle run to life in the DCU as an animated series, the executive producer explained that for John, “He’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern because he’s not like every other Green Lantern. So, just like a Yellow Lantern says something different, or a Green Lantern says something different, or an Orange Lantern says something, this thing that John is, this utterly unique creation that he has not been given to him, that he is not chosen for but that he choose… he choosed himself? That’s the wrong verb somewhere, but he chose for himself – there it is, that he chose for himself, gets its own unique oath, seemed to line up very much with the lore and where we’re going from here.”

Lanterns season 1 is available for streaming on HBO Max.