‘Lanterns’ Episode ‘OutKast’ Explores Young John Stewart’s Painful Upbringing

HBO’s ‘Lanterns‘ has spent its initial episodes delving into small-town mysteries and cosmic fears, but its third episode takes a significant turn towards character exploration. Titled “OutKast,” this episode dedicates the entire hour to John Stewart, tracing his life from infancy to the pivotal moment he meets Hal Jordan.

The episode’s structure is unconventional, even by prestige-TV standards. It unfolds as a nonlinear job interview, with Aaron Pierre’s adult John Stewart narrating his past to a mysterious Guardian of the Universe, portrayed by Laura Linney, while flashbacks reveal a childhood marked by fear conditioning and his parents’ secret knowledge of his cosmic fate.

One of the most discussed moments occurs during a seemingly minor scene featuring a road trip and a car radio. Young John, traveling with his brothers Aaron and Marcus, is dared to rap along to the song playing, which turns out to be OutKast’s ‘ATLiens’, the title track from their 1996 album.

Initially, the moment appears to be a lighthearted sibling challenge, with John hesitating before joining in. However, the scene quickly takes a darker turn: his mother, Bernadette, orders him out of the car in an unfamiliar neighborhood, not as punishment for the song, but as part of the family’s ongoing efforts to toughen him up and eliminate his fears.

This contrast, where warmth turns into something harsher, characterizes the episode as a whole. John’s parents, played by J. Alphonse Nicholson and Jasmine Cephas Jones, were informed years earlier by the Guardians that their son was destined to become a Green Lantern, which profoundly influenced how they raised him compared to his brothers.

The episode’s title serves a dual purpose. It directly references the rap group whose music permeates the episode, while also describing John himself, a child deliberately set apart from his siblings, shaped into someone capable of enduring scrutiny that none of his family faced. The decision to conclude the episode with another OutKast track, ‘Gasoline Dreams’, reinforces this theme as the credits roll.

In addition to the Stewart family drama, “OutKast” also includes glimpses of John’s early experiences as a Green Lantern trainee and his tense first encounter with Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler. The episode reportedly opens even earlier, in 1986, on the night Abin Sur’s ring first arrived on Earth, providing a stronger historical context for the show’s mythology before returning to John’s adult timeline.

‘Lanterns’ has already garnered attention for its departure from the John Stewart most comic readers are familiar with, replacing the stoic, battle-hardened Marine archetype with a character whose calm demeanor masks a childhood built on suppressing fear. This reframing appears intentional, using episode three to explore why John became the person viewers encounter in the present-day storyline.

With Hal Jordan and Sinestro’s long-anticipated confrontation still on the horizon after the previous episode’s cliffhanger, “OutKast” opts to slow down and focus on character development rather than plot, resulting in some of the show’s most emotionally impactful material to date.

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