Lanterns sure does seem to enjoy hitting viewers with a big, last-minute twist and then immediately pivoting elsewhere in the following episode. The pilot culminated with a jump ahead to 2026 and the reveal that Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) has seemingly been murdered. Episode 2 avoided returning to the 2026 timeline at all, instead ending with circa-2016 Hal travelling to Oa and meeting with an incarcerated Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen). And now our follow-up to that pivotal meeting is another jump backward, this time to the '80s and '90s for an installment that goes into great detail about John Stewart's peculiar origin story. That approach might almost be frustrating if not for the fact that the execution remains so strong. It turns out that this "mere" flashback episode is the best chapter of Lanterns to date.

Through its complex but easy-to-follow nonlinear narrative, Episode 3 fills in a great many blanks about John's childhood, his relationship with his parents, his doomed military career, and his recruitment into the Green Lantern Corps. It's interesting how little the series is actually drawing from the comics here. Trace elements remain, like John's mother being a formative influence and the Guardians keeping a watchful eye on him from afar, but for the most part, the show invents this origin story from whole cloth. It's a risk, but a very successful one.

Personally, I've about had my fill of superhero origin stories that center around a character grieving the loss of a parent figure and using that as propellant to become the hero they're destined to be.

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