This week’s episode of Lanterns, “OutKast,” really packs a wallop, detailing as it does the pretty messed-up origin story of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Whereas most comic-book heroes usually just have a dead relative or two to deal with on the journey to becoming super, in the HBO series’ take on John, the road to being a Green Lantern is paved with… your parents shooting apples off your head.

Those parents, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and Bernadette (Nicole Ari Parker), were of course deeply affected by what could’ve been when John Sr. was offered the Green Lantern ring but passed it up out of fear, leading to Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) claiming the ring instead. But their reaction to that – which is to put the young John Jr. on a merciless path to becoming a GL by wringing all sense of fear out of him – is pretty messed up.

I spoke to Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy about where the idea to revise John’s origin came from and how it evolved into conditioning him in this manner as preparation for his destiny as a Lantern.

“We hit on that pretty early,” Mundy explained. “We didn't hit on the entire framework of the storytelling in Episode 3 [right away], but we did on the thing that John's dad could have been Hal, and how many others there were. We would always just refer to it as he was bubbled – that John Sr. was bubbled.

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