Welcome to the Couch Club, our recurring column devoted to all things #DCTV! This week, Joshua Lapin-Bertone looks at what Lanterns reveals about overcoming programming and identity.
 

SPOILER ALERT: The following feature contains major spoilers from the Lanterns season finale.
 

Can we talk about that Lanterns finale? It’s been a few days and I’m still processing everything we saw. We learned about Hal Jordan’s final moments, the Manhunter threat was resolved, and John Stewart chose a new path for himself as a renegade Green Lantern. There’s a lot to unpack and my mind keeps returning to the conversation in the car between John Stewart and Noah Macon, who we discovered was secretly a Manhunter.

Noah tells John about his dual nature, and how part of him wants to live a normal life playing football with his friends, while his Manhunter programming wants to infiltrate the United States government, take over the world and kill the Guardians of the Universe. He then confesses to killing Hal Jordan, and tells John to kill him as an act of mercy so he doesn’t give in to his Manhunter instincts.

However, the conversation convinces John that not only is Noah not a threat, but that he has a chance to overcome his lineage as a Manhunter and build a new life for himself. For starters, John had already figured out that Noah’s mother Kerry Kane had killed Hal. All Noah’s false confession does is confirm John’s suspicions about the boy’s nature. The teenager chose love over self-preservation, taking credit for Hal’s murder to protect his mother.

Rewatching the episode, I really get the sense that John put all this together before he and Noah ever get into the car. Shortly before returning through the portal, the Hal Jordan hologram (“Halogram,” if you will) warns John that Noah could kill him.

“No, he won’t,” John replies.

In my first viewing I thought this was John being confident that Noah couldn’t overpower him, but after seeing the rest of the episode, I realize he’s saying it because he knows Noah isn’t a killer.

I suspect this is because John sees a lot of himself in Noah. John knows what it’s like to fight programming and conditioning. While Noah’s programming is genetic and John’s was done through some harsh and questionable parenting, the parallels are hard to miss.

“For a long time, I couldn’t tell where I started and where my programming ended,” John tells Noah. “The whole ‘What is me?’ thing, you know, how much of it is just training and repetition and am I just doing it to please my parents? But then, you know, I decided that actually, that’s all just a big f*cking cop out. Because if I can ask myself the question, then I can answer it for myself.”

John understands Noah in a way nobody else could. As we see in the flashback, when Hal finds out Noah is a Manhunter, his instinct is to take him and Kerry and flee the planet. He believes Noah needs distance from Earth for his protection, and he worries about the Guardians coming after him. But John sees something different. He sees someone fighting his programming, choosing compassion over conquest. Above all else, he sees a scared kid. And John knows what it’s like to be scared kid.

Do yourself a favor and watch the car scene with John and Noah again and really pay attention to actor Shea Pritchard’s performance. Look at the fear in his eyes when John talks about Noah’s grandmother fearing she couldn’t overcome her Manhunter programming. Listen to him talk about playing football with his friends.  He wants a normal life, but he’s afraid of facing the same fate as his grandmother.

“If you could see the inside of my head, you would never stop screaming,” Noah tells John.

It’s interesting that this conversation happens during a car ride, because car ride conversations have been a big part of this series. I feel like there is some symbolism there that I am missing. Maybe it’s about being the driver of your own destiny? After all, at one point in the conversation, Noah and John come to a fork in the road and John asks Noah where they’re going. He clearly isn’t just talking about their destination.

Noah chooses to drive to the football game, and it confirms what John already knew. He wants his human life with his friends. The decision has already been made. The rest of it was just fear, and it leads John to realize that instead of running from fear like his parents and the Guardians taught him, he has to embrace it and forge his own path.

Seeing Noah overcome his Manhunter programming helps to inspire John to do what he does next: choosing to become an unsanctioned Green Lantern who plays by his own rules. It’s not the easy choice, and it’s not the one he was raised (or programmed) to follow, but it’s John’s life, and he’s the driver of his own destiny.
 

All eight episodes of Lanterns, starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, are now streaming on HBO Max.

Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, "Gotham Gazette." Follow him on Bluesky at @joshualapinbertone and on X at @TBUJosh.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Joshua Lapin-Bertone and do not necessarily reflect those of DC, Warner Bros. or Skydance, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.