Trauma creates superheroes, we’re told. Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents’ murder and made vengeance his life’s mission. Superman survived his planet’s destruction. “Lanterns” opens with the shocking scene of John Stewart’s father, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson), aiming a gun at him and shooting an apple off his head when he was 10. Then he affectionately hugs young John (Cairo Cash Lee), who smiles up at daddy, proud he didn’t flinch.
Some origin stories present trauma as an inciting moment that changes everything. John’s, however, unfolds over the course of his childhood, when he is most impressionable, beginning on his fifth birthday. In the third episode, “OutKast,” that’s when John Sr. and his mother, Bernadette (Jasmine Cephas Jones), reveal his destiny to become the next Green Lantern. Moments after he blows out the candle on his cake, John’s father places a rifle in his hands.
