Star Sapphire has always been the one character in Green Lantern with the strongest link to the theme of love, even before the invention of the Emotional Spectrum made love into the Sapphire’s literal power source. Having a character that revolves almost entirely around one specific emotion should ideally allow for some pretty deep, thoughtful exploration of the nature of emotion, what it means to a person, and what wearing a ring made of pure concentrated emotion actually does to someone. In the case of Star Sapphire, love tends to be more a source of anguish than anything else, starting with the soap opera that is the relationship between Carol Ferris and Hal Jordan.
Just so we’re all on the same page: Hal Jordan is a pilot working for Ferris Aircraft. Carol Ferris is Hal’s boss, and the two of them have this “will they won’t they” sort of relationship. Carol is also Star Sapphire…kind of. Unlike Green Lantern, Star Sapphire isn’t just Carol using super powers. Aliens called the Zamarons implanted Carol with this gem that has a will of its own, and Star Sapphire is a separate personality that comes out and takes control of Carol’s body. Carol has no control over, or (in some cases) memory of, Sapphire’s actions. So for the bulk of comic history, the group dynamic here is: Hal’s in love with Carol, but she refuses him because she’s his boss and he’s too irresponsible…Carol loves Green Lantern, but doesn’t know Green Lantern is Hal…Hal knows Carol is Star Sapphire, but Carol doesn’t know she is…and Star Sapphire wants to kill Green Lantern, but doesn’t know it’s Hal. And then sometimes everything I just said is the opposite, because they’ve been doing this for 73 years and it’s bizarre.
This love triangle…love square?…was the status quo for these characters for decades, and was honestly a complicated enough soap opera already…but they had to add one more character to the mix. They had to add the Predator.
The Predator was this super powered vigilante who’d show up to do things like protect Ferris Aircraft from sabotage and attacks from super villains. Nobody knew anything about him…his costume and name made him stand out as untrustworthy, but his actions seemed altogether positive. He was helping the good guys. He was helping Carol. He’d eventually start talking to her in polite conversation. Later he’d start sending her love letters. And before long, he’d pursue her like the dangerously obsessed Predator he is.
…and at the height of all of this, a revelation is made that the Predator is a part of Carol, a manifestation of Carol’s own psyche, projected into physical space. He’s the embodiment of all of Carol’s desires and aggression, presenting as a super powered man who thinks only of Carol, most likely representing a distorted version of what she wants from Hal Jordan. The Predator is, in a very literal way, the result of a Will-They-Won’t-They love story that went on too long.
…and it doesn’t stop there, because if we accept all this, we have to take into account what it means for Carol as a person, how it means that every quality possessed by the Predator is a quality found within Carol. His dangerous obsessive nature is something that comes from her…his fixation on her a sign that she believes no-one outside of herself will love her. She and Hal might’ve been good together if they ever gave an honest and unobstructed attempt at a relationship, but that never happened, and both parties inability to let the other go turned toxic, leading to Carol looking at herself, at least in part, like this.
I find all of this fascinating to think about…but because it’s comics, we can’t just leave a good thing alone, and the truth about the Predator would be retconned in a pretty extreme way…saying that the Predator wasn’t actually a projection of Carol’s mind, but that both the Predator and the Star Sapphire were separate alien beings using Carol as a host at the same time. In this version, the Predator stalked Carol, slowly introducing himself into her life, manipulating her so he could gain access to Star Sapphire and get her pregnant as part of a larger plan to lash out against the Zamarons, the alien race who created Star Sapphire. Carol wasn’t pregnant, just Star Sapphire, which makes no sense at all…and it doesn’t have to, because that entire thing was retconned away…but it kind of doesn’t matter that it was…because even in the most positive light possible, the Predator is a character defined by doing whatever it takes to satiate overwhelmingly selfish desires…and this is the character Geoff Johns chose to make into the embodiment of love.
Geoff Johns is the writer responsible for what’s arguably the most popular run of Green Lantern ever. From Rebirth to Blackest Night, he reinvigorated the franchise by masterfully applying the right amount of retcons. Some of those retcons were large, world-building ones…like establishing the concept of the Emotional Spectrum, the actual power source of the Green Lantern rings, while also opening the door for the creation of other rings powered by hope, rage, and even love.
Most of Johns’ retcons, however, were more character-centric: examining their histories, and figuring out ways to keep the details mostly the same, while still making small changes to let those characters become more relevant to the modern stories being told. As far as villains go, a character like Black Hand used to be a C-tier nobody, but Johns was able to skillfully turn him into one of the most terrifying villains in all of comics, while also tying him in directly to the mythology of the Emotional Spectrum, with the implication that the character has always had some sort of connection to this cosmic mythology, and we just never knew before. It’s exactly the same thing he did for Parallax, which used to just be the name Hal Jordan took after he was pushed over the edge by the death of his entire city…now Parallax was the name of an Entity of pure fear, birthed from the heart of Fear’s portion of the Emotional Spectrum, who came to reside within Hal, influencing him into doing some pretty extreme, unthinkable things. We’ll talk another time about wether or not this method worked successfully with Parallax, but I’d argue that doing this with the Predator was a much messier, and ultimately problematic decision.
In a way, I can understand the choice to make the Predator into the Love Entity. It was decided that Star Sapphire’s power would be rolled into the Emotional Spectrum, Carol’s character has always revolved around the fact that she loves Green Lantern, Star Sapphire was just a way to get more drama out of that Will-They-Won’t-They relationship, so of course Sapphire is related to the part of the spectrum embodying love. And the Predator already had several characteristics that fit perfectly with our modern understanding of how the living Entities of the Emotional Spectrum work. He’s a parasitic alien being who can take a host, either lurking in their subconscious to affect their actions, or taking full control of them while his costume appears on their body. I actually wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the Predator as a character influenced the way Geoff Johns chose to approach the Parallax retcon.
…and part of me kind of wishes that if they were going to go this rout, that it would’ve been a full retcon, giving us a whole new version of the Predator. But when we get our first good look at this new status quo of the Predator, we find out quickly that not much has changed. Yeah, he’s a purple dinosaur bug now, but that’s really it. He stalks and possesses people who’re dangerously obsessed with others, empowering them to act on pent up desires that tell them they deserve to own and control the lives of another person regardless of what that other person wants.
At this point, Star Sapphire IS Carol. The whole Emotional Spectrum thing let her get a power ring of her own, powered by pure love, so now the Sapphire is just Carol’s super hero identity, not a different personality or an alien possessing her. Some form of her traumatic history with the Predator remains, and she takes it upon herself to hunt him down and stop him. But when she does find him, and sees that he’s still doing all these terrible things, victimizing more people…she doesn’t fight him. She gives in to him. She placates him by giving him what he always wanted from her. From that day on, the Predator has been Carol’s loyal, faithful pet, never hurting anyone or doing anything wrong. And that is a grossly irresponsible message to put out into the world…that if you know someone who’s physically or emotionally abusive, that it’s ok because you can change them, that love can change them. I get the impression that what we’re supposed to take from this is some positive message about the overwhelming power of Love conquering all, but all I can see here is a victim rewarding their abuser.
A running theme with the Star Sapphire is the fact that the Zamarons who created them have their own personal problems, and it’s tainted the way they perceive and present the concept of pure love. Carol is constantly getting in the Zamarons’ faces over the fact that their approach to running the Star Sapphire Corps has nothing to do with pure love, and that the Zamarons are just taking out their own broken hearts on the rest of the universe. Love is an extremely powerful thing that people have incredibly complicated relationships with. Carol understands that, and is constantly grappling with what her own unhealthy relationships mean for her ability to still be worthy of a ring powered by love. The problem is that Carol is a supporting character, and the Zamarons are supporting characters of a supporting character, so nothing any of them do or believe is ever given the room to be fleshed out or explored, and the same hypocritical points about love just keep getting repeated as the shorthand for what these characters are all about. So all we ever get is a whole lot of characters talking about how wonderful love is, yet doing absolutely terrible things in the name of love, while Carol is made to ride the fence because while she advocates a better version of what love can be, she’s relegated to the sidelines because she’s not the star of the book, and thus never makes any real progress. And that really sucks, because all of the groundwork needed to tell a truly compelling story about the thoughtful exploration of what it means to harness love as tangible, usable power is already there, it’s just being ignored.
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