What’s REALLY Going On in Green Lantern Right Now?

 Ok so I have been thinking a lot about the current run of Green Lantern, written by Geoffrey Thorne, and I’m having a lot of fun trying to figure out where this story might be going.  So what I want to do today is share my thought process with you, and just have fun talking through my theory of what’s really going on in Green Lantern right now.  As of this recording, issue four still hasn’t come out, so maybe everything I’m about to say will end up being wrong, I don’t know, but right now it makes sense to me, so let’s have fun and start at the beginning.

One of the first things everyone learned about the Geoffrey Thorne run was that the Central Battery was going to be destroyed, and that concept didn’t sit right with a lot of people…some because they’re not as interested in super heroes who don’t have their powers anymore, and some because it feels like a retread of a story we’ve seen several times before.  It wasn’t all that long ago that we lost the Central Battery in the “Lights Out” storyline, and even then it felt a little derivative of the “Emerald Twilight” storyline.  The general feeling among fans is that this story has been told already, so why are we doing it again?  And despite the fact that most people ask that question as a way to express disappointment with DC and writer Geoffrey Thorne, it actually is the most important question we could be asking about this storyline.  Why destroy the Central Battery?  Who destroyed it, why did they want it gone, and what does it have to do with everything else that’s happening in this series?

The thing is, I think we’ve already been told exactly what’s going on.  We’ve been shown all the pieces already, and today I’m going to try to explain how they fit together.  And to do that, we need to talk about the history of John Stewart.  This is going to involve general spoilers for the 18 issue series “Green Lantern Mosaic”, a book I will be covering eventually, so if you don’t want to know one of the big twists of that series, then stop this video right now.  Ok?  Here we go.

Something that’s important to know about John is that the way he became a Green Lantern was completely different from the way Hal Jordan did.  Hal was chosen by the ring…but John was hand picked by the Guardians, and Green Lantern Mosaic tells us why.  The Guardians saw something in John, the potential to become something more, to ascend and become a being just like them.  So they made him a Green Lantern to get him used to cosmic stuff, and once he mastered that, it was time for his test: watch over the Mosaic World.  A collection of cities from across the universe had been moved to Oa by a renegade Guardian and placed right next to each other, and it was up to John to maintain peace and order until those cities could be returned home.  There were two reasons to make this John’s test, the first being the fact that the Mosaic World was a microcosm of the greater universe…if John could maintain peace and order here, then perhaps he could do the same on a larger scale when it came time for him to act on the level of the Guardians.  The second is that wrestling with this patchwork civilization was forcing John to explore and come to terms with the different aspects of his own character that always seemed to be in conflict with each other, leading to him having a much stronger sense of his own identity, and letting him build a new future now that he’d made peace with his past.

The sad part is, it didn’t stick.  One issue after Green Lantern Mosaic ended, Emerald Twilight began, and the entire Green Lantern franchise was turned upside-down and reinvented, and there was no room for what John had become, or was becoming.  The next time we saw him, he had regressed back to his old self, and joined the Darkstars.  The reason was entirely editorial, but if we wanted to, it’d be easy enough to say that John’s regression happened because his entire support network was destroyed at a critical moment in his development.  After all, what happened during Emerald Twilight?  Someone blew up the Central Battery, the Guardians died, and all the Green Lanterns lost their powers except for one…and that should sound extremely familiar to anyone paying attention to the current series, because how did the Geoffrey Thorne run start?  Someone blew up the Central Battery, one Guardian died and the rest are missing, and all the Green Lanterns lost their powers except for one.  So far this book has been filled with little moments that tie back to the period right around Emerald Twilight…like the appearance of the Qinoori Raiders, who’s only meaningful act was to destroy the home world of the main character of the Darkstars series in the 1990s, a run that saw John reinvented as a Darkstar after Emerald Twilight, after someone blew up the Central Battery.  And that’s not even mentioning all of the times characters in this book talk explicitly about Green Lantern Mosaic, and how the Guardians blatantly think of John differently than they do the rest of the Corps.  They made a point to get rid of the Corps hierarchy so all Green Lanterns would be equal, and then still gave John a position of authority as Quest Leader. They come out and say that his success with the Mosaic World and his failure with Xanshi has given him perspective on what it means to be a Guardian of the Universe.  And it’s at this point that we have to remember the Crux Worlds.

In the first issue of the Thorne run, a Crux World is described as a planet capable of producing something unique in all the universe.  Earth is the Crux of Heroes and produces most of the universe’s super beings, and one day Humanity will rise up as the next generation of Gods.  At the time, I thought that was a nice little retcon to explain why Earth is always so important, and why so many Lanterns come from Earth…but it takes on an entirely new meaning when we think about it in the context of Green Lantern Mosaic, because what was that series if not the story of someone hand picked by the Guardians who was then set up to achieve his full Human potential?  It’s just a shame that, despite John making so much progress, the experiment didn’t work.

…which is why the Guardians are trying again.

In just a few issues, this book has reinforced the idea that being immortals who’ve been watching over the universe on a macro level for millennia has given the Guardians a perspective that few mortals could ever hope to understand.  They’re completely inept when it comes to navigating daily life the way regular people do, but the tradeoff is that they see the bigger picture in ways that nobody else can.  John even realizes, when he sees the Quest Lanterns gather in preparation for their journey, that the Guardians knew exactly what was going to happen when Oa petitioned for membership in the United Planets.  All of the changes, the reassignments, the concession of territory…the Guardians knew all of it would happen, and everything has been going according to plan.

And those reassignments are key, because it seems to me that being forced to comply with the restrictions that come from being a member of the United Planets is very convenient cover for a massive redeployment of troops that would otherwise draw a lot of attention.  The Guardians suddenly had an excuse to position all of their Lanterns at new locations across the universe without anyone questioning it, because everybody knows they’re just falling in line with the rising authority of the United Planets, right?  In reality, the Guardians may be positioning their troops in preparation for something else, while also increasing their odds of survival once the Central Battery goes down.

As of right now, I believe the Guardians intentionally destroyed the Central Battery themselves.

When you lay out the timeline, things look suspicious.  A Guardian was killed, and then four hours later, a funeral was held, and his body was sent into the Central Battery.  Immediately after the dead Guardian entered the Central Battery, the entire Green Lantern Corps received new marching orders.  Fourteen hours later, once most of the Corps had left for their new assignments, the Central Battery exploded.  It feels to me like these events were orchestrated by the Guardians to cover up their true intentions, while allowing their Lanterns half a day to make it to the relative safety of their new assignments.  It’s worth mentioning that the Guardians themselves have not been seen since the Central Battery exploded, and they’re most likely allowing everyone to assume that they’re dead.

I think the Guardians know something is coming.  Something that the Corps can’t stop.  And the only chance they have is to build something stronger, while maintaining the element of surprise.  Everyone has to believe that the Green Lantern Corps is gone, and that the Guardians are dead.  Because if they do, then nobody would ever suspect that the Guardians have been working in secret to build an even stronger Corps…and this is where Keli comes in.

Keli Quintella, the Teen Lantern of Young Justice, and her mysterious gauntlet…a device not of Oan origin, yet clearly modeled off of Krona’s prototype gauntlet that was made long before the rings.  Keli got her gauntlet from a dying alien wearing a Green Lantern uniform, and it was powerful enough to destroy the Red Tornado in a single shot.  It could be the result of a project designed to upgrade the Corps into something more powerful…maybe, just like Krona’s gauntlet before it, Keli’s gauntlet is another prototype, a stepping stone to get to a new generation of rings.  Also, blowing up the Central Battery is only a setback if you just have one Central Battery.  Keli’s gauntlet draws power from somewhere, and it wasn’t the big battery on Oa.

…but where does all of this leave John?  How could any of this have anything to do with his history or with Green Lantern Mosaic?  Why would the Guardians intentionally send John and one thousand other Green Lanterns through that barrier, into the dark sectors, if they knew the rings were about to shut down?  That barrier is the answer.  Time moves differently inside the barrier, a hundred years can go by in a couple weeks, making it the perfect place for someone to undergo a significant amount of growth and development in a hurry.  I don’t know if the Guardians created that barrier, but they’re absolutely taking advantage of it, because it’s the perfect setting for John’s new test.

Protecting the Mosaic World was ultimately the Guardians’ way of evaluating how well John could manage the diverse cultures across the universe…but that’s only half of the job.  A Guardian has to be able to use their unique perspective to effectively command the Green Lantern Corps.  John has been Corps Leader for a while now, but he’s almost always been surrounded by piers who could help him, or higher authority he could defer to.  By making him Quest Leader and sending them beyond that barrier, to a completely uncharted sector of space cut off from the rest of the universe, the Guardians have repeated a version of their Mosaic test by giving John sole authority over a miniature Green Lantern Corps under suboptimal conditions, to see what he does with it.

…and you might think that blowing up the Central Battery would undermine this, since doing that takes away the main resource John and the Corps rely on the survive and do their jobs…but that’s kind of the point.  If the goal of the Guardians is to get John back to where he was at the end of Green Lantern Mosaic, then they needed to create a situation where it would be impossible for John to succeed just by relying on the same old tools and methods laid out by the Guardians and the Corps.  He’s an architect, and a soldier, and a Green Lantern, and so much more, and he has to use all of it, all of himself, everything he was and is have to be used to make him into what he’s going to be, and nobody else’s design can get in the way.  The Master Builder has to create something new.

I think the reason you make that barrier so strong that it takes the combined power of one thousand Green Lanterns just to barely manage to breach it…is so that it’ll be really, really impressive when John takes the barrier down by himself.  I think the entire point of locking him in a space where time moves faster is so that he can reemerge very, very different.  And considering the past events that this story is pulling from, I think we have a good idea of what to expect from John when he re-enters normal space again.

…the biggest question I have now is…what threat could possibly make all of this necessary?  Maybe it has something to do with magic and the Starheart, I really don’t know.  But for now, even if everything I’ve said turns out to be completely wrong, I can’t wait to find out.