Over the years, there have been many, many Green Lantern villains with close ties to the hero they fight. Sometimes it’s a former colleague gone rogue, other times it’s a loved one acting under the influence of a malevolent force…but sometimes, the most dangerous villains are the ones created by the hero, personifying that hero’s greatest failure.
She’s known as Fatality, a bounty hunter who’s sworn to hunt and kill everyone who’s ever worn a Green Lantern ring. Over the years, countless Green Lanterns have died trying to fight back against her onslaught, as she carves a bloody path of revenge across the universe.
In order to talk about Fatality, we first have to talk about the planet Xanshi, which was destroyed in the pages of Cosmic Odyssey #2, published in 1989. The short version is that the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart were sent to disarm a bomb before it could blow up the planet, but John went off on his own, confident that he could handle everything himself. He was wrong, and thanks to his hubris, the bomb went off and the planet was destroyed. I go into great detail about this moment, and the long-term impact it had on John’s life in another video “John Stewart and the Legacy of a Fatal Mistake”, which I recommend watching when you’re done with this video.
For years, the destruction of Xanshi was a tragedy that haunted John Stewart. A tragedy on that scale is honestly hard to comprehend, and it’s kind of reductive to just say “the planet Xanshi died”, but that’s the best we can do when we don’t really know anyone from Xanshi. That would start to change in 1997, in the pages of Green Lantern #83, 84, and 85, when Kyle Rayner is attacked in public by an alien warrior calling herself Fatality.
Her real name is Yrra Cynril, the eldest child of Xanshi’s ruling family. She was off-world, training with the Warlords of Okarra, when her planet was destroyed. Details were scarce, and she never learned the whole story of how and why Xanshi died…only that an arrogant Green Lantern failed in his duty to save it. She never knew that Green Lantern’s name, but it didn’t matter, she was content to take revenge on all of them. Every single person who ever wore a Green Lantern ring was her target, and after years of training and planning, she began the hunt. Now, Kyle Rayner was in her sights.
Fatality had arrived on Earth the previous night, and then spent the last 24 hours tracking Kyle. Once she found him, she kept track of his movements, learning where he lives, and most importantly, confirming that he hasn’t recharged his ring since her arrival. Confidant that his ring’s charge would hit its time limit soon, she forced a confrontation and purposely dragged it out, knowing that soon the ring would fail and Kyle would be an easy kill.
Unfortunately, Fatality was working with bad information. She didn’t realize that the limitations of the Green Lantern Corps didn’t apply to Kyle’s ring. He didn’t have a time limit, or a weakness to yellow, so Fatality’s usual tactics would’t do her any good. He’s able to block the yellow energy blasts coming from her weapons, which would’ve been lethal to the previous generation of Green Lanterns. And even her yellow space ship, which was immune to Green Lantern rings, can be easily shot down by Kyle’s constructs.
Since the old tricks aren’t going to work this time, Fatality changes tactics. Kyle may not have a 24 hour time limit, but he does have a battery, meaning his ring will still run out of power eventually. So she breaks into his apartment, steals his battery, and leads him on a chase across the universe until his ring does finally run out of power.
After crashing on an unknown planet, they’re both wounded, and are constantly being attacked by wildlife, but Fatality still won’t stop. She was so focused on getting revenge at all costs, and she made careless mistakes…to the point that, while she does manage to escape, she loses an arm in the process.
The next time Fatality appeared was two years later in 1999, in pages of Green Lantern #111 and 112. By this point, Kyle Rayner had gone off into space to try restarting the Green Lantern Corps, leaving Jade to act as Earth’s Green Lantern. Fatality tracks the energy signature of Jade’s ring, and gets two Lanterns for the price of one, since Jade is out on the town with John Stewart when Fatality attacks.
…and we need to talk about John for a minute, because like I said earlier, Fatality never knew the identity of the Green Lantern who killed her world. She also didn’t know that John used to be a Green Lantern…she actually saw him the last time she was on Earth and didn’t have any interest in hunting or killing him. This time, however, she walks right up to John, and talks about how she finally gets to look into the eyes of the man who murdered her world. And do you wanna know why Fatality knows that? Because Kyle told her. Kyle Rayner, in an attempt to diffuse a violent situation before someone gets killed, tried to give Fatality the big hero talk about violence not solving anything, and how the Green Lantern who let her home die feels real bad about it…and in the process, he also told her John’s name, and what he looks like, and where he lives. This is easily the dumbest thing Kyle Rayner has ever done in his entire existence. He gave her this information for literally no reason, and now this alien assassin who’s already killed an army of former Lanterns because of how much she hates John can just go find John whenever she wants. And this is at a time when John has no means of protecting himself from that kind of threat…he does have some latent green energy power that occasionally manifests when he’s trying to protect other people, but never when he needs to protect himself. So thanks Kyle, great job.
Jade actually does a pretty good job of subduing Fatality, and would most likely have won if not for the fact that her ring ran out of power in the middle of the fight, because she forgot to charge it. And while that can seem like a lazy plot contrivance to let the villain get the upper hand so that Kyle can swoop in to save the day, it actually makes sense, since Jade spent most of her life with an internalized version of the Green Lantern power that never needed to be replenished, so the idea of working with a limited power supply is something she still isn’t used to having to think about.
So Kyle’s back, and he smartly decides to restrain Fatality from a distance instead of playing to her strengths by trying to fight her up close. It’s a good idea, but it doesn’t work out, because remember Fatality lost an arm last time, and she replaced it with a scifi prosthetic with vague powers that let her knock everybody out and take John back to her space ship. Kyle helps Jade recharge, and the two Lanterns shoot down Fatality’s ship. The big climactic battle happens under water, and Fatality actually manages to steal Jade’s ring, and starts using it herself…and she’s actually pretty good at it. Kyle assumes it’s because she’s spent so many years fighting against Lanterns that it’s given her insight on how their weapons work, which makes enough sense. Though it’s really surprising that she’d even be willing to use a Green Lantern ring, considering how much she hates the Lanterns…I guess when her goal is so close, any weapon will do.
Fatality attacks Kyle with everything she’s got, so John jumps in. Like I said earlier, John is able to let out burst of power, but only in defense of others…so this time, he picked his moment and let out all of it, causing a massive explosion. Afterwords, there’s no trace of Fatality, or Jade’s ring. That ring’s journey isn’t even close to being over, but we’ll talk about that another time.
Fatality showed up again two years later in 2001, in the pages of Green Lantern #132, this time trading in her Green ring for a Yellow one. Fatality has no idea where the Yellow ring came from, it was just on her finger when she woke up, though she doesn’t actually care since it presents her with an opportunity to finally end all of this. She goes to Earth and immediately starts tearing up the far end of New York City, causing as much damage as possible to draw out Kyle Rayner, and endangers as many lives as possible to keep Kyle busy while she heads straight for John Stewart. And when she finds John, we start to realize that things are very different this time.
Up until now, Fatality had been single minded in her goal to execute the people she held responsible for what happened to Xanshi, but this time she seems to revel in the ability to prolong John’s pain, and even plans to torture John’s loved ones while he watches. She tore apart John’s apartment just roughing them up, when she could’ve killed everyone there and finally had her revenge any time she wanted.
When Kyle shows up, it doesn’t take long for him to defeat her. He’s gotten much better at using the ring since the last time they fought, while she’s driven more than ever by anger and desperation. Kyle pins Fatality down, and she tells him to do it, to kill her, to finally put an end to all of this. She has a complete breakdown as the weight of it all finally becomes too much to bear. The death of her world, everything she’s done since then…she can’t take it anymore.
Kyle backs off, knowing the fight is over. He stops calling her Fatality, and starts referring to her as Yrra, as he asks her to please give him the Yellow ring. After pausing for a moment, she does it, and it looks like the threat of Fatality will finally end without any more bloodshed.
The instant she removes the ring from her finger, there’s an explosion. The ring is gone, and her left arm has been blown off. Kyle rushes her to S.T.A.R. Labs, where doctors stabilize her and give her treatment. She’ll live, and now both of her arms will be prosthetic.
The ring, by the way, teleported back to its makers, the Quardians. They never intended Fatality to keep the ring, they just used her to test it. Sinestro’s old ring had a number of flaws that had to be worked out, and now this new model was ready to be given to its intended wielder: Alex Nero.
Her next appearance came later that same year, in Green Lantern #141 and 142. Fatality is being held in The Slab, a maximum security prison for superhumans. She has two prosthetic arms, and they’ve both been calibrated to only exert about ten pounds of force, so her ability to escape or do damage has been greatly reduced. What’s interesting is how openly she talks about the experience of losing her arms…about how these new ones offer some feeling, but only a little, so it always feels like she’s wearing thick gloves…and how when she wakes up in the morning, she’ll often forget what happened to her, and she’ll try to take off whatever’s covering her hands. It’s an interesting bit of honest vulnerability that helps to Humanize a character who, up to this point, has been solely defined by revenge.
John Stewart comes to visit her, mostly out of a sense of guilt, at which point these two issues lean hard on Fatality using sexuality as a weapon against him. She belittles his personal suffering while taking her cloths off, she refuses to tell him what he wants to know until he takes some of his cloths off…she’s still determined to hurt him, even if only through humiliation. And it does somewhat line up with her first appearance, when she attempted to seduce Kyle in a night club so he’d follow her somewhere isolated before trying to kill him…which is a good plan, but it only works when her target doesn’t know she’s a threat, and the instant Kyle resisted, she dropped the whole act and just attacked him normally. Maybe using these tactics against John now is just a matter of her not having any other options, but it adds an awkward layer to their relationship that really doesn’t sit well in the greater context of why she hates him in the first place.
To their credit, her seduction is shown to be just an act both times. When she undressed, she was actually preparing for her regularly scheduled shower. And when she had John take off his shirt, it was to remove an obstruction…this issue retcons Fatality to have the power to literally see points of weakness in others. John has been dealing with a spinal injury for a while now, and Fatality noticed that there was actually nothing wrong with his spine at all, which is why she began taunting him about his frailty and guilt, and why she used that as a way to get him to remove his clothing so she could get a better look at his supposed injury, just to be sure.
They’re trying to find a way for Fatality to continue to be threatening that doesn’t rely so heavily on combat, which is refreshing since all of her appearances up to this point have been basically the same, with a little bit of variation here and there. And I’m glad they’re letting her focus specifically on John without Kyle having to get in the middle. Kyle involvement always felt obligatory since he was the only Green Lantern left, but Fatality makes the most sense as an antagonist for John specifically.
The next time we check in on Fatality is in 2003, in Green Lantern #156. Nothing has changed for her since 2001, she’s still in her cell at The Slab, wearing as little clothing as they can get away with. The biggest difference is John Stewart…because of what she told him about his spinal injury, he was able to get his life back on track, and even become a Green Lantern again. He came to visit Fatality again specifically to thank her. In response, Fatality tells him the real reason she chose to help. She still intends to get her revenge, and when that day comes she wants to fight John at his best. She wanted him on his feet again, she wanted him to get his ring back…she helped build him back up so that the moment she kills him will feel more triumphant.
Something that I really don’t like is the way this issue explicitly refers to the destruction of Xanshi as a “freak accident” that John got blamed for. While I agree that Xanshi is something that comes up way too often in stories about John Stewart, the absolute worst thing you could do at this point is try to absolve him of any responsibility for that tragedy. When you erase the consequences of a character’s actions, you just make that character feel hollow, and it’s an especially dumb thing to do when we’ve got another character right here who’s designed to explore the consequences of those actions.
This scene goes a long way to making Fatality feel dangerous again. Nothing about her situation has changed, but now we understand that she’s just biding her time, waiting for an opening to strike. There’s been enough time since her last appearance that I don’t really believe that this was always the plan, and her attitude here does feel like a course correction to bring things back to the more classic depiction of the character, but I think it works better than the sly seductress they tried presenting her as last time. It is a little strange to see her go back to being driven by bloodlust after what happened the last time she fought Kyle, but at this point it may just be all she has left.
Speaking of fighting Kyle, Fatality takes another crack at him in 2004, in the pages of Green Lantern #178. The villain Major Force got her out of prison, and sent her to kill Kyle and deliver the ring. This issue was ultimately more about the conflict between Kyle and Major Force, that stretches all the way back to the beginning of Kyle’s career as a Green Lantern, and Fatality’s involvement was kind of unnecessary. Her role in this issue could have been played by any random villain, though it does make sense that Major Force would choose one who specializes in hunting and killing Green Lanterns, especially when he can use the promise of her freedom as leverage. Now that she’s back out in the world, Fatality is basically back to her old self, with one significant exception: she isn’t fighting angry this time. The visceral hatred for Green Lanterns is still very clearly there, but she’s being smarter, controlling the flow of battle and forcing Kyle to fight at close range where she has the advantage, and even manages to inject him with neurotoxin that severely limits his ability to think clearly and use his ring. It was an entertaining fight, and a good use of the character, but it honestly felt kind of disposable…this is part of Ron Marz’s return to writing Green Lantern, and it was his original run that first introduced villains like Fatality and Major Force, so bringing them back now just kind of feels like Marz playing his old hits, and nothing more.
Now that Fatality is out of prison, she would spend the next few years going between Earth and Space, making brief cameos in a bunch of stories, basically showing up any time you need a crowd shot of B-list villains…which makes enough sense…she’s a bounty hunter, she’ll take a job if the pay is good enough, especially if there’s a chance it’ll let her fight a Green Lantern.
In 2005, Fatality joins up with the Secret Society of Super Villains in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis. The most notable thing that happened to her during that time was in Villains United #3, where she got into a fight with Scandal Savage, daughter of long-time Green Lantern villain Vandal Savage, and Scandal actually bit off Fatality’s ear…because I guess they got tired of making her lose arms.
Then in 2006, Fatality makes a brief appearance in Green Lantern Corps Recharge #3 and 4. She left Earth and started working with a group of bounty hunters in the Vega System, which is a solar system that’s considered to be off limits to the Green Lantern Corps. Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, and Kilowag ended up entering the Vega System to rescue new recruits Soranik Natu, Isamot Kol, and Vath Sarn, prompting the residents of Vega to hire bounty hunters to go after them. The story never makes this connection, but it actually makes sense for Fatality to have gone to Vega, since the Vega System is where the planet Okarra is located. Okarra is where Fatality trained when she was younger, and going there is the only reason she wasn’t on Xanshi when it blew up…between that, and the fact that Vega is supposed to be free of all Green Lanterns, it makes sense that she’d regard it as a safe space she can return to.
In 2007, Fatality joins the Injustice League, in the pages of the Justice League of America Wedding Special, and then issues #13, 14, and 15 of the main series. This story deals with a massive number of characters, so there isn’t that much to say, except that for some reason Fatality has a Yellow ring again. The cover to Justice League of America #13 has Sinestro in the big group shot of villains, so I thought maybe he gives her a ring somewhere in this story, but Sinestro is just one of the many villains on that cover that aren’t actually in the story. As far as I can tell, we’ve never seen Fatality get this new ring. By this point, the Sinestro Corps War storyline was already happening in the Lantern books, and the year leading up to that war did show various members of the Sinestro Corps receiving their rings, so it’s possible that this Justice League story takes place before the Sinestro Corps War and Fatality received a ring in preparation for it. But it’s just as likely that someone at DC remembered that one time she had a Yellow ring, thought she was supposed to still have one, and just gave her one in this story.
The only other thing worth mentioning about Fatality’s presence in this arc is that it’s kind of cool to see her fight some non-Lantern heroes for a change. With the element of surprise and a power ring at her disposal, she’s able to subdue Batman, Red Arrow, and Black Lightning, before helping the rest of her team to incapacitate Superman. She loses to John Stewart way too easily, though…probably because she’s been relying on the Yellow ring lately, and that’s the weapon she has the least amount of experience using.
Next we jump to 2009, with Green Lantern Corps #30. This story takes place after the Sinestro Corps War storyline is over, and the Zamarons have started to round up female members of the Sinestro Corps, and brainwash them into embracing Love instead of Fear, amplifying the faint glimmer of love that still exists in their hearts. One of the specific Sinestro Corps members shown in this issue is Fatality. This issue talks at length about how these captured women are members of the Sinestro Corps, and that they all swore an oath to the Sinestro Corps…one problem though, Fatality has never been affiliated with the Sinestro Corps. She did not appear in the Sinestro Corps War, I re-read that entire event looking for her. I personally think that, just like with Justice League of America, someone remembered that one issue where the Quardians gave her a Yellow ring and mistook that for her status quo. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there’s an issue somewhere I missed that clears all of this up (and if there is please tell me in the comments). But if there’s not, then this is a very frustrating misunderstanding, since it’s the basis for a major turning point in the life of this character.
…and we can see that begin to play out that very same month, in the pages of Green Lantern #36, part two of the Rage of the Red Lanterns storyline. The process of converting Fatality over to the side of Love is almost complete. Interestingly, it’s not just her that’s being converted, we see her Sinestro Corps ring being turned into a Star Sapphire ring. Once the conversion is complete, Fatality is reborn from her crystal chamber as a Star Sapphire, and immediately tells her ring to locate John Stewart.
After the Rage of the Red Lanterns ends, the Agent Orange storyline begins. Fatality’s journey takes her into the pages of Green Lantern #40, 41, and 42. Fatality sits on an asteroid overlooking the remains of the planet Xanshi, just like John Stewart has done so many times before. For the first time since she was a child, the painful hole in her heart has been filled with the light and love of the Star Sapphire ring, and with it comes a mission that gives her life new purpose. Her goal is to spread her love to John Stewart, to forgive him, and free him from the anguish he feels over his role in Xanshi’s destruction. She finds him on the planet Okarra, the same world where she learned to be a warrior, and the place where she first learned about Xanshi’s fate. There, the Guardians and Green Lanterns are battling Larfleeze, the Orange Lantern, an enemy who’s as powerful as an entire Lantern Corps. Millions of years ago, the Guardians made a deal with Larfleeze that kept him sealed away deep within Okarra, but now war has erupted between them, and John is caught in the crossfire…until Fatality arrives and saves him.
It’s here that we get an interesting addition to Fatality’s history. We already knew that she was sent to Okarra as a child to be trained in combat by the Okarran Warlords, but now we learn that she never wanted to become a warrior, and actually tried running away twice. She resisted so much that she had to stay on Okarra longer just to complete her normal training…and that’s the only reason why she wasn’t on Xanshi when it exploded. Part of what’s always driven her is survivor’s guilt, she knows there’s no good or fair reason why she still gets to be alive while the rest of her world isn’t.
From Fatality’s perspective, she and John are the same, in that the death of the planet Xanshi left them both with deep scars that they never recovered from. It made her lead a life obsessed with bloody vengeance, and it made him lead a life of regret and self-loathing. But now, being a Star Sapphire has helped her find peace, and she wants to help John do the same…which seems great, except for the panel where her ring literally tells her to love him.
It’s incredibly important to remember that Fatality didn’t become a Star Sapphire the normal way, she wasn’t chosen for having a strong affinity for love. She was captured and converted, indoctrinated into a belief system, and that ring is keeping her on the path of love and forgiveness. So while everything she’s saying sounds great, it’s built on something sinister that’s beyond her control.
Before she leaves, Fatality kisses John, and tells him something very specific. She says “the next time you’re among the remains of Xanshi, burying your grief over your wife beneath the weight of my homeworld, do what the Star Sapphire has enabled me to do…forgive yourself”.
This moment is meant to be taken as a positive message, but it’s honestly just as manipulative as their encounters in prison. She kisses him and then immediately talks about his feelings for his dead wife, and then seems to suggest that he’s been holding onto his guilt over Xanshi as a way to distract himself from the pain he still feels from Katma’s death. Fatality may not be actively trying to hurt John, but she still knows exactly how to strike where he’s most vulnerable…and thanks to her ring, her read on his feelings are most likely correct.
This takes us right into 2009’s Blackest Night event, specifically the tie-in issues of the main Green Lantern ongoing series, namely Green Lantern #44-47, 49, and 52, all of which came out in 2009 and 2010. Black Lantern rings are spreading across the universe, reanimating the dead and causing an intergalactic zombie apocalypse. The goal of a Black Lantern is to use the appearance and memories of a dead person to emotionally manipulate that person’s friends and family so that those heightened emotions can be harvested…meaning that it’s in a Black Lantern’s best interest to make your dead loved one say the most hurtful things possible to you, and really undermine what you think of yourself while simultaneously reinforcing your most negative impulses. As long as they can make you feel something as strongly as possible, they win. So you can imagine what was going through John Stewart’s mind and heart when, on his latest pilgrimage to the ruins of Xanshi, the entire planet was resurrected as a Black Lantern. Millions of Black Lantern rings swarmed the area, using the rubble as the basis for a reconstructed world, and then began reanimating every single person who lived on Xanshi when it exploded. All of them came after John, tormenting him, taunting him to kill them all over again. And this would have been an excellent situation for John and Fatality to deal with together, but for some reason, she’s not there. Her homeworld and its entire population are brought back as Black Lanterns, with the sole purpose of getting a reaction out of the people who care the most about them, and the focus is placed entirely on John Stewart, without a single thought given to what this would mean to Fatality. I mean seriously, the zombie version of her family should be walking around somewhere on this world. The Black Lantern version of John’s wife Katma is also here, which is even more reason to get Fatality involved, since this whole situation is an extension of what she told John the last time they met, on Okarra.
Fatality is part of a small group of Lanterns from various Corps who come to help John once Xanshi gets close to Earth during the final battle of Blackest Night. They make their way to the planet’s core and destroy the mass of Black Lantern rings holding it all together. Just like that, this ghastly perversion of Xanshi’s memory is gone. I think it’s interesting that this is the second time John is directly involved in the destruction of the planet Xanshi, only this time it’s framed as a very good thing…not only because destroying it saved the Earth, but because confronting this zombie version allowed John to finally accept that there’s a difference between killing Xanshi and failing to save it. Fatality is right next to him when he has all of these revelations, and she has nothing to say. The few times she does talk, it’s very clinical, very matter of fact…Xanshi being back doesn’t illicit any reaction from her at all, which I guess makes sense if the Star Sapphire conversion process brainwashed her, but it feels like a complete waste of what was the strongest aspect of Blackest Night.
Still, it’s nice and symbolic that John and Fatality work together to destroy the Black Lantern version of John’s wife Katma, the beginning of a new love overcoming the doubt and regret left behind by the old one.
This brings us to the New 52 era of DC comics, specifically the 2011 series Green Lantern New Guardians. The first twelve issues of this series were about one Lantern from every Corps working together to solve a mystery and stop a common enemy. The Green Lantern of the group is Kyle Rayner, and the Star Sapphire is, of course, Fatality.
The catalyst for this whole series is that one ring from every Lantern Corps randomly abandons its user, and goes to Earth in search of Kyle Rayner. A member of each Corps then shows up to reclaim the rings and beat up Kyle for stealing them, and chaos ensues. It should be noted that Fatality now has a new Star Sapphire costume, which isn’t perfect, but I’d still call it a significant upgrade from her last one.
This is the most screen time Fatality’s had since 2004, and it’s giving us a much needed look at her character outside of the context of her relationship with John Stewart. After saving the lives of a family, she says “I’m no hero. Just a hunter who finally saw the light”, which is an extremely accurate way to describe what happened to her, though it hides just how sinister and involuntary that change really was.
As this series goes on, we get to see what kind person Fatality is when she isn’t being driven by anger and revenge. Her years of training and experience as a bounty hunter make her the rational, tactical mind that this group sorely needs to balance out wild cards like Arkillo of the Sinestro Corps and Breeze of the Red Lanterns. Though, ironically, the group setting and frantic nature of the story makes it difficult to really get personal with any of these characters. Some of them do get more attention than others…for example, Saint Walker gets pushed to an emotional breaking point, and Arkillo undergoes some significant character development…but the rest of the group remains fairly surface level the entire time.
That said, there are some small details that help flesh out Fatality’s character, like how her version of saying “oh my God” is “Ghosts of Xanshi”, and how her default construct of choice is a replica of the spear she used as a bounty hunter. All of the skill and training that made her a formidable threat are still there, only now she isn’t driven by anger and revenge, so those skills can be put to better use. I particularly like the way she’s able to size up her new teammates, observing their behavior and getting right to the heart of what they want to keep hidden. This isn’t to say that she distrusts them, in fact she really does grow fond of some of these characters…like when an alien empire called The Reach attacks the Blue Lantern homeworld, Fatality ignores direct orders from the Zamarons to not get involved, because all she can think about is the fact that her teammate Saint Walker needs her help, and she flies half way across the universe to stand by his side.
Around this time, in the pages of Red Lanterns #11 and 12, Fatality tries her best to convert Breeze to the Star Sapphires, to finally save her from the curse of the Red Lantern ring. And though she calls it conversion, Fatality has no intention of repeating her own brainwashing process…she offers Breeze a ring, and tries to reason with her, explaining why Bleeze should choose to become a Star Sapphire. And while the two of them do seem to genuinely connect with each other over this, the reasoning is kind of a big problem.
Fatality and Bleeze bond over the fact that they’re both victims of abuse. In Fatality’s case, this issue is framing her bing sent away to Okarra for combat training at a young age as child abuse. This honestly comes out of nowhere, and seems like it could make sense, until you think about it a little deeper.
The biggest problem with the planet Xanshi is the fact that its primary function is to make John Stewart feel bad…we don’t care about Xanshi, we care about John, and Xanshi is just a plot device to motivate John to feel a certain way and do certain things. As a result, Xanshi has never been fleshed out as a place or a culture…we don’t know anything about the role of children in Xanshi society, what’s expected of them and at what age, what is normal for the people of that world, and how does it differ from what we think of as normal for ours? We know that she tried running away from her training, but we don’t specifically know why, and we don’t know how different this is from the experiences of other children from Xanshi. There’s also the fact that the comics have never specified how young Fatality was when she went to Okarra for training, and the few times we’ve seen glimpses of that training, she looks like an adult. On top of that, they’re trying to say that what Fatality went through is similar to what Bleeze went through…and we know for a fact that the abuse Breeze suffered included her being sexually assaulted by a member of the Sinestro Corps. I don’t think they’re trying to say that Fatality was also assaulted, but it’s an very strange and tone-deaf association to make, because it seems to imply that all trauma is equal, and everyone who experienced past trauma is capable of understanding each other…which is a far too reductive and generalized stance to take on an incredibly serious subject that honestly didn’t even need to come up. I’m glad that they’re trying to dig into Fatality’s past as a way of growing her relationship with another character, but this is not a good way to do that. It’s messy, it’s uncomfortable, it misunderstands some very sensitive topics, and ultimately there were much better ways to arrive at where they wanted to go.
What we’re seeing happen in the pages of Red Lanterns and New Guardians really hi lights the problem with Fatality’s origin as a Star Sapphire. She didn’t choose to become a Sapphire, and she wasn’t chosen by the ring…it was forced on her, in a way that’s causing her to have very limited and inconsistent character growth. Just look at how she reacts to working along side Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, someone who she tried to brutally murder multiple times at this point. The manner in which she became a Star Sapphire was like flipping a switch and turning off a major part of her character, and the people who were most directly impacted by that part of her barely seem to notice. All of the animosity between her and Kyle Rayner has just been erased, to the point that you would never even know that the two of them have any history with each other. They’re both just so emotionally neutral towards each other. I suppose the chaotic nature of the story should excuse a lot of this, since there isn’t exactly time to talk it all out, and working with Fatality isn’t really any stranger than working with Arkillo or Bleeze at this point, so I guess you could justify Kyle’s lack of interest in commenting on their history together. Still, becoming a Star Sapphire seems to have separated Fatality’s life into two distinct halves that don’t really interact or impact each other, and so far all that seems to do is limit the number of interesting things that can be done with her character.
Next up is Green Lantern Corps #15, 16, and Annual #1, published in 2013. This is after the “War of the Green Lanterns” storyline, where the mad Guardian Krona brainwashed everyone wearing a Green Lantern ring, forcing Hal, John, Guy, and Kyle to use the rings of other Corps to fight back. During the battle, Mogo was destroyed by John, who used an indigo ring to channel the power of a Black Lantern, doubling down on the idea of John as a destroyer of worlds, complete with the imagery of him looking like an agent of death.
With the war over, John finds himself overlooking the remains of Mogo, just like he’s done with Xanshi, until Fatality arrives. Her ring picked up on the fact that Mogo’s pieces are still alive and trying to put themselves back together. With their help, Mogo is reborn, good as new. Through this whole process, the way John and Fatality talk to each other has been different…this is the first time we’ve seen these two interact without trying to hurt or manipulate each other in some way. You feel the weight of all they’ve been through together, but that history comes with a certain level of familiarity and understanding. It’s very significant that John doesn’t call her Fatality anymore, he only calls her Yrra now. And unlike Blackest Night, where she came off as very impersonal and detached, here she having meaningful, personal conversations about their shared history.
Fatality and John working together to rebuild a shattered planet through the power of their own will and love is pretty much the best possible metaphor anyone could ever come up with for these two characters coming to terms with their past and evolving their relationship. But that relationship would undergo a trial by fire in the pages of Green Lantern Corps #18 and 19, when they’re attacked by Volthoom the First Lantern. Volthoom is…complicated, but all you need to know right now is that he has the ability to see different versions of peoples lives, and explore how making different choices could have changed things.
Volthoom captures Fatality and John, forcing them to experience alternate versions of their own lives, specifically the tragic ways things could have played out. We see John choose to take his own life after the destruction of Xanshi. We see Fatality use the power of the Star Sapphire to finally get her revenge, using the love she feels for her home and her family as fuel for murder. Their continued association with each other is framed as an endless downward spiral of destruction and pain.
They’re saved by Mogo, who forces everyone to confront doppelgängers of themselves that embody their worst aspects. John ends up fighting a twisted version of himself that looks like a Black Lantern, representing all of the death he feels responsible for.
Fatality is fighting a Yellow Lantern version of herself…and while, again, she was never a member of the Sinestro Corps, this does work as a callback to the first time we ever saw her wear a yellow ring, way back in Green Lantern #132. That was the day she hit her lowest point and gave in to the crushing weight of everything she’s lost, and her inability to do anything about it. Now she’s fighting that version of herself…and she wins. She defeated the person she used to be, she defeated the version of herself that fell into despair, and there’s an incredible panel where she watches as the person she used to be fades away.
It really hi lights how different things are now…once, she was Fatality, vengeful killer of Green Lanterns. Now she’s a Lantern herself, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Green Lantern Corps as an ally.
It all culminated in a big battle with Volthoom in the pages of Green Lantern #20, which was the final issue written by Geoff Johns. Fatality was there, and she was helping, but this was another one of those times where a tidal wave of characters made it impossible to focus on anyone beyond a small handful of leads. Though it’s worth mentioning that the issue’s epilogue shows us a possible future where Yrra and John go on to live peaceful lives together on Earth.
Green Lantern Corps #20 shows us the aftermath of the fight, when Fatality and John escort Mogo back to its sector. This whole situation has put the two of them through the emotional wringer, experiencing the worst aspects of what they are and what they could have been, and it’s made them appreciate the good things that’re right in front of them. And just like that, we have the beginning of the romance between John Stewart and Yrra Cynril
I’ll give them this, these two characters getting together does make sense in the context of the storyline that just wrapped up in Green Lantern Corps…but in the bigger picture of the lives of both of these characters, it’s incredibly messed up. And that sentiment gets explored in the pages of Green Lantern Corps #21, 22, 23, 26, and 27, where John is unsure about them forming a romantic relationship considering their history. The whole thing is framed as John following his head while Yrra follows her heart…he recognizes all of the reasons why they shouldn’t be together, but Yrra says that even though their situation is complicated, love is simple. Love is a basic concept, you either love someone or you don’t, and everything else is just noise to give it context. It’s a concept John has trouble grasping until a few issues later, when he’s training new recruits on Oa, and he explains how to use a Green Lantern ring by saying “If you want something badly enough, you can make it happen…no matter how impossible it seems”, which honestly is a great way to help him work through his own doubts about their relationship.
John and Yrra come across a world where group of unknown aliens are stealing parts from a large nuclear reactor, ensuring that it’ll explode and wipe out all life on that planet. They do manage to contain the explosion and save the population, but it’s becoming a habit to make these two symbolically atone for what happened to Xanshi, and I honestly wish they would stop, because constantly revisiting this idea only serves to water it down and deprive it of meaning.
They go to pursue the villains, but John receives an emergency alert, calling him back to Oa. He leaves, and Yrra follows the bad guys on her own. It’s worth mentioning that the planet Oa does in fact explode a few issues later, but even though John is there at the time, he didn’t do it. Kyle Rayner has still blown up Oa more times than John.
Fatality catches up to the unknown aliens, who are revealed to be Durlans, a race of shape shifters who’ve spent years working behind the scenes in preparation for the day they would finally take revenge against the Green Lantern Corps for dooming their world centuries ago. The Durlans attempt to trick Fatality, but she sees right through it, so the entire group attacks her at once. Unfortunately, this is all happening during the lead-up to “Lights Out”, a storyline where the power supply of every Lantern Corps is running out, and that’s begun to manifest as rings suddenly losing their power for a short time before coming back online. Fatality’s ring suddenly fails, and in the confusion the Durlans are able to knock her out. She wakes up on an operating table, in a room full of Durlans, and quickly escapes by having her ring lock on to John.
Yrra spends the rest of the Lights Out storyline recovering in the medical bay on Oa. When Oa is destroyed, the entire building is transported to Mogo, where John meets up with her again. It seems these two get closer every time they live through a catastrophic event, because now that things are finally calming down, John starts referring to Yrra as his girlfriend, and even talks about how he was considering quitting the Corps to retire on Earth with Yrra…but ultimately, John can’t bring himself to abandon the Corps at its lowest point. The Guardians are dead, the reputation of the Corps is ruined, there are hundreds of new recruits who need training, some veteran Green Lanterns are concerned that the rings might fail again, while others don’t want to use their rings at all because it’ll just drain the power all over again…so overall, it’s a pretty rough time to be a Green Lantern, and it’s a time when John needs Yrra the most.
The war against the Durlans is long and frantic, taking place over Green Lantern Corps #28-33, plus the corresponding issues of the main Green Lantern book. Along the way John acknowledges that he feels he’s atoned for what happened with Xanshi…I wonder if that’ll stick…
It’s eventually revealed that the Durlan’s plan is to invade the planet Daxam and learn to mimic Daxamite DNA. Since Daxamites are related to Kryptonians, this will give every Durlan the same powers as Superman. The catch is that such a powerful form is hard to maintain, so the Durlans also need to invade the planet Zezzen. The Zezzites are beings of living energy, so if the Durlans eat the population of the planet Zezzen, they’ll have enough power to stay in Daxamite form forever, effectively turning the Durlans into an entire race of murderous Supermen.
The Corps was too late to stop the Durlans from getting to Daxam, but they do manage to prevent them from reaching the Zezzites. As of Green Lantern Corps #33, the Durlan army is captured, and John and Yrra finally get the opportunity to relax on the beaches of Zezzen…until Yrra reveals herself to have been a Durlan all along! Her real name is Verrat Din, and she’s been biding her time, waiting for her chance. Just by tagging along with John, she was able to control what information got leaked to the Green Lanterns, and it gave her plenty of chances to copy Daxamite DNA. Now she’s consumed one of the Zezzites, and can hold Daxamite form permanently.
In all fairness, they didn’t hide this surprise very well. The circumstances of Fatality’s capture and escape, coupled with how aggressively she attacked specific people who could’ve greatly helped the Lanterns against the Durlans, all pointed to her not being the real Yrra. The good news is, we know exactly when the real Yrra was replaced, so there’s absolutely no question about when she was or wasn’t an imposter. The real Yrra got knocked out and captured by the Durlans after John went to Oa, and the fake Yrra is the one who woke up on that operating table.
So now there’s a Durlan with the body of a Daxamite that looks exactly like Fatality, and she is delighted to finally be able to drop the act and beat the hell out of John. She really rubs it in his face that he was easy to manipulate, and decides to make him watch the rest of the Corps die before she finishes him off. One final, bloody battle erupts between the Durlan and the Lanterns…and the way it ends is perfect, because the fight was happening on Mogo, so Mogo just moved away from Zezzen’s yellow sun. She hadn’t been a Daxamite long enough to store any solar energy, especially with all the fighting she’s been doing, so as soon as the sun is out of sight, her powers are gone. Now the big question, where is the real Yrra? When Verrat Din dropped her cover and turned into a Daxamite, the Star Sapphire ring rejected her and began scanning for the real Yrra…and it did find her, but Verrat Din destroyed it immediately, just to twist the knife in John’s heart a little more. But the fact that the ring located Yrra at all means she’s alive, and that’s all the hope John needed to go searching for her.
He finds her the very next issue, in 2014’s Green Lantern Corps #34, locked away on a world where the Durlans keep deadly creatures who’s DNA they want to have access to. She’d been there for months, and by the time John arrives, she’d already finished killing nearly every ravenous beast in the building. He calls her Yrra, and she does not like that one bit.
The conversation they have hurts John more than anything a Durlan Daxamite could ever do to him. According to Fatality, she never loved him, it was all the ring, nothing but lies brainwashed into her by the Zamarons after they abducted her. Fatality says she was a prisoner inside her own body, doing what the ring forced her to do…and it didn’t just magically stop when the ring was removed. The Durlans experimented on her and tortured her, to learn how to make her replacement so perfect that even her own Star Sapphire ring wouldn’t be able to tell the difference…and it was that slow, agonizing process that made the love drain away.
John, of course, doesn’t believe that what they had could possibly be fake, and he’s sure that she really does love him…but as far as she’s concerned, his love must be pretty shallow if he couldn’t even tell she’d been replaced, and accuses him of loving with his eyes instead of his heart.
On her way out, Fatality says she now considers the Star Sapphires to be her enemies, which is an interesting spin to put on the classic formula. A hunter and killer of Lanterns gets brainwashed into becoming a Lantern herself, and is now on a quest to take down an organization that she knows from the inside, which is filled with Lanterns who, until recently, she considered her sisters. I’d love to see Fatality wage a one-woman-war on the forces of Zamaron.
She also says that she considers John to be her enemy, but interestingly, she leaves him alive and mostly unharmed. Maybe she was just tired from already having killed so many space monsters, but we’ve seen rage and revenge carry her through worse. After everything that’s happened to her, she needs to take it out on someone, and at least part of her believes John deserves it…but at the same time, she wouldn’t have dropped her weapon and settled for hurtful words if she really didn’t care.
That finally brings us to DC: Love is a Battlefield #1, a Valentines Day anthology published in 2021. John feels something tugging at his heart, and that feeling leads him to the planet Zamaron…where the leaders of the Star Sapphires have actually re-abducted Fatality and are in the process of brainwashing her AGAIN…John is pissed, because whatever path Yrra walks should at least be her choice. The Zamaron Queen makes the case that all they’re doing is getting rid of the most negative aspects of her personality, making Fatality into the person she would have been if her planet had survived. As they see it, they’re just undoing the damage John’s arrogance did to her all those years ago.
John isn’t buying it, and he isn’t leaving without her, so a fight breaks out. What happens next can only really be described as the magic of true love, which is both really cheap and totally appropriate for a story involving Star Sapphires. The sensation that lead John to Zamaron was the love that connects his heart to Yrra’s, and through that connection he’s able to wake her up, before the conversion process can change her, so she can help fight off the Zamarons.
The hypocrisy of the Zamarons really shows here…they talk about doing things in the name of love, and that they’re just helping this poor woman regain her true self…but as soon as they’re met with resistance, the Zamaron Queen casually decides to just kill both Fatality and John.
They’re outmatched and outgunned, but they have each other. In a critical moment, John reaches out to her, and she chooses to trust him. They join hands, and in a blinding flash of green light, they teleport three lightyears away from the planet Zamaron. And as the two of them float there, all alone in the vacuum of space, we’re left on a cliffhanger. John risked his life to keep her from being brainwashed a second time…will she reach out to him with an open hand, or a clenched fist? We’ll have to wait and see, because as of the time of this recording, that is the last time Fatality has appeared.
When you get right down to it, Fatality’s character is a very simple idea that grew naturally out of a major moment in Green Lantern history, and is the perfect catalyst to spark growth in John Stewart while Fatality herself develops into a deeper and more complex person at the same time. Unfortunately, her potential has gone almost entirely untapped, and a big part of that is how infrequently she appears. There’s a gap of two years between most of these appearances, and once she does start appearing more frequently, she only gets a couple pages per issue, and isn’t allowed to participate in moments that would be perfect for developing and deepening her character.
Making her a Star Sapphire was an interesting decision, but all it really managed to do was cut her off from everything in her past that was meaningful. Events and decisions that don’t have consequences are pointless, and nobody who’s tied to the planet Xanshi should be able to just get over it and move on. It doesn’t have to totally define her life, but like it or not, it’s going to be an aspect of who she is forever…and you absolutely can not replace it with a love story.
After reading Fatality’s entire history, I really don’t buy for a second that she ever could, or would, fall in love with John Stewart. It might be interesting to explore what happens when real feelings grow from something that’s completely artificial, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening…I think we’re meant to believe that Yrra does have some amount of true love for John, and that just doesn’t work for me, not in the context of the tragedy that brought them together in the first place. I’m glad her ring is gone, and I’m glad it made things between them more complicated…but what I’m most interested in at this point is what’s going on in Fatality’s head. This character’s been around since 1997 and we rarely ever get to see things from her perspective. I think it would go a long way to enhance future encounters with John (and even with Kyle) if Fatality got to venture out on her own for a while, and be the protagonist of her own story. They could explore her vendetta against the Zamarons, and whether or not that’s replaced her fixation on hunting Green Lanterns…hell, there’s still a Durlan out there who stole her face and lived her life for months, that confrontation practically writes itself.
In the end, the biggest problem with Fatality is that she’s too interesting to be relegated to a supporting character, because the space they’re giving her isn’t enough for her to grow and thrive. We’re constantly being presented with the basic concept of Fatality instead of the character of Fatality, and that’s not enough. Hopefully a writer will realize that someday, and then finally tell the kinds of great stories this character has been perfect for all along.
Comments
Post a Comment