How Hal Jordan, John Stewart and Guy Gardner Each Earned Their Green Lantern Rings
The mythology behind DC’s three most prominent human Green Lanterns has become must know information for anyone following HBO’s ‘Lanterns’, and the show’s premiere has only deepened interest in how Hal Jordan, John Stewart and Guy Gardner each came to wear a power ring. When Abin Sur’s spacecraft crashed on Earth, the dying alien’s power ring chose two candidates to replace him as Earth’s Green Lantern, Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner, and Hal was selected because he lived closer to the crash site. That single detail of geography has shaped decades of comic book history and now sits at the center of a new television mystery.
The renewed attention comes because ‘Lanterns’ opened with a shocking twist involving Hal’s fate, and the question of who actually holds his ring now has become the show’s second major hook. The Green Lantern mythos has always been about who is worthy of the ring, and the paths taken by Hal Jordan, John Stewart and Guy Gardner to becoming Green Lanterns all circle back to the same idea of overcoming fear. Understanding each man’s origin makes the current HBO storyline easier to follow.
Hal Jordan’s Ring Origin And His Path To Becoming Earth’s Lantern
Hal Jordan’s origin begins with tragedy, since his life was shaped by watching his father, pilot Martin Jordan, die in a plane crash, and he grew up to become a test pilot himself. That career put him in the right place when Abin Sur’s ship went down in the California desert, and the ring selected him over Guy Gardner largely due to proximity rather than any clear superiority in character.
Guy Gardner first appeared in ‘Green Lantern’ number 59 in March 1968, created by writers John Broome and Gil Kane, and was introduced specifically as a backup Lantern for the sector containing Earth. Once Hal was chosen, Guy was intended to serve as his replacement should anything happen to him, a role that set the two characters on parallel but unequal paths from the very beginning.
In the HBO series, Hal is portrayed by Kyle Chandler as an experienced, decades long veteran of the Corps, and the show leans into that seniority as a contrast with the newer recruits around him. ‘Lanterns’ co-creators establish a stark disparity between what qualifies Hal Jordan to wear the ring versus what is expected of John Stewart, framing Hal as someone whose exceptionalism has always been validated by the universe around him.
That contrast becomes central to the show’s opening episode, which reveals that Hal is murdered in 2026, setting the murder mystery structure that drives the rest of the season.
John Stewart Green Lantern Training And His Selection By The Guardians
John Stewart first appeared in ‘Green Lantern’ volume 2, issue 87, in December 1971, created by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams as one of the first major Black superheroes in mainstream American comics. He was introduced as a replacement Green Lantern selected by the Guardians after Guy Gardner was injured, and the character broke barriers as one of DC’s earliest prominent Black heroes.
The story that introduced Stewart presented him as a headstrong young architect with a distaste for authority, which immediately put him at odds with the more by the book Hal Jordan. He earned his place in the Corps after battling a Manhunter sent by the Guardians to judge his worthiness, impressing and frightening them with his bravery and tactical brilliance in the process.
Which Green Lantern is your favorite?
In ‘Lanterns’, Aaron Pierre plays John as a former Marine who is still in training under Hal rather than a fully realized Lantern in his own right. According to Den of Geek, showrunner Chris Mundy said “It was always going to be John and Hal” when asked which characters the series would center on, adding that there was never any doubt about that pairing.
That training dynamic is part of why many viewers expected John to inherit Hal’s ring once the character died, though the show’s first episode complicates that assumption considerably.
Guy Gardner Backup Lantern History And His Surprising Role In The HBO Mystery
Guy Gardner was eventually sidelined by a serious injury sustained during an earthquake, which prompted the Guardians of Oa to seek another suitable alternative and ultimately led them to John Stewart. That sequence of events is why Guy is often remembered as the least favored of the three human Lanterns, despite technically being selected before Stewart.
As a character, Guy has always been something of a prickly pear, prone to outbursts and not exactly a people person, even though his heart tends to be in the right place when it truly matters. Nathan Fillion has played the character since ‘Superman’ in 2025, establishing Guy as an already active Lantern and member of the Justice Gang well before the events of ‘Lanterns’ begin.
That prior appearance has made the show’s central mystery more confusing rather than less. According to TVLine, series co-creator Tom King said on the official ‘Lanterns’ podcast that by the end of the first episode Hal is dead, John Stewart is shown not wearing the ring, and Guy Gardner is revealed to have it instead.
King specifically raised the question of how Guy Gardner ends up with Hal Jordan’s ring and why it goes to him instead of John Stewart, especially since Guy has already been established as an active Green Lantern in ‘Superman’, where he also belongs to the Justice Gang. Since ‘Superman’ takes place in 2025 while Hal’s murder occurs in 2026, there is clearly more history among these three Green Lanterns than audiences currently understand.
Lanterns HBO Ring Mystery And What It Means Going Forward
The line of succession for Hal’s ring has been made unusually clear by the show itself, which makes the question of precisely how and why Guy is chosen instead of John a genuinely open one for the remaining episodes. ‘Lanterns’ was created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King for HBO, with Mundy serving as showrunner and the series following experienced Lantern Hal Jordan and new recruit John Stewart as they investigate a murder on Earth that leads to a wider mystery.
DC lore has traditionally enforced a rule limiting Earth to two active Green Lanterns at a time, though that rule would later expand to allow for as many as eight space cops across various eras, including Hal, Guy, John, Jessica Cruz, Kyle Rayner and Simon Baz. The apparent overlap between Hal and Guy being active simultaneously suggests the show may be building toward its own explanation for how that balance shifted.
For now, the specifics of how Guy Gardner physically obtained Hal’s ring, and what that means for John Stewart’s own arc as a trainee, remain unanswered as ‘Lanterns’ continues its run on HBO.
Given how differently Hal, John and Guy earned their rings across the comics, which version of that path do you think ‘Lanterns’ is actually building toward for Guy right now.
