Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season one finale of Lanterns.
The last episode of HBO’s Lanterns saw John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) speak an altered oath when he charged up his ring. That oath refers to John embracing his fear, a direct contrast to the traditional oath that says that Green Lanterns must be fearless.
For Pierre, John acknowledging his fear is far from a fault. “John’s superpower, in my opinion, subjectively, is not being fearless; it’s the ability to acknowledge fear and overcome it,” he said in a press conference after the season finale, which Reactor attended.
The actor went on to say that this fear is part of why John first rejected the ring in 2016, and why he was prepared, 10 years later, to take on the mantle.
In 2016, Pierre explained, John knew he wasn’t ready for the job yet. John, however, “leans into” this self-awareness. “He doesn’t lean away from it with arrogance or with this delusion,” Pierre said. “He leans into it and actively searches for ways to become everything he knows he can become if he just makes himself the student that absorbs versus deflecting when he doesn’t know something.” That approach, in essence, involved John acknowledging his fear of not being ready and working to address his weaknesses rather than get defensive and shut down.
You can see John Stewart the Marine overcome his fear to become John Stewart the superhero on HBO, where all eight episodes of the first season of Lanterns are now streaming.
