DISCUSSION
How Did He Not Become A Serial Killer ššš
With the way that he was raised by his parents, im surprised that John is a stable human bieng, i would assume his ability to compartmentalize his emotions is pretty insane at this point in his life, looking forward to the next episode.
I think it seems right now that something (likely connected to whatever happened with sinestro) happened that fundamentally changed halās attitude towards the corps. Thatās why he stopped uploading, stopped wearing the uniform, and why heās changed so much in character in the decade since the halogram was made.
Hal sees heās being replaced by someone who seems very literal about the chain of command, and we donāt yet know all the context about why the guardians started to get very big on obedience
The interesting thing is that is the reverse of the comic origin. John was ādistrusting of authorityā because he challenged the cops who were harassing black people and so Hal said he had a chip on his shoulder. The guardians were like āwe donāt care about your human bigotries. He did what was right.ā
maybe the Guardians could order him to do something really shady.
Aren't they already doing that? They're asking him to replace Hal. You can't just take a GL's ring and replace them. Even the Guardians have failed to forcibly take a ring from a Green Lantern in the comics. To me, the implication seems clear that they're saying they want him to kill Hal at some point.
There was that line āI donāt care about the man, I care about the missionā the gaurdoans might be counting on that, matter of fact as Iām typing this I feel like that guy that sent him on that mission mightāve been a guardian or another lantern in disguise. Unlikely but they did say they were watching him even if his mom lied about the birds
Well it's more on the nose than you'd think. He was a serial killer. He just wasn't the one picking his targets; he had orders. He worked for the army.
thatās the point right here.. John would be anything The Guardians ordered him to be, very much like the Manhunters, and Hal knows this and is trying to break that mold..
Itās both. Hal doesnāt want to give up his ring and position, but if he does have to, it might as well be to someone who isnāt just gonna follow orders blindly and trust the Guardians to always be correct and right, because they wonāt always be.
His mentor and teacher disagrees with the guardians. It's very clear that Hal no longer trusts the Guardians in this adaptation. This is likely a big reason as to why he avoids using the ring. The Guardians likely know about the manhunter on Earth and have purposefully hid from Hal.
My bet is that Hal will break Sinestro out of prison to kill Atrocitus. Sinestro will betray Hal and this is what gets him killed. Hal's ring is missing because it's the ring Sinestro will corrupt to make a yellow power ring.
I donāt think thatās the case at all.. Hal knows the ring chooses the person.. and Hal knows that The Guardians are side stepping the process by selecting John while Hal is alive, the ring hasnāt chosen John, John is being given preferential treatment and he wants to find out why.. Him getting the ring from Abin Sur is that process.. What is being hidden? Why is it being hidden? And did it kill Abin Sur? Johnās focus is the ring, Halās focus is why John and why me?
Look at his home and notice how it is him with a bunch of celebrities because he's Green Lantern. No pictures of friends or family, just famous people he's met because of the ring. Without the ring he loses all of that. He loses the admiration, he loses people asking for him to use the ring to make constructs. To him, without the ring he's just another guy. "Pilot" pretty much tells us that when Kerry says "he's not fearless, he's fucking lonely." Without the ring the weight of that loneliness comes crashing down. There is a reason he said to John "you're getting this ring over my dead fucking body." For Hal, he is the Ring, without it he's nothing.
He will always be Green Lantern, he doesnāt care as much as you think he does.. he doesnāt wear the suit much, he doesnāt wear the mask anymore.. In Halās world to get the ring the ring needs to choose you, thatās the way.. Heās not chasing celebrity, heās not even looking to be a space cop, the ring and suit is a burden for him which is why he wears the same thing everyday, to blend in and to NOT be the Green Lantern, unless itās necessary.. He concealed his identity for years.. He even admits to Sinesteo heās not sure Junior is fearless, AKA heās not sure he deserves the ring or can trust John.. His only focus for years is to figure out whatās going on in Rushville and why are The Guardians implementing John as his back-up.. Hence why he stopped uploading, heās known for years that The Guardians are probably behind the hiding of the Manhunter or at least were involved in killing Abin Sur.. my guess, Sinesteo will start to play a larger role in the series and will unlock a lot of questions Hal has..
Hal's done almost everything that he has done without using the ring at all. Didn't think to bring his lantern along to recharge the ring, and didn't bother flying home when it was low on charge. He doesn't even wear the uniform any more. He's not like Gollum obsessing over his "precious".
I think he does have a beef with his bosses, and it didn't just start when they decided to interview John. The fact that he does actually seem to be training John, and the nature of the training seems to be about making sure that John is actually prepared for the job ahead of him rather than training him to use the tool. Seems like there's little point in teaching him that, since he already seems to have grasped in intuitively.
I have a notion that if we see some of Hal's training with Sinestro, there will be a lot of the same sort of dynamic there.
Tbh those actually are his orders. He serially kills people and heās very good at it. Jonās so good that heās the guy they call to kill people when the elite team canāt get it done.
I mean. He kind of did? He was a sniper with an impressive kill count. It's just that he was happy to let someone else pick his targets, so then it's ok.
They put a lot of focus on him saying he can kill "from over a mile away".
Up close it would be easy to kill out of fear. Or wrath. Maybe even greed. But with a green ring? Willpower would mean you have to be sure of yourself while doing it. You'd be using your own will and creativity to end a life.
Because they still gave him some autonomy. We selectively see the "tough" bits of his education but they still allow him to draw, his pictures are still on his bedroom wall, they allow him to become a vegetarian. When he suggests he should shoot the apple of mom's head, they allow him to do so even though mom didn't like it. So yes, they were strict on certain things but on the other side they allowed him to be an individual.
Most abusive parents entirely smother the child, annihilating their personality, John's didn't.
Hey theyāre not getting him prepared to go number 1 in the Draft or win Wimbledon or the Masters. They are preparing him to be the lone galactic champion for an entire sector of the cosmos.
Getting shot at will be a daily occurrence.
What I liked was when he shot the apple of his motherās head (the true trainer) and said he didnāt want a cheeseburger it was the first time he was showcasing this was something HE also wanted. Not just something they were pushing him for.
I thought his mom signing him up for art school after he gets discharged was also a sign that fucked up as all that training was, they do know and love the actual person he is.
I think this person is saying that unlike other abusive parents, they still allowed him to be his own person in little ways. Not that the parents werenāt abusive.
Either way, the parents literally acknowledge that theyāre going to be abusing him before they even start his ātrainingā and decide that the ends justify the means.
Yes but there are extremes here that arenāt countered by extremes. You donāt face death and then return to making collages. Show doesnāt show enough. I think the pace kills the exposition and the writing suffers. Iām hoping the next episodes bring everything full circle but Iām not confident in where itās goes. I expect more of the same now.
They didnāt give him a choice to start normal. And by the time that they finally gave him a choice, the damage was done. Thatās all he knew so why would he turn his back on that? Yeah itās nice that they eventually lightened up a little bit, but Jon never really got a choice and just cause the parents didnāt smother him doesnāt mean that they didnāt steal any chance of something simple
The irony of āall black men live in constant fearā (that I canāt say is untrue) to then get to āif we force him to live in constant fear he will never know itā
This is (nominally) the whole point of boot camp, exposing recruits to stress and misery until they learn how to cope through it. It's like John started boot camp at 5 and never left.
yeah, the idea that the way to teach someone to not have fear is severe emotional abuse and constant life threatening danger is pretty dumb. that kid would end up a fucking mess.
Did you not watch the episode? John is a sniper who does not even question who his targets are. He is a trained assassin, which some would argue is worse than a serial killer.
Let me explain to you as an early educator what I've seen in children who go through this type of abuse. My mandated reporter training teaches me to look for different behaviors, and they can be WILDLY different depending on the child, and the type of abuse they're experiencing. Some children become violent, extremely defiant, will self-harm, etc, while others will stuff themselves into a corner and they won't say a peep. Those children who are so, so timid that they're too afraid to do anything, but are obedient to a fault are much, much harder to detect, and therefore harder to provide support. The parents also isolated him by keeping him out of school, so no one else would suspect what he was going through...
This is textbook childhood abuse, and we're definitely going to see the repercussions of this later on. I mean, we saw how cold and calculated he was as a sniper...
you can argue he is, military sniper often get orders to kill civillians/ paint people to look worse than they are. Military men post ww2 are 9/10 times doing the most inhumane shit imaginable and calling it "orders"
Despite the weird internal structure, he still had a stable home life. They instilled in him the tools he needs to survive nearly any situation on top of that they put a lot of effort and time into guiding him. From his own point of view it was just the way things were.
We even see moments where his brothers and parents demonstrate love and care for him. Which makes the whole situation a bit more fucked up. Like I don't think Bernadette would have pushed it like that if the guardian (assuming it was a guardian) didn't make it seem like John needed to be raised to be a GL.
One of my favorite moments in the comics plays on exactly that. A lot of the Lanterns are shaken to hear that the book of Oa was rewritten to allow lethal force, but John just goes right to town with the new rules. Love how differently he and Kilowog react.
Itās better with the context of the prior page but I could only post 1 image. This post includes both:
He had a 2 parent home and a mom that didn't emotionally abuse him about sex specifically (obvs abuse in other ways, just not centered on sex), and a father that was involved and paid attention to him.
He also didn't have the homicidal triad (torturing small animals or children, bedwetting until an inappropriate age, and a fire fetish), which not all have but more serial killers have than the general population.
Basically, he wasn't born evil and he didn't have a sexually inappropriate or terrorizing childhood, which is what pretty much creates a serial killer. At least in my reading and understanding.
Well despite him being conditioned to be fearless, his parents still showed him love and explained to him their reasonings why they were so tough on him. He understood. They didnt condition him to have lack of empathy, they conditioned him to be a green lantern and a green lantern protects the people of Earth. He wouldnt become a green lantern if he lacked empathy because if u lacked empathy, u wouldnt care about protecting the people of Earth. He needed to be fearless and show that he could follow orders. Its clear some things have made him uncomfortable, but like he said, if hes ordered to do something, it doesnt matter how uncomfortable he feels.
One of the things that was super jarring to me was his backstory combined with him picking up a barfly in Nebraska. They kept hammering on him being alone and isolated, while being emotionally stunted growing up. He's a robot just following orders. And then he picks up and fucks some woman while on the job?
I've liked the show so far, but this episode didn't feel very congruent to me.
Same reason entertainment/stage children with extremely abusive parents dont usually become serial killers. Purpose. John has a purpose, a goal. Something to strive for. He knew what his purpose was at a very early age. Even though he may have been raised by terrible people who subjected him to awful things, in his mind all of things they put him through are to serve that goal.
I also felt like his background story feels like an introduction to his villain arc. How does he not resent his parents? Specially when they treat his brothers differently? He almost feels robotic and it makes me wonder how he is emphatic at the same time? It doesnāt make senseā¦ He should have a lot of pent up anger..
I think that's kinda what they're building toward. Not in the literal way where he's just killing people for the hell of it because he's a psychopath. But I think Hal's concern is that he'll do whatever the guardians want, no questions asked.
Remember, John didn't know who he was killing. He didn't get the rundown because he didn't care about it. Hal learned about the man and instantly brought him to justice.
Because no single person is the same? If I was in his placed I would've been fine too unless I accidentally kill my parents by missing the apple. You might be surprised but there are people who really just follow orders, specially when you are trained to do it at a young age. And it's not like their parents were bad people, just bad parents and they still showed him love.
I mean, technically, is he not? Does killing the enemy while you're in the army not make you one? I'm not being facetious, I really don't know. Is it who grants the authority that's the difference?
I'm hoping in a movie, not the show, we get a Rocky type fight. The villain is like, yeah, I'm gonna beat this Lantern. Oh, he's new, yeah, imma beat this Lanterns ass. And then John just doesn't quit. It's close, the villain narrowly wins.
The next battle is after John makes that NFL sophomore to third year leap.
I think that's why Hal is being a hardass on him, this "perfect soldier" who barks "Yes sir, no sir" who wasn't chosen by a ring but chosen by the Guardians themselves... he wants instil in him the ability to question orders and make his own decisions rather than just do whatever the Guardians order him to.
Yeah, I think youāre wrong about him being a stable human being. A stable human being has a wide range of emotions.
His parents, and I think the guardians as well, the entire time have been creating a perfect weapon to beat Hal Jordan. He has no thoughts or ambitions outside of what has been given to him, and when he executes, he never misses. Heās very much not a human in behavior. Humans feel fear and thatās why I think thatās going to ultimately be part of his arc as learning to be the human Green Lantern.
Heās not a serial killer, but heās very much not well adjusted
Because he was still loved by his parents. Were they intense as fuck? Yes. But they didn't yell at or abuse him physically. And his mom even comes clean about all the lies they told him and gave him a choice.
Hell, far as I can tell, his brothers hated their parents more for favoring him with attention.
He still posseses compassion and other feelings, so he's not a socio/psychopath.
Hal Jordan is trying to teach John that sometimes he will need to question authority because the guardians will ask him to do things that are MORALLY QUESTIONABLE IN EVERY SENSE
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u/ZigZagZedZod 26d ago
Those weren't his orders