HBO's Lanterns, from showrunner Chris Mundy and writer Vanessa Baden Kelly, takes a grounded, True Detective-style approach to the Green Lantern mythos, set largely in the small town of Rushville, Nebraska. In episode 2, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) sends his trainee John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) back to Coast City to recharge his power ring and tend to an alien plant. John is abducted by aliens led by Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor), the same group tied to the mass shooting that first brought a Green Lantern to Rushville.
Antaan reveals he is hunting a Manhunter, a synthetic being capable of building new bodies to infiltrate societies and create advanced technology, and whose sense of justice has previously led to the destruction of entire species. He implants John with a memory of a Manhunter-caused holocaust on his home planet. According to Antaan, a Green Lantern — presumably Abin Sur — once took a Manhunter into custody for execution, but something went wrong during the transfer, causing Sur's ship to crash on Earth and killing him, which led to Hal becoming Earth's first Green Lantern. Antaan says the Manhunter has taken human form and can be killed as one, giving John 48 hours to identify it before he destroys the town.
The episode expands on Green Lantern lore, explaining that the Guardians of the Universe on Oa created the Green Lantern Corps using power rings that translate willpower into constructs. Before the Corps, the Guardians relied on the Manhunters, androids designed to fight evil that eventually turned against organic life and massacred planets before being destroyed — though some survived in disguise. Hal, who admits he doesn't know much about this history, turns to his own former mentor, Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen), a onetime Green Lantern who led a coup and killed a Guardian before Hal stopped him and who, in the comics, later formed the fear-powered Sinestro Corps. After being hospitalized and overheard saying Sinestro's name in his sleep, Hal dons his uniform to visit Sinestro in a secure alien prison, where Sinestro calls the Manhunters the 'second greatest threat' Hal faces and asks about John.
Separately, the episode raises questions about the extent of John Stewart's abilities. Green Lantern rings typically only grant powers while worn, a rule previously dramatized in other DC media. But John, only two months into his training and still unable to fly, instead conjures a small, autonomous bird construct — a feat that stuns Hal and that even Antaan calls 'wildly impressive,' noting it's considered nearly impossible without wearing a ring. Most Lantern constructs are simple and hollow, but John's is fully detailed, consistent with his comic-book characterization as a former architect who builds constructs 'down to the last nut and bolt.' The show hints at this trait by showing John sketching in fine detail earlier in the story.
John maintains the bird construct even after being knocked unconscious twice and nearly killed while evading his captors. Upon returning, he tells Hal that his captors said sustaining such a construct without a ring was 'practically impossible,' prompting a moment of mutual respect between the two. When Hal suggests the bird, born from John's subconscious, might mean something significant, John dismisses it as 'just a bird' and crushes it into cosmic dust. In the comics, John Stewart only achieves comparable feats — such as creating the sentient construct Ellie — after gaining vastly greater cosmic power, making his abilities in Lanterns notable this early in his training.