HBO's DC Universe series Lanterns, showrun by Chris Mundy, is largely a grounded buddy cop mystery centered on the threat of the Manhunters — shapeshifting synthetic peacekeepers created by the Guardians of the Universe that went rogue, leading to the creation of the Green Lanterns. The show has already introduced fallen Lantern Sinestro, played by Ulrich Thomsen, and one of the Guardians, played by Laura Linney. In episode 4, series co-creator Damon Lindelof and writer Justin Britt-Gibson introduced another classic Green Lantern villain, Hector Hammond, to test John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler).
In the comics, Hector Hammond was introduced in a 1961 issue of Green Lantern by John Broome and Gil Kane. His origin ties to the meteor that gave Gorilla Grodd and other apes of Gorilla City superintelligence; Hammond used the meteor's radiation to boost his own intellect and gain psionic powers, and used it to mind control scientists into building inventions for him. The 2008 storyline Green Lantern: Secret Origin revised the meteor's source to be part of former Green Lantern Abin Sur's crashed spacecraft. The character was reworked again for the 2011 Green Lantern film starring Ryan Reynolds, where Peter Sarsgaard played Hector as a friend of Hal Jordan working for Amanda Waller at the Department of Extranormal Operations, who becomes infected by the fear entity Parallax during an autopsy of Abin Sur, gaining telekinesis and telepathy at the cost of his sanity and body.
On Lanterns, the character's introduction follows an awkward scene in which Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan) watches John Stewart sketch her husband William (Garret Dillahunt) in the nude, then urges John to leave town. As John watches Zoe drive away, her truck is destroyed by satellite lasers, which Hal pulls out of the sky. Rushville Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) traces the satellite to Atlas Inc., a company owned by Hector Hammond, and the Lanterns grow suspicious that he is the Manhunter since there are no records of Hector before 1986.
The Lanterns investigate a high-tech slaughterhouse Hector operates, where workers seem unable to notice them and an extradimensional portal is used to process cattle. When they confront Hector, played by Jason Manuel Olazabal, he threatens to destroy John's childhood home and kill his parents using his satellites, and reveals he has been eavesdropping on the Lanterns' hotel rooms, including a conversation about replacing Hal with a Guardian.
Hal exposes Hector's deception by asking what color Abin Sur — the red-skinned Green Lantern who died crash-landing on Earth while transporting the Manhunter — actually was. When Hector claims not to remember, Hal threatens to rip out his heart to check whether it's human or the crystalline heart of a Manhunter. Hector then admits he is really Hector Gutierrez, an engineering student bribed by the Manhunter with advanced technology to help his family and community. He reveals the true Manhunter is William Macon, sending the Lanterns back to Rushville.
According to Polygon's analysis, the Manhunter used the Hector Hammond identity as a smokescreen to distract the Green Lanterns — a misdirection that works especially well on comics fans who might expect Hammond to be a genuine, ongoing threat rather than a decoy.