Lanterns: The Official Podcast | Ep. 7 "The Jordan Boys’ Legacy" | Chris Mundy, Tom King, & Jason Ritter

DC Studios Showcase: The Official Podcast

Host Juju Green sits down with Lanterns co-creators Chris Mundary and Tom King to dissect episode 7, 'The Jordan Boys' Legacy.' The discussi

Key takeaways

• Co-creators used a time jump to contrast a less cynical Hal Jordan with a more jaded version of the character.
• The episode explores 'legacy' through the shared trauma of fatherhood between Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart.

Main topics

• Character development of Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart
• Themes of fear, courage, and trauma

Notable quotes

Fearlessness through brokenness.

Conclusion

The episode offers a deep, emotional look at how grounded storytelling

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) What are you doing here? I didn't summon you. I'm going to manifest whatever the were is thinking, ergo you're thinking of me. I didn't summon, I'm not your genie. I'm not thinking about you. And all evidence to the contrary. Go away! That feels kind of personal. Speaker 3 (0:21) Hey everybody, it's Juju Green and welcome to Lanterns, the official podcast. Every week we go deep on the episode, we bring in the people who made it, and we get into what the show's really about underneath the surface. Today we're diving into episode 7, The Jordan Boys Legacy. It was written by Damon Lindenloff and Tom King and directed by Alex Sakharov. Now remember, this is still a spoiler discussion, so make sure you go to that episode, get it queued up. Watch it with your friends, your family, your wife, your dog, anybody you want to watch it with, and then come back here where we're going to discuss all the spoilers. This episode is about the redemption of Hal Jordan and the very strange partnership between Jon Stewart and the backup of Hal's consciousness. Hal and Jon are now reunited and their journey gets cosmic. Now, speaking of cosmic, one of my favorite things about this episode is that we spend an extended period of time in this desolate alien planet. We're going off-world with a partnership that could have been versus the partnership that we got. Hal Jordan's consciousness, and Jon Stewart. And their chemistry is actually pretty good, and I like to see that being explored through this off-planet story. Today, we're joined by not one, but two of the co-creators, writers, and executive producers of Lanterns, Chris Mundy and Tom King. Chris is also the showrunner for Lanterns, and Tom, well, he co-wrote this episode. But without further ado, let's jump right in. Speaker 3 (1:39) I'm here with showrunner and writer Chris Mundy and co-creator and writer Tom King to talk about episode seven. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode, y'all. Speaker 2 (1:47) Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this, man. It's amazing. They asked me to Speaker 3 (1:51) come. I'm not saying no to you guys, especially for this show. Like, this show is... crushing it right now. We're in episode seven, the ultimate episode. A lot of things go down here, but I want to talk about stuff on like the smaller level, the relationship between John and Hal. And we get to see a new relationship between his consciousness, Hal's consciousness, and John. And so that creates like not a contentious relationship, but one of growth and learning. Can you guys talk to me about kind of like building a different type of relationship and letting us see these two as a partnership that should have been versus what it eventually was? You're the lead, you gotta go first. Speaker 4 (2:25) The whole thing of using Halogram in the first place was, and using the time jump was, that was a less cynical Hal. And so John meets the person that Hal was. And that when Hal was more jaded, that was almost like a cautionary tale for John. So we wanted there to be a real distinction between the two personalities kind of right off the bat. And we used to talk about it in the room that... one of them had to die for them to actually finally grow close. That's kind of tough, man. Yeah, I know. Speaker 3 (2:59) That's kind of tough. Speaker 4 (3:00) And so we really were trying to build to that the entire time and make it be an authentic learning curve for both of them. So we built that. We took a lot of time trying to build that. Speaker 3 (3:13) That's how you know when the relationship is just so fraught. It's just so unfixable that one has to literally die Speaker 4 (3:18) in Speaker 3 (3:19) order Speaker 4 (3:20) for you to finally get along. Speaker 3 (3:21) When he says, over my dead body, it's like, yeah, we can arrange that. We can actually arrange that there. The theme of the entire show is the theme of parenthood. And, you know, just the parental figures in this so drastically differ. Hal was, you could say, abandoned, or at least he would describe it as being abandoned by his father. But John is like... aggressive parenting, the most aggressive parenting that you can ever have. And all tying that back to fear, right? Like, how learning, like, courage and fear through, like, what his father has been through. And then John basically getting courage beat into him. Tom, I want to start with you. Like, was that an intentional contrast? Was that something that you guys found as you started to kind of, like, create the show? Speaker 2 (4:03) No, it was an intentional contrast sort of built in from day one and looking at those two different characters and what makes them distinct in that. One kind of was chosen from birth and kind of programmed to be a lantern, and one sort of fell into it in a different sort of path. And how two people can think their path is better, and how that can create sort of these two alpha dogs fighting over the ring at the same time. Speaker 3 (4:24) Right. Speaker 2 (4:24) And that contrast and that energy that comes from it. And then, of course, this is the episode where we learn that though they went on separate paths... it was like the same path converging. Like, it's what they have in common. It's that, I mean, the episode's called Legacy, but it's like, it's what our fathers did to us. It's what we have to carry forward. It's them finally bonding over that instead of letting it stand between them. Their differences become their commonalities here as we approach the end. Speaker 3 (4:48) When we talk about Legacy, you know, that's just... Green Lantern as a whole, right? Like, you know, he's the replacement for Hal. And so it almost seems like he inherits the will of Hal now that he's, like, passed away. And now that Hal's a proper mentor, he's, like, kind of, like, handing over the reins to him without ever really knowing it, right? And so I love this idea of legacy and inheritance. And, like, this one ring is the thing that you pass down, the heirloom, but then that comes with a lot of responsibility, right? Speaker 4 (5:15) Right. We talked in the Jon story all the time about... him being programmed in the same way the Manhunters were programmed. So we juxtaposed it with Zoey in that story. But in the same way, like, Hal didn't question what he was given from his dad, but the secret was really dark. Speaker 3 (5:31) And Speaker 4 (5:31) he was afraid of it. but you're not supposed to be afraid. So it was a nice mirror in two directions, backward to Zoe and forward with Hal. Speaker 3 (5:39) It's a nice deconstruction on what fear is and what fearlessness is, right? And I mean, that's what makes Green Lantern as a character so great. It's like, how many ways can we interpret how we overcome fear? And fear is always there. We always hear all the time, like bravery is not the absence of fear. It's like doing things in spite of it, right? And so you can tie back to Jon Stewart's origin in episode three, where we, you know, coming from... a black man, you look at like what we perceive as privilege and how it's like given the ring because of this privilege. Totally. Speaker 1 (6:08) But Speaker 3 (6:09) then you give them an opportunity to actually learn that, oh, he's actually been through some things as well. And like he actually had to overcome it. It's not the same as your experience, not invalidating it, but he's had to overcome as well. And now they get to learn those things about each other. Yeah. Speaker 4 (6:23) And he'd never opened up to anybody at all. Yeah. You know, and so it and it took being a dead person on a boat. Speaker 3 (6:31) As it does. As it tends to do. Not just being dead, but also being a 10 years previous version of himself. Speaker 2 (6:38) Who is about to die himself, running out of energy in his last moments. That's when Hal can finally become sensitive. Speaker 3 (6:44) There's Speaker 2 (6:44) so Speaker 3 (6:44) many layers to this to finally make this relationship work. Oh my gosh. Fearlessness through brokenness. The episode's role in fear theme is just so great. When you guys wrote that, I'm not fearless, I'm broken. When you guys were talking about that, what did that mean to you? What was the conversation behind that line? Speaker 2 (7:04) I mean, that comes right out of our time with the first episode in that first scene. Yeah. When Carrie says, you know, breaks him down, it's like, is he fearless? Speaker 5 (7:12) Or is he just lonely? She clocked Speaker 2 (7:14) it, like, immediately. Yeah, that's what Carrie does. And the idea of, you know, fear is... Fear is risk, and if you're risking nothing, then what does it even matter to you, right? Speaker 3 (7:23) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (7:24) like that idea of there's two levels of being afraid. There's what you just said, there's being brave, and there's being reckless. And what line are we drawing and where do we fall on that? Is that the heart of the show? Speaker 4 (7:37) Yeah, and I also like the fact that the howl ground through the whole thing doesn't exactly, he doesn't know the howl that comes ten years later. Right. So he just knows himself at that. So I'm guessing that the person I became was... did these things, but like, that's not me. There's various times where he guesses wrong, but he's just trying to put together, he's trying to do the math. Like, how did I get here? How did I get here? Because like, oh, this is where I was going to end up. You know, there's that great scene in this episode that I really love when Carrie sees him for the first time. And he's