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This article contains light spoilers for the first several episodes of Lanterns.
DC’s Green Lantern mantle has been shared and passed down across generations. With each new Lantern, whether it be the original Golden Age of comics character Alan Scott, the most recognizable Lantern Corps member Hal Jordan, or the modern beloved Green Lantern, John Stewart, the Lantern mythos has never been deeper. Now HBO’s Lanterns has propelled the complex rainbow that is the Lantern Corps into the mainstream, leaving the Green Lantern with a larger audience than ever before.
While Lanterns watchers have only seen the traditional Green Lantern Corps in action so far, the show will almost inevitably introduce some of the other Lantern Corps down the line. There are plenty in the comics, including a special cult following the newly introduced Sinestro currently rotting in Hal Jordan’s prison. But if there is one organization that most deserves to make the jump to the new DCU, it is the Red Lantern Corps.
For those who are unfamiliar with the crimson corps, they are a group of Lanterns powered by anger and emotional volatility, whose ruby hue represents unthinking, reactionary violence, and they tie right back to the beginning of it all: the Manhunters.
As has slowly been unspooled in the series, the Manhunters are enigmatic robots of immense power with minimal explanation (yet). But on the page we already know that Manhunters were robotic peacekeepers created by the celestial Guardians of the Universe to patrol the galaxy. Unfortunately, they committed a number of villainous acts, including massacring the inhabitants of Space Sector 666, which marked one of the bloodiest moments in DC comic history. They left a few survivors in the carnage, though, and one was named Atros, who is so consumed with rage that he becomes the first Red Lantern and kills several other remaining survivors in the process. Afterward he renames himself Atrocitus.
Manhunters have already been mentioned in the Lanterns television series, so there is a clear way to introduce the Red Lanterns into the rest of the show. Additionally, although it might seem cartoonish to have a monstrous scarlet alien lead a group of other monstrous aliens, all of whom collectively represent uninhibited anger, the Red Lanterns are deeply compelling antagonists in the DC Universe.
Atrocitus is born out of the Guardians’ hubristic desire to control the universe. The genocide of Sector 666’s residents was the result of a glitch in the Manhunters that made each of them believe they needed to exterminate all life in the area. The inhuman look of the sector’s members, in addition to the number which humans associate with evil, is not the reason they are evil. The Red Lanterns are created by instances as out of their control as their appearance and the color of their skin—a metaphor that should speak for itself.
The fact that they are born out of inadvertent glitches and chance makes the Red Lanterns that much more volatile, and therefore narratively intriguing. Genre stories and science fiction often rely on deterministic tropes and bio-essentialism; characters with inhuman aesthetics (aliens, animals, creatures less humanoid than a Vulcan) are the “bad guys” and often have a long history of being the bad guys, while the human (or humanoid, in some cases) characters are the “good guys” (hello there again, Spock). At a surface level, this seems true for the Red Lanterns vs. the Green Lanterns, but the Red Lanterns were thrust into their antagonistic role by the characters who are supposed to be good.
After learning the backstory of the Red Lantern Corps, it is difficult to describe them as pure evil. They do commit acts of extreme violence that must be stopped by Hal Jordan and several other Lanterns in the comics, but a majority of its members are victims of injustice. For example, the character of Bleez was a princess on her home planet before being kidnapped, tortured, and sexually assaulted by members of the Sinestro Corps. After escaping, her insatiable rage over the way the Sinestro Corps treated her led to her induction into the Red Lantern Corps. She would later attack a group of Green Lanterns who were transporting Sinestro to another planet for execution.
Other Red Lanterns have similarly tragic backstories. Dex-Starr was an ordinary house-cat who watched his owner get murdered in a break-in, while the jellyfish-esque Ratchet was mutilated for resisting his species’ custom of not making social connections.
It is easy to find sympathy for many of the Red Lanterns, despite their rampage across the galaxy in various storylines. Popular superheroes, including Supergirl, Guy Gardner, and even Jordan himself have succumbed to the temptation of a Red Lantern Ring. DC Studios co-chief James Gunn’s interest in adding nuance and complexity to the live-action DCU, especially with what is happening in Lanterns, synergizes well with the Red Lantern Corps. If fans of Lanterns could ever be so lucky as to get another show focused on one of the Corps other than the Green Lanterns, it should absolutely be their crimson counterparts.
The post The Other Lantern Corps That Deserve Their Own Show appeared first on Den of Geek.
