Is The Sinestro Corps Coming In Lanterns Season 2?
The next time we see Thaal Sinestro on-screen, he might just have an army with him.
Even if you’ve never picked up a Green Lantern comic book before, chances are you recognize the name. A critically panned 2011 movie, a starring role in one of the most beloved cartoons of the early 2000s, and a short-lived animated solo series means Green Lantern has some pop cultural presence; most people at least know he’s got a magic ring that makes constructs and that he’s a member of the Justice League. They might even know that multiple heroes operate under the name, due to the sprawling size of the intergalactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps.
But for the first time ever, the Green Lanterns have received their own live-action TV series, and it has shed some light on corners of the mythos general audiences might not be as familiar with. Across eight episodes, Lanterns has laid the groundwork for one of the most important corners of the DC Universe, introducing some incredibly important players moving forward, including Earth’s new Green Lantern John Stewart. But with the tentative confirmation of a second season, it’s clear that the show still has more story left to tell. And, certainly, a huge part of that story will be the machinations of Sinestro, Hal Jordan’s former mentor who has been left in what looks like a prison — but might actually be his salvation (and everyone else’s worst nightmare).
Warning! Spoilers for Lanterns below.
Despite not having all that much screentime, Sinestro’s presence and his future looms large over the show’s next season.
Where Does Lanterns Leave Sinestro?
In the seventh episode of Lanterns, John Stewart and Hal Jordan travel to the decimated planet from which Antaan and his gang of extraterrestrial Manhunter-hunters originated from. There they find the remnants of a civilization utterly destroyed by the shape-shifting androids, specifically destroyed through the usage of a chemical weapon that assaults victims’ minds with their worst fears. To make matters worse, they find Sinestro there, and the season finale reveals why: He had been hard at work constructing a power battery for Noah, Sheriff Kerry’s secret Manhunter son, one tainted by the residual fear chemical left behind in the atmosphere and the water of the planet.
The season ends with John Stewart leaving Sinestro trapped and taking the lantern for himself, using it to operate as Earth’s Green Lantern in an “independent contractor” capacity — the fear compound imbued within it become key to John’s arc of learning to accept the existence of fear and overcoming it. It’s an interesting dynamic for the character, one that loosely parallels the non-canon alternate universe storyline Green Lantern: Earth One vol. 2, in which John wields a yellow ring for good as opposed to evil. But while John is able to harness his fears for the sake of protecting the world, his mentor’s mentor is well-known for harnessing his for evil.
While Sinestro’s extended stay on Antaan’s planet might seem like imprisonment, it might just work out in his favor.
The Sinestro Corps, Explained
In the comics, Sinestro began using his yellow ring in 1961’s Green Lantern vol. 2 #9, just two issues after his debut in issue #7. At first, Sinestro’s ring was simply an alternative power ring, and it was yellow because in early Green Lantern comics the color was actually a significant weakness for standard GL rings. It was created by a species of highly advanced weapon-smiths on the anti-matter planet of Qward — where Sinestro was imprisoned for ruling over his home planet like a dictator while using the powers of a Green Lantern — and it could only be charged by siphoning energy from Green Lanterns themselves.
That all changed in the early 2000s, when Geoff Johns began writing his nearly 10-year long Green Lantern saga. Johns is credited as one of the most influential writers ever for the character, and it’s easy to see why: not only did he bring Hal Jordan back from the dead (the character was killed off after temporarily becoming a villain in the ‘90s), but he also made a host of retcons to the Green Lantern mythos, most notably making the Green Lanterns’ weakness to the “yellow impurity” the result of the cosmic entity of fear known as Parallax, the same being who possessed Hal Jordan back during his villain era. Johns revealed that Parallax, who has been around since the beginning of the universe, was imprisoned by the Guardians of Oa in the Central Power Battery, which is the reason why Lanterns were originally weak to the color yellow.
Unlike the Green Lanterns, whose recruits are fearless and strong of will, the Yellow Lantern Corps is made up of those who inspire fear wherever they go.
In 1988, Sinestro was imprisoned inside the Central Power Battery on Oa as a punishment for his perpetual crimes in the pages of Green Lantern Corps #222-224. And almost 20 years later, Geoff Johns revealed that while Sinestro was there, his yellow ring made contact with and awoke Parallax (he was even a part of Parallax’s plan to corrupt Hal Jordan in the first place). His allegiance to Parallax becomes a massive problem in Green Lantern vol. 4 #10, with the official birth of the Sinestro Corps, an alternate villainous counterpart to the Green Lanterns; powered by Parallax, Sinestro created his own Central Battery and forged dozens of rings, offering them to anyone in the galaxy with the ability “to instill great fear” in the hearts of others. The Sinestro Corps (otherwise known as the Yellow Lantern Corps) would become the primary antagonists of the 2007 storyline The Sinestro Corps War, and their members include several villains from previous DC Comics storylines, including Cyborg Superman (the villainous Superman impostor who showed up after The Death of Superman), Superboy-Prime (the Clark Kent of another dimension who went insane after being stranded in a “paradise” pocket dimension), and a temporarily corrupted Kyle Rayner (one of the human Green Lanterns who came after John Stewart).
It’s hard to say whether or not Lanterns is gearing up for an adaptation of The Sinestro Corps War in its second season, but it’s a safe bet that Sinestro will be forging a new ring of his own. Although the last time we see him he’s stranded on Antaan’s ruined planet with seemingly no escape, if he could forge a ring and a lantern battery once, he can do it again — and this one will be completely powered by fear, unlike John’s. While the newest Green Lantern of Earth has once and for all proven his worth as a hero, he’ll definitely be in for a challenge when he has to face off against the man who trained the man who trained him.
