DC Studios Officially Reveals John Stewart’s New Lantern Oath as His Dark Lantern Future Takes Shape
John Stewart is officially doing things his own way. DC Studios has released a clip from the season finale of Lanterns featuring Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart reciting his newly created Lantern oath, and it makes his new place in the DCU even more interesting. John isn’t following the Green Lantern Corps anymore, but he isn’t exactly joining another Corps either.
The finale sees John charging Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan’s decommissioned ring using the power battery created by Sinestro. Once the ring is powered up, John takes his first flight, but the familiar Green Lantern oath is nowhere to be heard.
Instead, with some encouragement from Halogram, John decides to forge his own path. He essentially becomes an “independent contractor,” taking responsibility for protecting Earth while Guy Gardner continues policing the cosmos.
John seals that decision with an oath of his own: "In Brightest Day, In Darkest Night, I’ll embrace my fear, I’ll do what’s right. I choose this ring, I choose this fight, in service to this lantern's light."
It’s a cool shift for the character because John isn’t simply replacing Hal or becoming another standard Green Lantern. He’s created something that doesn’t fit neatly within the established Lantern Corps.
Lanterns co-creator and writer Tom King has confirmed that John isn’t a Yellow Lantern, even though his new power source does have “a bit of yellow in it, has a bit of fear in it.” Instead, Stewart has entered new territory.
“John is not a hundred percent a Green Lantern anymore. He has an unsanctioned lantern that has a bit of yellow and a bit of fear in it. So he’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern — just like a Yellow Lantern or an Orange Lantern says something different.
“John is this utterly unique creation that he chose for himself. So getting his own unique oath seemed to line up very much with the lore and where we’re going from here.”
That leaves a pretty big question hanging over John Stewart’s future in the DCU… What kind of Lantern is he now?
We don’t know whether John will eventually adopt an official name for this new identity, but “Dark Lantern” has already entered the fan conversation.
The speculation picked up after concept art for Sinestro’s power battery appeared online, and considering John’s unusual combination of Green Lantern power, fear, and independence from the Corps, the name certainly feels possible.
For now, John appears to be something completely new within the DCU’s Lantern mythology. He has his own power source, his own mission, and now his own oath. More importantly, he chose all of it himself.
Whether the DCU ultimately calls him the Dark Lantern or gives this new kind of Lantern another name remains to be seen, but John Stewart is building his own version of what a Lantern can be.