LANTERNS Digs Into the Manhunters and a Dark Secret at the Heart of the DC Universe
HBO’s Lanterns is using one of the Green Lantern Corps’ oldest enemies to expose a nasty secret the Guardians would probably prefer stayed buried.
Episode 2 brings the Manhunters into the story, connecting the mystery unfolding in Rushville, Nebraska, to events that predate the Green Lantern Corps itself.
Showrunner Chris Mundy and executive producer Tom King have now opened up about why these robotic enforcers were brought into the DC Universe series and how the idea stretches all the way back to the earliest planning of the new DCU.
King describes the Manhunters as a “deep, dark secret” belonging to the Guardians of the Universe. Long before the Guardians created the Green Lantern Corps, they built the Manhunters as their first attempt at an intergalactic police force.
Their design was based on the Manhunters of Ma’aleca’andra, the Red Planet, but unlike the living Green Lanterns who eventually followed them, these enforcers were machines.
Thousands of years of existence caused the Manhunters to evolve beyond their original programming, while their infamous directive, “No Man Escapes the Manhunters,” eventually helped send them down a destructive path.
Things got considerably worse when the scientist Krona reprogrammed the robots to wipe out organic life. The resulting devastation spread across multiple worlds before the Guardians finally managed to stop their creations. Some Manhunters survived, escaped to different planets, and hid themselves by taking on living disguises.
That piece of mythology gives Lanterns a creepy angle. These things don’t have to arrive in giant spaceships or march into town looking like killer robots. They can blend in.
The Manhunters were actually part of King’s vision for the DCU from very early on. When DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran gathered writers at Safran’s Los Angeles home for one of the foundational meetings that helped shape the new DC Universe, King pitched a cop series involving DC’s cosmic law enforcement with a True Detective influence.
The part that caught the attention of writers who weren’t already steeped in DC mythology was the Guardians screwing up on an almost unimaginable scale. King shared: “These people who were trying to fix the universe got it wrong and then killed everyone and then tried to start again.”
The Green Lantern Corps is supposed to represent order and protection across the universe, but its very existence is connected to the catastrophic failure of the organization that created it. The Guardians’ first police force became a civilization-destroying nightmare, and the Green Lantern Corps was their attempt to start over.
Mundy says the Manhunters became part of the series fairly early while he was developing the story with Damon Lindelof and King. “It felt like you could have somebody hiding in plain sight and it tied back to the Guardians,” Mundy explains.
That brings us to Rushville, where Lanterns has planted a single Manhunter among the population. The synthetic being can construct new bodies and work its way into civilizations without revealing what it really is.
Meanwhile, a group of aliens has issued the Lanterns an ultimatum, and that is to identify themselves within 48 hours or Rushville faces annihilation.
Suddenly, what looks like a strange case in a small Nebraska town is connected to one of the oldest mistakes in Green Lantern history.
It’s a cool way for Lanterns to bring some seriously geeky DC Comics mythology into its detective story without simply dumping decades of lore onto the audience. The Manhunters fit naturally into a mystery built around identity, hidden motives, and figuring out who can actually be trusted.
Their arrival gives the series a chance to explore the uncomfortable history of the Guardians and the organization they created. The Green Lantern Corps may be policing the universe now, but the Manhunters are a reminder that they weren’t the Guardians’ first attempt.
That first attempt went horribly wrong.