John Johnson/HBO Max
Contains spoilers for “Lanterns” Season 1, Episode 2
“Lanterns” Season 1, Episode 2 sends John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) on a deceptively simple mission: track down Hal Jordan’s (Kyle Chandler) actual green lantern, the charging device his power ring depends on. The errand quickly turns into a revealing detour through Hal’s strange private life. John visits the veteran Lantern’s sparsely occupied mansion, which Hal received as a gift, and encounters an alien flesh-eating plant with strong “Little Shop of Horrors” energy that Hal has apparently decided to keep as a pet. By the time the side quest wraps up, John has also been kidnapped by a rogue alien faction — because in the Green Lantern corner of DC, that sort of thing comes with the territory.
Even with all that weirdness packed into the episode, its most quietly bizarre moment is easy to miss. During the search, “Lanterns” slips in a playful reference to one of DC’s strangest superheroes: Mogo, arguably the most unusual Green Lantern of them all. The Easter egg comes through Hal’s password for the pocket-dimension lockbox containing his lantern: “Mogo doesn’t socialize.” The line directly points to the Green Lantern Corps member who is also a gigantic sentient planet, meaning Mogo has now been acknowledged as part of the DCU.
Mogo is the biggest Green Lantern, with power and responsibility to match
DC Comics
Mogo has appeared in a few different forms over the years, but the essentials rarely change. He is an enormous living planet, affiliated with the Green Lantern Corps but famously uninterested in mingling with others — exactly as Hal’s password suggests. Mogo can control his vegetation, climate, weather, temperature, and the other systems that make up a habitable world. When he needs to communicate, he projects holograms, and when he wants to reveal his allegiance, he arranges the plant life around his equator into the shape of a massive Green Lantern symbol.
As a mobile, self-aware planet with command over his own gravity and physical environment, Mogo is one of the Corps’ most formidable members and has played major roles in several Green Lantern stories. His importance goes beyond sheer power, though. Thanks to his immense telepathic abilities, Mogo is also responsible for helping distribute Green Lantern power rings to worthy new bearers.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has already explored the sentient-planet concept with Ego (Kurt Russell), Star-Lord’s (Chris Pratt) father, in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” Whether James Gunn intends to bring Mogo fully into the DCU remains unknown, and the “Lanterns” reference may be all fans get for now. Still, Hal’s password makes one thing clear: Mogo exists somewhere within the DCU’s Green Lantern mythology.
“Lanterns” Season 1 is streaming on HBO Max.
