Zack Snyder's Justice League's Green Lanterns, Explained

In Zack Snyder's Justice League, there are two different occasions -- neither in the main, present [...]

By Russ Burlingame

In Zack Snyder's Justice League, there are two different occasions -- neither in the main, present day storyline -- where members of the Green Lantern Corps show up. While Snyder would have had it differently in a perfect world, neither of the GLs are human, but both of them are characters who have a history in the comics -- one significantly more than the other. The first of these two characters shows up in the History Lesson segment, wihch sees the heroes of the past teaming up against Darkseid and repelling him. The second appears in the Knightmare sequence, dead on the ground.

The first of the two is Yalan Gur, whose death is seen during the History Lesson segment. The character, who protected Sector 2814 in the distant past, was theoretically a part of the theatrical cut of the movie, but his appearance was trimmed back to being just a burst of green light, whereas here we get to see him close enough to identify him.

Created in 1991, Yalan Gur was first drawn by Mart Nodell. Ironically, his in-story first appearance was in, essentially, a history lesson. The issue was the 50th anniversary special for Green Lantern, and co-creator/original artist Mart Nodell drew him into a scene where Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott was explaining some of the history of the rings to Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner.

In the comics, Yalan Gur had the yellow impurity removed from his ring, allowing him to impact the color yellow, but the absolute power that gave him corrupted him quickly. After a time, the Guardians gave him a new impurity -- the ring was ineffective against wood, which allowed him to be killed by Chinese villagers.

None of that comes to pass in the movie, of course; there, he dies during battle with Darkseid and, in one of the more fan service-y shots of the film, we get a moment where the Green Lantern ring hovers in Darkseid's grasp, before it flies off in search of a new owner. Gur's story was used as a means to unifty the disparate mythologies of Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, and the later retcon of the Green Lantern Corps.

The first appearance of Yalan Gur -- and his only other appearance, in a flashback in an issue of Green Lantern Corps Quarterly -- is unavailable digitally. While one might suspect that it's due to a profoundly stereotyped depiction of Chinese people, with colors that would get the colorist (and possibly the book's editor and/or publisher) in trouble today, it's in fact part of a wholesale purge of the works of writer Gerard Jones from DC's digital sales.

Jones was arrested in 2016 on charges of uploading child pornography to a private YouTube account. He eventually pleaded guilty and began a six-year prison term in November 2018. Following the revelation, a print collection of his Green Lantern work, which was already beginning to circulate because it was only a week or two away from release, was pulled from store shelves and pulped. When DC Universe launched its digital comics interface, most of Jones's work was missing, and the few of his comics that were available got pulled down when a journalist pointed them out.

The other Lantern seen in Zack Snyder's Justice League has significantly more appearances to choose from, and even popped up in Green Lantern (the Ryan Reynolds movie) and the Green Lantern animated series. That would be Kilowog, of Bolovax Vik and Sector 674, whose appearance is only as a corpse in the Knightmare sequence at the end of the movie.

Kilowog was one of the handful of Green Lanterns rumored to appear in Zack Sndyer's Justice League, and at one point it was even rumored that a Green Lantern (possibly Kilowog) had been cast for a cameo. A t-shirt released to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention even featured a small Green Lantern logo alongside the emblems for the Justice League members and Martian Manhunter.

Kilowog long served as the trainer/drill sergeant for the Green Lantern Corps, a role that he was well-suited for. During Geoff Johns's run on the title, Kilowog left that post to go back into regular field combat (not that he had ever stayed out of it for long). He hails from a world that was, broadly speaking, socialist, with the collective good being prized over individuality. When his race died out, he took their consciousnesses into his ring and carried them with him.

His death here is not explained, just like other deaths in the Knightmare world aren't, so there isn't much substance to his appearance here, although it certainly does suggest that there's something bigger going on with these dreams. After all, previous dreams had all featured people Bruce knew, allowing for the possibility that he wasn't tapping into something larger. With Kilowog, a character he's never met but that fans know exists and is real, it feels like this one went to a new level.

You can watch Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max now.

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