This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 8.As we all expected, the finale of Lanterns ends by establishing John Stewart as Earth’s new Green Lantern. What we didn’t expect, however, is that he’s just the Green Lantern of Earth… not of Space Sector 2814 and all the other planets within it, just Earth. Moreover, John will be doing his patrols with a ring and a lantern created by Sinestro, not sanctioned by the Guardians and, therefore, not as part of the Green Lantern Corps.We know that Aaron Pierre will next show up as John Stewart in the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, and nothing about John’s Earth-only gig necessarily disrupts that plan. However, given that Man of Tomorrow will see Superman and Lex Luthor team up against the alien villain Brainiac and given that it will involve ARGUS’s off-planet prison Salvation, the movie will force John to deal with issues that go beyond just Earth. cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});For as much as Lanterns deviates from the comics, its depiction of the Green Lantern Corps more or less matches what’s been established by DC. The Green Lantern Corps are an intergalactic police force created by the Guardians of the Universe. They have divided the universe into 3600 space sectors, and each one has at least one GL. As Hal tells Kerry in the 2016 section at the start of the finale, the Guardians need to know about large-scale threats. And as Guy threatens John at the end of the episode, the Guardians will send multiple GLs to deal with an issue, even if it’s only happening in a single sector.All of which is a long way of saying that both Brainiac and Salvation will likely be issues of concern for the Guardians and, by extension, the Green Lantern Corps. Unlike most space-fairing villains, who just want to conquer the universe because they love power or evil, Brainiac craves information. He travels across the cosmos collecting cities from various planets, shrinking them down and keeping them a collection for study. He’ll take an imposing physical form when necessary, and certainly has ways of fighting with Superman and other heroes, but his primary motivation involves knowledge.Because Brainiac interferes with many civilizations, he’s exactly the type of threat the Green Lantern Corps exists to fight. Except, here’s the thing: the Corps has rarely fought Brainiac in the comic books. The most notable interaction came in the Panic in the Sky storyline from the 1990s, in which Superman recruited Guy Gardner and others to battle Brainiac, and James Gunn has explicitly said it won’t be an influence on Man of Tomorrow.Gunn has said the same thing about Salvation Run, the 2008 miniseries that introduced the off-planet prison Salvation. In that miniseries, Amanda Waller and Rick Flag kidnap the supervillains of Earth and send them to Salvation, an uninhabited planet where they will pose no further threat. Of course, the supervillains do pose a threat, eventually forming teams and making it back to Earth.The season 2 finale of Peacemaker brought Salvation into the DCU, as Rick Flag and ARGUS made plans to send metahumans there, and we know that he’ll eventually do the same with Superman and possibly Luthor. The act of kidnapping people and transporting them to another planet would be enough for the Green Lantern Corps to get involved… if that’s what the Guardians wanted. As Lois Lane in Superman and as Hal reiterates throughout Lanterns, the Guardians are reluctant to contradict local law enforcement. They may consider ARGUS’s actions a matter for Earth’s governments to solve, and forbid the Green Lanterns from interfering.That may explain John Stewart’s role in Man of Tomorrow. Because he uses an unsanctioned ring, John does not need to follow the Guardians’ rules. If he sees trouble on Earth, then he has the ability to get involved, regardless of the Guardians’ feelings.The bigger question, then, is how the Guardians will respond to John’s use of an unsanctioned ring, especially if he starts fighting ARGUS. Lanterns doesn’t check back in with Lianna or any of the other Guardians after John’s decision, but we can probably guess that they aren’t thrilled with about a GL who isn’t under their control. Will they send an army to take him down, as Guy threatened? That’s probably not going to happen in a movie that’s mostly about Superman and Lex Luthor, especially not with a cast as stuffed as Man of Tomorrow.However, the Guardians may deal with John in the same way they dealt with Hal. The Guardians allowed Hal to go to jail after the destruction of Rushville in 2016 because it helped solve their problem. They may see Salvation and even Brainiac as a convenient solution to the problem of John Stewart, letting someone else take out the imposter and allowing Guy to do their work on Earth once again.Whatever happens, Lanterns has taught us one thing: John Stewart knows how to defy expectations, even those of the Guardians of the Universe.Man of Tomorrow comes to theaters on July 9, 2027.The post Lanterns Finale Raises Questions for Man of Tomorrow appeared first on Den of Geek.