HBO’s new series Lanterns has made the Green Lantern superhero vegan, and its fourth episode reveals that the choice is rooted in animal rights rather than health, environment, spirituality, or social justice (the other four main gateways to veganism).
John Stewart, the Green Lantern played by Aaron Pierre, is established as vegan in the opening episode, when he attends a barbecue and is handed tofu steaks instead of flesh. He says, “That’s very kind. I appreciate it.”
The reasoning behind Stewart’s diet becomes explicit in episode four. The Lanterns become trapped inside the compound of a character named William Macon, where they witness a cow killed with a laser inside a slaughterhouse. Stewart responds, “That’s why I’m vegan.”
Pierre’s portrayal makes him one of the first live-action vegan superheroes, following a line of vegan and vegetarian characters in animation and comic books. Beast Boy, from the animated series Teen Titans, avoids eating other animals for empathetic reasons connected to his own ability to transform into them. Scarlet Witch, from Marvel Comics, also avoids flesh, while Damian Wayne, from Batman Inc., goes vegetarian after rescuing a cow from a slaughterhouse.
Animal rights organisation PETA praised the writers of Lanterns in an Instagram post about the series, saying, “This is the future we all need… In the first episode of Lanterns, [Aaron Pierre’s] John Stewart is vegan, so when the grill fires up, the tofu steaks come out. It really is that easy.”
Lanterns premiered on HBO last month and has been well received by critics and viewers, holding a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92% at the time of writing, though some fans of the original DC comics have noted that Stewart’s backstory has been altered considerably for the series, with his Green Lantern journey now shaped around his father and generational trauma.
