Lanterns Episode 4 Resurrects a Villain from Reynolds' 2011 DC Misfire

HBO's Lanterns has been quietly doing something ambitious: constructing a grounded, procedural take on DC's cosmic mythology while still honoring the dense lore that comic readers have spent decades absorbing. Episode 4 deepens that project considerably, introducing a villain whose name will trigger immediate recognition — and perhaps a wince — among fans familiar with the franchise's complicated cinematic history.

A Character Born in the Silver Age

Hector Hammond is, in comics terms, a genuine classic. Created by writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane in 1961, Hammond was originally a scheming opportunist who exploited a mysterious meteor's radiation to amplify his own intelligence and unlock psionic abilities. That same meteor, in the original continuity, also gave Gorilla Grodd and the apes of Gorilla City their superintelligence — a detail that speaks to just how gloriously strange Silver Age DC storytelling could be. A 2008 storyline, Green Lantern: Secret Origin, later retconned the meteor's origins, tying it instead to the crashed spacecraft of fallen Lantern Abin Sur.

Hammond's profile rose considerably — if not exactly favorably — when he appeared as a central antagonist in the 2011 Green Lantern film starring Ryan Reynolds. Played by Peter Sarsgaard with a committed physical transformation, that version of Hammond was reimagined as a government scientist who becomes infected by Parallax during an autopsy of Abin Sur, slowly gaining telepathy and telekinesis while deteriorating physically and psychologically. The film's mixed-to-poor reception has since become something of a cautionary tale in superhero cinema, and Reynolds himself has made sport of it in the years since, most pointedly through the Deadpool franchise's meta-humor.

How Lanterns Uses — and Subverts — the Legacy

In Lanterns Episode 4, according to Polygon, showrunner Chris Mundy and writers Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson deploy Hammond as a feint rather than a genuine threat. After a satellite attack nearly kills Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan) on a rural road, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) trace the incident to Atlas Inc., a company registered to one Hector Hammond (Jason Manuel Olazabal). The man has no records prior to 1986, operates an eerily automated slaughterhouse with extradimensional technology, and is surveilling both Lanterns from orbit — all of which positions him as a plausible Manhunter suspect.

The confrontation that follows is one of the episode's more tightly constructed sequences. Hector attempts to drive a wedge between the two Lanterns by replaying a private conversation in which a Guardian discusses Hal's potential replacement. Hal, unmoved, deploys a disarmingly simple test: he asks Hammond what color Abin Sur's skin was. When Hammond stumbles, Hal threatens to crack open his chest to check for a Manhunter's crystalline heart. The bluff works. Hammond folds, revealing himself as Hector Gutierrez, an engineering student who accepted advanced technology from the actual Manhunter in exchange for assistance — his family and community receiving genuine benefit in the bargain.

The Misdirection Cuts Deeper for Fans

What makes the episode's construction genuinely clever is the layered nature of its misdirection. For casual viewers, Hammond functions as a red herring in a buddy-cop procedural. For DC readers and anyone who remembers the 2011 film, his appearance carries the additional weight of expectation — the assumption that a named villain from the comics and from Reynolds' much-discussed movie will naturally become a major player. The Lanterns creative team weaponizes that expectation, using Hammond's notoriety to draw attention away from the real threat: William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), whose Manhunter identity the episode reveals only in its closing beat.

It's a structurally elegant move, one that rewards franchise literacy while remaining entirely coherent for newcomers. Reynolds, meanwhile, continues to navigate his own expansive place in superhero cinema — from crashing the Avengers: Doomsday panel in a Deadpool suit to new projects like the Cold War comedy Mayday — but Lanterns suggests that even his most derided work has found a second life as productive mythology.