While HBO’s DC Universe series Lanterns is mostly a grounded buddy cop mystery, showrunner Chris Mundy isn’t afraid to dig into the weirder corners of Green Lantern mythology. The show is focused on the threat of the Manhunters, the shapeshifting synthetic peacekeepers created by the Guardians of the Universe who eventually went rogue, leading to the creation of the Green Lanterns. We’ve also met fallen Lantern Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen) and even one of the Guardians (Laura Linney). In episode 4, series co-creator Damon Lindelof and writer Justin Britt-Gibson added another classic Green Lantern villain to test John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), but viewers who haven’t read the comics might not realize his significance.
Spoilers follow for Lanterns episode 4.
Who is Hector Hammond in the Green Lantern comics?
Photo: Francois Duhamel/Warner Bros. Pictures/Everett Collection
Hector Hammond was introduced in a 1961 issue of Green Lantern by John Broome and Gil Kane. His origins are tied to the meteor that gave Gorilla Grodd and the other apes of Gorilla City superintelligence. He used the meteor’s radiation to enhance his own intellect and gain psionic powers. Hammond also used the meteor to mind control a bunch of scientists and make them create high-tech inventions for him. The source of the meteor was rewritten in the 2008 storyline Green Lantern: Secret Origin to be part of former Green Lantern Abin Sur’s crashed spacecraft.
The villain’s origins were revised again for the 2011 Green Lantern film starring Ryan Reynolds, where Hector Hammond was played by Peter Sarsgaard. In the movie, Hector is a friend of Hal Jordan who works for Amanda Waller at the Department of Extranormal Operations. When Hector does an autopsy of Abin Sur, he is infected by Parallax, a twisted former Guardian who tried to harness the power of fear. Parallax gives Hector telekinesis and telepathy, though the powers make him mentally unstable and cause him to physically deteriorate.
What is Hector Hammond’s role in Lanterns?
Photo: John Johnson/HBO
After an extremely awkward scene where Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan) watches John do a nude sketch of her husband William (Garret Dillahunt), Zoe visits John in his hotel room to urge him to leave town. As John watches her drive away, her truck is blown up by lasers coming from a satellite, which Hal then pulls out of the sky. Rushville Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) traces the satellite to Atlas Inc., a company owned by Hector Hammond. There are no records of Hector before 1986, which makes them suspect he’s the Manhunter.
The Lanterns drive to one of the slaughterhouses Hector operates and find an eerie facility where the workers don’t seem to notice them, even when directly addressed. The facility is extremely high tech, using an extradimensional portal to send a cow into a room where lasers slash it into cuts of meat that the workers then gather up to process. When the Lanterns confront Hector (Jason Manuel Olazabal), he threatens to use his satellites to blow up John’s childhood home and kill his parents. Hector also reveals he’s been eavesdropping on their Rushville hotel rooms, trying to turn Hal against John by replaying his conversation with one of the Guardians about replacing Hal.
Hal sees through Hector’s tactics, asking him what color Abin Sur is. The red-skinned Green Lantern died when he crashed on Earth while transporting the Manhunter. When Hector claims he just doesn’t remember what color the alien was, Hal threatens to rip his heart out to see if it’s human or the crystalline heart of a Manhunter. Hector folds, admitting he’s really Hector Gutierrez, an engineering student the Manhunter bribed with incredible technology to help his family and community. He then tells them the Manhunter is actually William Macon, sending them back to Rushville. The Manhunter used Hector Hammond as a smokescreen to distract the Green Lanterns, and it’s a misdirection that works even better for DC Comics fans expecting him to be a real threat.