on Google Preferred Source Google News Link copied to clipboard By Corey Plante Published Aug 30, 2026, 10:00 PM EDT DC Remember Birds of Prey?
Image: Warner Bros. Lanterns Sign in to your Polygon.com account Add Us Add on Google Preferred Source Google News Summary Generate a summary of this story Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) has already spent two months training to become a Green Lantern when HBO’s Lanterns begins, but episode 3 flashes back to the strange interview that led to him landing the job. Inside an abandoned shopping mall, a Guardian of the Universe played by Laura Linney questions John about his troubled childhood, military career, and feelings about Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) to determine whether he deserves the ring. Leading up to the big interview, however, Lanterns delivers a major DC Comics Easter egg. Not only does it have connections to a Batman villain we’ve already seen in live-action, but it also may have ties to yet another rogue slated to debut later this year.
Note: Spoilers follow for Lanterns season 1, episode 3.
The episode opens with a disorienting shot of John simply falling through the air, flailing before he crashes into a stack of mattresses in an abandoned shopping mall. We don’t know it yet, but the episode later reveals that this happened roughly two months before the show’s main 2016 narrative. A series of arrows on signs lead John to an empty Famous Footwear on the upper floor where the interview takes place in the manager’s office. But just before he enters the store, across the way there’s a large sign for “Janus Cosmetics.” John never approaches or interacts with the storefront. Unless you already know your Batman history, there’s really no reason to give it a second thought. But it just might wind up being more significant than it seems at first glance.
Image: HBO Janus Cosmetics is the company owned by the wealthy Sionis family in DC Comics. Roman Sionis inherits the business after the death of his parents, but his disastrous tenure as its leader eventually leaves it on the brink of financial ruin. A product rushed to market without adequate testing disfigures hundreds of customers, forcing Roman to accept a bailout from Bruce Wayne and surrender control of the company.
Roman blames Bruce for this humiliation, and in seeking revenge, he becomes Black Mask, the Gotham City crime lord first introduced by Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake in 1985’s Batman #386. Janus is also the Roman god commonly depicted with two faces and associated with transitions, duality, beginnings, and endings. Naming the character “Roman” as a first name and associating him with a company called Janus is a pretty on-the-nose reference.
Black Mask made his live-action debut in 2020’s Birds of Prey , where Ewan McGregor played Roman Sionis as a sinister Gotham nightclub owner and aspiring criminal kingpin. Before anybody jumps the gun drawing too many connections here, however, it’s important to know that Birds of Prey belongs in the previous DC Extended Universe. So everything that happened in that movie is not considered canon in the new continuity overseen by James Gunn. (Except maybe Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn? It's unclear .)
Image: Warner Bros. The Janus Cosmetics sign doesn’t mean that McGregor’s Black Mask — or…