The following post contains SPOILERS for Lanterns Episode 3.

I like the TV show Lanterns. I also like DC’s Green Lantern comics, and have ever since I was a kid. (Ron Marz and Darryl Banks’ Green Lantern was the second DC book that I obsessively collected, after Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s Flash.) But I’m not sure I like  the Green Lanterns on Lanterns — and, more to the point, I’m not sure the creators of Lanterns like their Green Lanterns either. With each passing week, the show feels less like a superhero adventure and more like a deconstruction of this beloved concept.

The series’ latest episode paused its ongoing murder mystery to fill in the backstory of Green Lantern trainee John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Lanterns’ version of the character is essentially the understudy of longtime Lantern Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). Episode 3 is structured around John’s job interview for the role of backup Green Lantern; as he answers questions from a Guardian of the Universe (Laura Linney), Lanterns flashes back to John’s childhood, where we learn he was groomed by his parents since he was very young to replace Hal Jordan.

READ MORE: Who Is the Secret Manhunter on Lanterns?

In fact, John’s father, John Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) was very nearly chosen to be Green Lantern himself. But John Sr. failed the ring’s test; when it was offered to him, he was afraid, and a Green Lantern can never feel fear. So John Sr. missed his chance, and Hal Jordan became Earth’s first Green Lantern instead. And after John’s mother Bernadette (Nicole Ari Parker) meets Linney’s Guardian, and the Guardian confirms John Sr.’s story about the ring and says that their son John might be an ideal candidate to become a Green Lantern one day, they become singularly focused on training and preparing their kid to succeed where John Sr. failed.

That’s why we saw John Sr. shooting an apple off the young John’s head in the Lanterns pilot — and why John shoots an apple off his own mother’s head this week. It helps him repeatedly prove that he is absolutely fearless.

The notion that Green Lanterns can’t feel fear has been baked into the concept for decades. Hal Jordan’s most notorious comic-book storyline, the mid-1990s’ “Emerald Twilight” — where the character basically went insane, murdered most of the Green Lantern Corps, and stole the Guardians’ power — was later blamed on Hal becoming infected by the living embodiment of fear, an alien called Parallax. (Said alien is yellow, and was long imprisoned inside the Lanterns’ Central Power Battery, housed on the Guardians’ planet Oa, a retcon to explain why for decades a Green Lantern’s ring could do almost anything, but was totally powerless against the color yellow.)

Some Green Lantern comics, though, bring a degree of nuance to this idea. They often suggest a Lanterns’ true power is not about never feeling fear at all, so much as it lies in overcoming it. After all, what sort of person never feels afraid? Is that the mark of a hero, or the mark of a person who is deeply out of touch with their emotions?

Bravery is defined as “the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.” In other words: Recognizing danger and performing an act of service in spite of it is what makes someone brave — not rushing headlong into danger without any regard for one’s safety.

But that’s not really what we’ve seen through three episodes of Lanterns, and especially this week’s installment. It suggests that a Lantern must be utterly fearless. Indeed, both Aaron Pierre and Cairo Cash Lee (who plays John as a child) remain totally stoic throughout all of their various trials and tribulations. They never crack under pressure — even when faced with a terrifying notion like potentially murdering their own parent with an errant rifle shot to the face.

This seems like an absolutely demented (and deeply unhealthy) way to treat a child, even in the name of preparing them for the weighty responsibilities of adulthood. But ... it works? When John’s opportunity arrives, he passes his interview. He becomes Hal Jordan’s understudy — and, eventually, he will become his replacement. (John’s the one who’s going to appear in next summer’s Superman movie Man of Tomorrow, not Hal — who sure looks to be dead during the events of that film, at least if Lanterns Episode 1 is to be believed.)

Unless the remainder of Lanterns’ first season explores the flaws in the Guardians’ recruitment strategy, Lanterns is a show about these borderline sociopaths who work for a group of aloof aliens policing the universe. Couple that with the way Lanterns generally depicts the Green Lanterns — almost never wearing their uniforms, rarely using their powers — along with their versions of the Guardians — who mostly look like the Academy Award-nominated star of Kinsey, rather than blue-skinned aliens — and you’re left with a show that feels deeply wary of its source material, if not outright hostile toward it.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad show. Through three episodes, Lanterns is smart and compelling, and it’s got a bunch of intriguing mysteries swirling around it. But it’s not at all what I expected from James Gunn and the new DC Universe that began with his Superman, a film that believed so deeply in the idea of the Man of Steel and the values he’s stood for through almost a century of DC comics.

After three episodes, Lanterns doesn’t believe in the Green Lanterns. It seems so skeptical of its core concept I’ve started to wonder ... is the ultimate villain of the series, the killer that Hal and John are chasing, a Green Lantern? Or maybe ... the Guardians themselves?