Question About Green Lanterns

I’m watching the Young Justice Season 1 Finale and it made me wonder: if a Green Lantern is completely robbed of his free Will to being remotely controlled, shouldn’t his ring stop working for him?

I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but the ring operates off of pure willpower, not necessarily free will. In the case of that episode, even though Hal and John were deprived of their own wills, it would’ve been replaced by Savage’s, so I feel like that would’ve been enough to keep the rings going

I did notice that Hal’s restraints were very machine-looking and the tethers to his ring very jagged and all over the place. Usually Hal’s constructs are everyday objects with very smooth tethers. That his restraints were so mechanical and the tethers so… uncertain-looking, I took that as a sign the Willpower the ring was operating on was practically on autopilot (and thus, probably kinda weak). After all, Klarion is controlling him and almost two dozen other people at the same time.

In the comics, during War of the Green Lanterns, most of the Corps was under Krona’s control, and their rings still functioned. I think it’s like @arkhamassassin said, it’s not necessarily free will as much as willpower. Even if that willpower is being directed by someone else.

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I dunno, kinda seems like a natural security measure, that the ring should be able to detect when it’s bearer is not in control of themselves and stop working accordingly. Just like how they shouldn’t be able to be used by anyone other than their current chosen bearer.

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That would make sense if it was just normal mind control, I do agree. :slight_smile: With War of the Green Lanterns it was the entire battery being corrupted, so that would probably override safeguards.

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Hal’s corruption by Parallax probably wouldn’t count as that was a gradual infection that influenced his decisions but did not make them for him. And while I haven’t read it myself, I know that John Stewart was assilimated by Brother Eye in Future’s End and if mind control like that prevented the rings from working, the only reason to assimilate any Lantern would be to only remove them as a threat. But that whole thing was pretty poorly written anyway, at least according to Linkara.