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.
What is Janus Cosmetics in the DC universe?
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.)
The Janus Cosmetics sign doesn’t mean that McGregor’s Black Mask — or any version of Roman Sionis — exists in the world of Lanterns. But it does place a company inseparable from his mythology inside the new DCU. At minimum, it’s a carefully selected Batman Easter egg. At most, it could be the earliest groundwork for a new incarnation of Black Mask, or even a light tease for Clayface.
Is Lanterns connected to Clayface?
Matt Hagen is the second and best-known version of Clayface in DC Comics. Introduced in 1961’s Detective Comics #298, Hagen is a treasure hunter who gains shape-shifting abilities after taking a dip in a mysterious pool of protoplasm. He can transform his body, impersonate other people, and reshape his limbs into weapons.
Batman: The Animated Series combines Matt Hagen’s story with elements of the original Clayface, Basil Karlo. This Hagen is a famous actor whose face is disfigured in a car accident. A corrupt businessman then supplies him with an experimental cosmetic that allows Hagen to reshape his appearance. But a seemingly lethal overdose of the drug transforms him into Clayface.
According to an Entertainment Weekly interview from July, the upcoming Clayface movie due out in October fuses elements of these different origin stories together into something new. Directed by James Watkins with a screenplay by Mike Flanagan, Clayface follows a new version of Matt Hagen. He’s a rising movie star who unwittingly sleeps with the girlfriend of a local mob boss who carves up Hagen’s face in response. A shady scientist treats him with a miracle serum, but instead of fixing the scars, it turns his entire body into clay. The movie seems to emphasize body horror over supervillain vibes, at least so far, but it seems Lanterns might be laying the groundwork for some deeper connections in the wider lore.
There is no explicit connection between Janus Cosmetics, the Sionis Corporation, and whatever happens to Matt Hagen in Clayface — so far. But across various iterations of these characters and companies in comics, animation, and even live-action, there certainly are enough parallels that it’s possible.
This also isn’t Lanterns’ only connection to Batman’s corner of the DC Universe. Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) previously told Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) that she’s originally from Gotham City, but we don’t really know anything beyond that. Lanterns feels rather self-contained and focused on Rushville, Nebraska, but the show isn’t shying away from offering up meaningful little connections to the wider DC Universe. With that in mind, the big Janus Cosmetics sign looms too large to just be another fun little Easter egg.