Ranking Nine Green Lanterns From Weakest to Strongest: Who Is the Most Powerful Ring Bearer?

The most powerful Green Lantern is Hal Jordan, the greatest Green Lantern who ever lived, and no one has more raw willpower than he does. Getting there means working through nine contenders, starting with a hacker who was never officially a Lantern.

Ask any DC fan who the most powerful Green Lantern is and you will probably get a different answer. Is it Hal Jordan, the original, the greatest who ever lived? Is it Kyle Rayner, who held the power of a god? What about John Stewart, the first man to become a Guardian of the Universe? Or maybe even Alan Scott, who is not even part of the Green Lantern Corps but might be the most powerful human in the DC universe. We are settling it here, starting from the bottom.

Keli Quintela, Teen Lantern, lands in last place because she has not shown enough yet

Keli Quintela was just 11 years old when she found a dying alien in a junkyard in La Paz, Bolivia. Instead of being given a ring and a lantern, she took his gauntlet, reverse engineered it, and hacked directly into the Green Lantern Central Power Battery on Oa. She basically became a Green Lantern without ever actually becoming a Green Lantern, going by the name Teen Lantern.

Her constructs are legit. She has managed to build working copies of heroes like Superboy, Wonder Girl and Red Tornado so they could all team up in a fight. She clearly has potential too, having been described as a "nuclear bomb of willpower." But she has not shown nearly enough to be any higher on this list than dead last. I mean, she is not even technically an official Green Lantern.

Jo Mullein's Emerald Sight is impressive, but her far sector holds her back

Jo Mullein is a member of the Green Lantern Corps assigned to a sector so far from Oa that she is not even sure it has actually been numbered, so it is just called the far sector. Her ring is fundamentally different from other Green Lantern rings. It charges itself and does not need a lantern, but the downside is that it has less power when it comes to constructs. It also operates on a different philosophy: most rings work through the will to overcome fear, while hers works through the will to live with fear.

What Jo can do is still pretty impressive. She can create force fields and constructs and travel through space, the same as other Lanterns. But she also has something called Emerald Sight, the ability to perceive the near future, a power almost nobody else in the Corps has ever shown.

Honestly, you can argue that Jo's sector is what is really holding her back. The far sector is a distant, isolated part of space, largely outside the normal Corps and its threats and villains. So Jo has never faced the same level of threats that Hal or Kyle have. She has not been tested against that top tier yet.

Simon Baz can heal with his ring, something thought impossible for a Green Lantern

Simon Baz is a former mechanic, street racer and car thief. He is a Green Lantern and the only Lantern who carried a gun as well, and honestly, it came in handy from time to time. Simon has battled alongside the whole Green Lantern Corps against Volthoom, the First Lantern, and has earned the trust of both Hal Jordan and Batman.

What really separates Simon from the rest is his unique power to heal others. He brought a family member out of a coma using his ring, and he revived Lyssa Drak through the same power, something thought to be impossible for a Green Lantern. The ring runs on willpower, but Simon is not just using the will to fight and overcome fear. He is using the will to heal, the will to live, and that is what sets him apart. Still, he just does not have the feats or the experience to match the others on this list.

Jessica Cruz drew blood from Darkseid using only 4% of her power

Jessica Cruz was forcibly bonded to the ring of Volthoom, an evil ring from Earth-3 that fed specifically on fear and nearly destroyed her from the inside. Eventually, through willpower, she was able to overcome it, and then she became a proper Green Lantern on top of that. She is really one of the best examples of conquering and overcoming fear.

She has some real feats too. She knocked away Wonder Woman with a single blast, matched a direct hit from Shazam and traded blows with Wonder Woman again. She harmed a character who had killed multiple Green Lanterns before Jessica got to them. At her absolute best, Jessica was able to draw blood from Darkseid while using only 4% of her full power. "4% against Darkseid. That's crazy."

She has also built weapons capable of fighting off two Yellow Lanterns while completely ringless, and repaired a Green Lantern space station solo. Both the ring and the woman wearing it are definitely formidable.

Guy Gardner has beaten Atrocitus, the founder of the Red Lantern Corps

Guy Gardner definitely has a bit of a temper and an anger issue. But maybe that is not such a bad thing when his powers run on emotion, and it also explains how he was able to double dip as a Red Lantern. Guy has beaten Atrocitus in a fight before. That is Atrocitus, the founder and leader of the Red Lantern Corps, the being who created the very ring Guy would later wield himself. So yes, he is definitely powerful.

He has also found himself in plenty of fights with other Lanterns. Although he typically loses to Hal or John, he still manages to land some good hits every time. That eagerness to fight shows up even in his constructs. He has so much raw willpower that he is almost overflowing with it, and his ring is often "sparking like a leaky faucet that just can't keep it all in."

John Stewart builds constructs down to every nut and bolt, and became the first mortal Guardian

John Stewart is probably the most precise Lantern who has ever lived. When he builds a construct, he builds it from the inside out, down to every single nut, bolt and screw. It is not just a rough idea of a wall or a hand or a cage, but a fully realized structure of internal components, accurate to an architectural level. That specificity and attention to detail is what makes his constructs stronger than most other Lanterns' even when the raw willpower might be the same.

He has managed to restrain Wonder Woman, and even made a construct that Martian Manhunter could not phase through. John has reached such heights as battling a Guardian of the Universe empowered by Predator, one of the emotional entities comparable to Parallax.

He was chosen by the Guardians to become an Alpha Lantern, the highest individual honor a Green Lantern can achieve. Not just that, but John eventually became the first mortal Guardian of the Universe. He is a soldier through and through and a model of who a Green Lantern should be. He is one of the best.

Alan Scott does not need a ring because he is the Starheart's power source

Alan Scott might be the original Green Lantern, but he is not actually a member of the Green Lantern Corps, and his power does not come from a Green Lantern ring. It comes from the Starheart, the collected banished magic of the universe that the Guardians themselves tried to be rid of, bound into a star, and eventually fused with Alan so completely that his body is now literally composed of green flame. He does not need the ring anymore. "He is the power source."

The Starheart predates the standard Green Lantern system entirely, and its power goes way beyond constructs: time travel, time manipulation, intangibility, invisibility, matter manipulation and all sorts of other powers that normal rings do not really do. He has sealed a multiversal rift and damaged Mordru, a top tier magic user. He can casually manipulate time, sending people to the future or the past, and even manipulating the passage of time in heaven, a realm stated to normally transcend time entirely.

Jay Garrick has said that when Alan's connection was running at a hundred times its usual power, Alan was the most powerful human alive. While possessed by the full corrupting force of the Starheart, it was implied he was capable of obliterating reality outright. The Guardians, the top authorities on Lanterns, believed Hal Jordan was the only one capable of putting down a fully Starheart possessed Alan. He is just that powerful.

Kyle Rayner rebuilt the Corps and held functionally infinite power as Ion

Kyle Rayner was chosen as the last Green Lantern. When Parallax destroyed the Green Lantern Corps, Ganthet gave Kyle the last ring because there was nobody else. The hope was that Kyle had the potential to do what no one else could and rebuild the Lanterns, and he did.

His constructs are the most creative on this list. Coming from his background as a graphic designer and artist, they have more imagination than almost every other Lantern's combined. He has helped push the moon and blew up a separate moon entirely. He has created an entire planet and fought a being capable of destroying that same planet.

Plastic Man believed Kyle was more powerful than Wonder Woman and the Flash, and the only one who could stop the White Martian invasion. The Flash doubled down, saying Kyle could actually kill Wonder Woman. He has held off Parallax, the fear entity itself, and the Guardians believed he was capable of killing Alan Scott when Scott was possessed by the full Starheart. As Ion, wielding the entity, he had access to functionally infinite power. He created and destroyed things at will and had the power to nearly destroy the universe itself. But there is just one man who is better than Kyle.

Hal Jordan is the greatest Green Lantern, with willpower described as a conduit to infinity

Hal Jordan is the greatest Green Lantern who ever lived, and that is not something Hal just says about himself. It is said by the Corps, the Guardians and his own enemies, more times than you can count. He puts out more raw willpower than any other Lantern in the universe, and his willpower has been described as a conduit to infinity.

He created Will World, an entire pocket universe inside his own ring, described as an infinite sea. He fought Sinestro while Sinestro was empowered by the full force of Parallax, and he fought a future version of himself as Parallax. Maybe the most impressive thing he has ever done is defeating Krona in one shot while Krona was simultaneously wearing rings from all seven Lantern Corps and had absorbed the emotional entities. Hal has even created his own ring before, out of pure willpower.

That about sums it up. No one has more raw willpower than Hal Jordan, and there is no Green Lantern who is better.

Do you agree that Hal Jordan tops Kyle Rayner and Alan Scott, or would you put a different Lantern at number one?