Red Lantern Corps - Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

Red Lanterns use red power rings, fueled by the rage of their users and those around them. Like other power rings, the ring covers the user in a protective aura which shields them from harm and enables flight, and can create "Hard Light" constructs. The power ring fires blasts of rage energy. The user's blood is replaced by a form of corrosive, rage-energized blood. The user can regurgitate this blood. The blood has the effect of bursting into flames of rage; the flames are so potent that they will burn even in space. The blood can melt through the constructs of other ring wielders, penetrate their personal force fields (sometimes burning them to death in the process), and corrupt their rings, depleting their energy at an accelerated rate. The Red Rings' blood is one of the few known substances that can destroy a Black Lantern's corpse faster than even they can regenerate. Since the Red Ring completely takes over the circulatory processes of the wearer, removing the heart of a Red Lantern only temporarily incapacitates them.

A red power ring operates by expelling the blood of the wearer, replacing it with red light. As a result, removing a Red Lantern's ring will result in the wearer's death. However, a Blue Lantern's ring can reverse this process, freeing the wearer from the ring. The combined powers of blue and green rings can destroy a red ring. Also, if the heart of the wearer fills with love, which is the opposite emotion to rage in the Emotional Spectrum, the rage gets compromised and the connection with the ring breaks, instantly destroying the ring, but the light of a Blue Lantern is still needed to heal the former Red Lantern, because his/her heart goes into cardiac arrest by the lack of blood. To date, Mera is the only Red Lantern who was freed this way.

Though most red ring wielders are little more than beasts driven by rage, individuals with strong willpower are able to manipulate the energy to create constructs. The Red Lantern ring is unique in that the user can manipulate its base of power, rage. A Red Lantern can detect the rage in the heart of others and, by connection, the blood that pumps that rage. Those who face a Red Lantern already in a state of anger are even more vulnerable to a red power ring's attack, as their anger only feeds the attack and increases its destructive power.

The red power ring has also displayed a number of weaknesses as well. To wear a red power ring is to be overtaken by the red light of rage, reducing the wearer to act on pure instinct, driven to kill and destroy with little reason or forethought. To date, Atrocitus has shown to be the only Red Lantern still fully in control of his mental faculties, though a Blue Lantern can, at least partially, restore a Red Lantern's cognitive functions while retaining their Red Lantern abilities. Atrocitus intentionally set the rings to select beings who cannot control their rage, and the rings have attempted to leave wielders who gain control of their rage on a few occasions (although as all of these were with members of the Green Lantern Corps, they may be set instead to leave those whose willpower is too strong to be influenced).

Much like a specific type of willpower is needed to use a Green Lantern Ring, a Red Lantern Ring requires a specific type of rage (e.g. the rage gained through a personal loss).