This season of Black Lightning seems to have found a good rhythm at this point. We’ve had multiple episodes now with well-paced, dramatic story developments. Better still, this one featured a ton of Black Lightning himself. The occupation’s really taking its toll on Grace. She’s terrified that Odell is going to pay another visit. That anxiety isn’t good for her powers. It’s causing her to shapeshift uncontrollably. Anissa says she’ll protect her, but her powers haven’t come back yet. She may have survived Khalil’s poison, but it took a serious toll on her body. I just hope we haven’t seen the last of Thunder.
Without her powers though, she can’t escort the metahuman kids through her underground railroad. Henderson tries to distract the ASA agents with a bomb, which Black Lightning notices and diffuses. That puts him on the wrong side of Henderson’s resistance. He and Jeff have a big fight about acceptable methods. It’s a well-acted scene that had me emotionally invested even though what they’re fighting about feels super contrived. Like yeah, using IEDs is probably bad, but when an occupying military force is rounding up children and putting them in cages, maybe the time for arguing methods has passed.
Nafessa Williams as Blackbird, Clifton Powell as Reverend Holt and Damon Gupton as Inspector Bill Henderson — Photo: Mark Hill/The CW
Despite Jefferson’s differences from the resistance, he finds himself compelled to work for them. The show mines a lot of good drama from that. Anissa has to get Grace out of the city, and she doesn’t have the powers to escort her. She asks her dad to get her through the underground railroad, along with all the other metahuman kids. That means trying to help a resistance that doesn’t trust him anymore. Especially since he’s been putting as much effort into saving ASA soldiers as anybody else. For a second, it looks like the reverend won’t turn the kids over to him, but with ASA closing in, he has no choice. It’s a stressful sequence, especially since this show is unafraid to give us a tragedy. From the moment Black Lighting is leading the kids through the occupied streets to the moment the ASA soldiers ambush him, I was so afraid one of the people in his care would die.
We get some fantastic Black Lightning action this episode. That’s a welcome surprise, since the show hasn’t given him much to do all season. Here, we see him patrolling the streets trying to do good. That’s really all I want from any superhero show. He fights off the ASA, shielding the kids from bullets and giving the soldiers some severe electrical burns. I guess he’s going to have to rethink his methods argument now, huh? When the soldiers are unconscious, Black Lightning notices Grace is missing. Anissa sends him her coordinates, and he goes after her. She’s in an empty apartment building with an ASA soldier close behind her. We get to see her powers in action here too as she turns into a leopard and mauls the guy to death. It’s like this one episode is making up for the season’s general lack of cool superpower stuff so far.
Cress Williams as Black Lightning — Photo: Mark Hill/The CW
All that action leads into a genuinely sweet moment. Seeing Black Lightning come back for her allows Grace to overcome her fear of abandonment. She also figures out who Black Lightning is. She tells him Anissa’s lucky to have a father that cares so much for her. See, this corny family stuff is the other reason I like this show so much, and with the characters in separate, compartmentalized stories, there hasn’t been enough of it. It didn’t get me crying like Anissa in this scene, but it did hit me in the feelings just a little bit.
It looks like Jenn won’t be using her powers much either for now. Jenn meets with an ASA agent who tells her Odell’s been shot. Not killed, just shot. OK, that’s a relief. Not because I have any fondness for the character. The season has spent a ton of time hinting that Odell will become a particularly dangerous villain. Killing him off now would make this entire occupation story a waste of time. So he’s alive, and will be back at some point. In the meantime, Jenn has a new handler and an order to stay grounded. She uses the situation to her advantage, though. That boy at school with the mysterious meta powers has been searching for Dr. Jace to get revenge for his mother. Jenn convinces her new handler to turn over all the ASA’s files on Dr. Jace.
For now, the show’s dragging out her relationship with Brendan, but it’s definitely going somewhere. She tries to understand how their powers react to one another, and she keeps dangling the information about Jace over his head. It’s not the coolest thing to do. Especially since she doesn’t even get the information until the end of the episode. It makes for some cool effects, though.
James Remar as Gambi, Jordan Calloway as Khalil/Painkiller and Christine Adams as Lynn — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW
This week’s episode felt a little confused at the beginning. Like it was flipping between its four different stories until it settled on one that was working. That’s forgivable here though, because it did quickly settle on its best story. Jefferson’s run-in with the ASA while protecting the metahuman kids had all the drama and action I want from this series. The rest of the stories are just looking ahead at this point. That’s fine, there’s clearly some good conflicts coming down the line, they just aren’t here yet. Best to do what this episode did and give us whatever updates and reveals it deems important, then switch back to the meatiest story.
The others are setting up what looks to be a pretty good conflict, though. Lynn gets full access to the ASA facility and helps Gambi gain access as well. There, they find Khalil. They have a huge disagreement about what to do about him. Gambi is convinced he’s not Khalil anymore, he’s just a weapon. He’s seen Painkiller attack Anissa, and they confirm that he was sent to kill his own mother. Lynn is offended by that assertion and threatens to turn Gambi in herself. She digs through his memories and finds they’re all still intact, buried deep within him. He still has memories of Jenn, though it appears he can’t access them. When he’s awake, he doesn’t know anything about Lynn other than what’s in her professional profile. All those memories are going to lead to something big though. That might happen fairly soon too. After Black Lightning attacked all those ASA soldiers, he became Painkiller’s next mission.
Black Lightning airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on The CW
Previously on Black Lightning:
- Black Lightning Season 3 Episode 6 recap
- Black Lightning Season 3 Episode 5 recap
- Black Lightning Season 3 Episode 4 recap
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