Black Lightning has a fantastic new villain on its hands after the last episode. I only wish we got to see more of him this week. After a mostly successful rescue mission, everyone in Freeland is decompressing and dealing with the aftermath. Agent Odell is holding up his end of the bargain, and everyone on Black Lightning’s team has been wiped from ASA records. For now, they’re safe again. Jefferson tells Odell about his run-in with Gravedigger, which is news to him. Odell asks if he can count on Black Lightning in the coming war with the Markovians. Jeff refuses to work with the ASA, but assures Odell that he’ll protect Freeland when it’s necessary.
Jefferson’s family isn’t thrilled to hear that he plans to lead Odell’s planned army in defense against Markovia. He argues that it’s better to work with the devil you know, but Jenn flat out says Odell needs to go. And both her sister and mother are in agreement with her. Lynn especially, since Odell’s the one that got her hooked on Green Light. The family decides to reset things between them. No more secrets from now on. Lynn admits that she found her last hidden stash of Green Light, but couldn’t bring herself to flush it. Jenn destroys it for her. Jenn admits to everyone that Odell groomed her into an ASA asset and tricked her into killing a building full of Markovians. Her family accepts her and tries to comfort her, but she’s still clearly tormented by what she did. Anissa confesses that she and Grace might be endgame, and Jefferson tells everyone about the whole Crisis thing. This family moment is slow and sweet and just a little cheesy, but it also feels necessary. This family hasn’t spent one moment together all season. They needed this.
Christopher E’mmanuel as TC/Baron and Jordan Calloway as Khalil/Painkiller — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW
Jenn, meanwhile, has two men in her life now and both are dealing with anger issues. First, there’s Brandon and his thirst for revenge on Dr. Jace. He demands to be taken to her, and Jenn agrees on the condition that he doesn’t kill her. That he just goes to talk. When he gets there, he reveals he’s been carrying around his mother’s ashes, and uses his powers to transform them into sharp crystals. He tries to shoot them into Jace, but Jenn hits his arm, causing the crystals to hit her shoulder. Jenn rushes him out, but not before Jace mentions Brandon’s father. It seems he’s not dead, as Brandon assumed. Not that he or Jenn fully trust Jace’s story, but at least Brandon has a goal beyond revenge now.
As for Khalil, despite his help during the rescue mission, everyone’s afraid he’ll revert back to Painkiller any minute. Jenn still loves him, and is convinced that he would never hurt her. Khalil also has Gambi in his corner, promising to take him to a good therapist when this is all over, and giving him a sketchbook to channel his feelings into for now. Gambi’s a good dude. The problem is Painkiller’s still in there. In the middle of a conversation, Khalil goes into a fugue state. Painkiller breaks through the firewall in Khalil’s brain and starts choking Jenn. Khalil and Painkiller battle inside his head, in what turns out to be the coolest fight scene of the episode. Before Painkiller can do any serious damage, Khalil summons all his strength and kicks him back behind the firewall. He stops choking Jenn and runs away.
Jordan Calloway as Khalil/Painkiller and James Remar as Gambi — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW
The overall story was engaging, and I’m glad it’s getting resolved here, but the emotional end it was going for didn’t work. Khalil shows up on Jenn’s roof to apologize and she says she can’t be around him when Painkiller’s always going to be there. He understands and they break up. He says she won’t see him around. It’s supposed to be this big emotional goodbye, but it just doesn’t land for some reason. Probably because we’ve seen this breakup with these two characters so many times now. They have lost each other in much more heatbreaking ways, that this one doesn’t measure up. It’s not sad that Jenn won’t be around someone that could kill her at a moment’s notice. At this point, it’s just a relief that this story is over for now.
This episode had a difficult job to do. It’s coming off a tight, exciting, action-packed rescue episode. The last Black Lightning was the culmination of everything the season had built up to. This episode had to figure out where the story goes from there. To its credit, it gets there eventually, but it takes a slow, circuitous,and at times nonsensical route to get there. Lady Eve works under Lala long enough to find out that he has Tobias’ ASA briefcase. She calls Lala for a meeting and reveals that she developed the programming that Tobias used to control Lala. She offers to undo it in exchange for a briefcase. Meanwhile, Gambi is torturing one of Eve’s associates for… some reason, and sends him back missing one eye to tell Lady Eve that she failed to assassinate him. Yeah, I’m just as confused as you are.
Jill Scott as Lady Eve — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW
All that is solely in service of getting us to the final five mintues of the episode. That’s why it all feels so inconsequential and out-of-nowhere. None of these actions are motivated by characters’ emotions or even logic. They just happen because the story needs them to happen. We remember that that briefcase is important, but also that we were never told why. And it’s not until the very end of the episode that it starts to really matter. Eve proposes that since Gambi didn’t die and she came back from the dead, that they should just forget the whole attempted assassination thing. She also gives Gambi the briefcase, on the condition that he uses it to destroy the ASA.
In the final sequence of the episode, we finally see what’s in the briefcase. It’s the DNA sequence of every metahuman in the United States’ registry. It details how the United States started experimenting on metahumans in Markovia before a regime change forced them out. The experiments killed most of the U.S. soldiers that were made to be subjects, except for one. The man who would become Gravedigger was forced to participate in the supersoldier experiment after he beat up a couple of racist platoon members. Instead of killing him, the experiment awakened his metahuman gene. He was the first successful test subject. Then, when the Markovian regime changed and the United States was kicked out of the country, Gravedigger was left behind. He became the head of the Markovian military, and was filled with hatred for the US government. Now, he’s planning to attack Freeland. To make matters worse, Jenn left the formula for her metahuman power serum in the Markovian lab. Gravedigger can now temporarily gain any power he wants. Well, that’s one way to set up a new villain.
Wayne Brady as Gravedigger (right) — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW
This episode was kind of a mess, but that ending made up for a lot of it. You could tell the show just wanted to get us to that point, and it took a couple shortcuts to get there. The Markovian attack on the Perdi camp led to a cool-looking fight, but the episode dropped the story entirely after that. The Markovians captured two Perdi, and Anissa went off to save them, but that’s the last we ever heard of them. Bringing up big plot points like that and immediately forgetting them doesn’t make for a very fun watch. It’s a good thing that final shot of Gravedigger was so scary. He’s the most interesting, chilling villain this series has had so far, and I can’t wait to see the showdown with him next week. Who knew it would take Wayne Brady to inject some real energy into this season?
Black Lightning airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
Previously on Black Lightning
- Black Lightning Season 3 Episode 13 recap
- Black Lightning Season 3 Episode 12 recap
- Black Lightning Season 3 Episode 11 recap
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