Black Lightning S01E08 Review: Confrontation

Black Lightning, Season 1, Episode 8: The Book of Revelations

Yep, definitely another great episode. As the title suggests, we get a whole ton of revelations, and it's not just for the audience's benefit either -- Black Lightning himself also gets a fair ton of things revealed to him. Most important of all is the confrontation between Black Lightning and Gambi. As Lynn figures out the fact that Green Light and Black Lightning's DNA are practically identical, she confronts Gambi... who morosely tells Lynn that he and Jefferson should talk it over together. And, yes, there's a whole lot of other things that go on here, but Jefferson and Gambi's confrontation is the most powerful moment in this episode. From Gambi telling Jefferson that he's directly responsible for introducing a version of proto-Green-Light into Freeland, and when he realizes how horrible it is, tried to expose it and thus getting Jefferson's father killed... it's not really that far-fetched for Jefferson to jump into the conclusion that Gambi trained him and groomed him into Black Lightning out of a sense of guilt. That confrontation that ended with Jefferson leaving Gambi behind is a pretty powerful moment that's been built up pretty damn well.

Of course, the episodic plot in this episode isn't bad either. We've got the ever-fickle public turning against Black Lightning over the alleged murder of Lady Eve, who's an upstanding Freeland citizen. We've got Black Lightning training Thunder in a holographic fighting sequence thing. But Black Lightning and Thunder treats clearing Black Lightning's name as a bit of an exercise to train Thunder. This of course goes nowhere,  but between them poking around in the morgue and finding the body of Eve's murderer -- and subsequently witnessing the trapped space gun explode -- are all entertaining enough. Even if they felt procedural in a way, the fact that this is all fresh and new, with both Jefferson and Anissa learning how to teach and how to become a superhero respectively. Another contender for the best scene in the episode has to be Jefferson's conflicted emotion of pride, panic and even more pride when he's talking to Lynn in their home about how Anissa managed to save him and shield him from the explosion.

Oh, and Jennifer's learning that she's got electrical powers, because of course she does. I'm a lot less invested in Jennifer as I am with the rest of her family, since a good chunk of her appearances has been the bratty child, but her confusion at finding out that she has powers, and her immediately confiding in Anissa, is definitely well done.

We've also got Lala, who's all kooky and having conversations with the ghost of Lawanda in his own head, talking about killing the men that left him behind... in the same car with those very men. I'm not sure what force Lala back, and for what purpose, but it does seem that he's gunning for both Black Lightning and Tobias Whale. We've also got scenes of Gambi meeting the leader of the shadowy government organization ASA, who's also hunting Black Lightning, and probably not connected to Lady Eve and her Shadow Council? All the ASA/Gambi/Shadow Council stuff is extremely interesting, and while we get a significant amount of the pieces together in this chapter, we've not quite gotten everything yet, and I'm definitely intrigued.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The A.S.A. (American Security Agency) does come from the comics, a minor organization that became corrupt and antagonistic in the pages of Batman and the Outsiders. Nothing that they do in the comics matches anything the ASA does here, nor is there any mention of a Shadow Board, so they might just be borrowing the name. 
• Anissa's finally called by her comic book counterpart's pseudonym, Thunder. 
• Jennifer Pierce's superpowers are lightning-based, just like her father, which is why in the comics she's called Lightning. Thunder and Lightning? Get it?