Black Lightning S03E04-05 Review: Unfreeland

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 4: Lynn's Ouroboros; Episode 5: Requiem for Tavon

Sometimes I kinda wish that Black Lightning, as a show, really do a better job at foreshadowing huge twists like this. Sure, it's totally in character for Agent Odell to want another hook to sink into the otherwise pretty uncontrollable Lynn, but you'd think that there would be some foreshadowing to the fact that Odell's apparently been using one of those "flash an image for a millisecond to subliminally plant an order" things to get Lynn addicted to Green Light. In some bizarrely convoluted plan to get her to dope up on Green Light in order to work around the clock to fix Dr. Jace's meta-plague. It's really a storyline that sort of pops out of nowhere and just feels pretty randomly shoved into an already busy season that has problems juggling all of its plot threads. 

Meanwhile, Jefferson is back from the ASA undergroud base and is totally in shock that Freeland is occupied with meta checks and whatnot and, I think, what makes Jeffferson extra-disturbed is how much Jennifer is acting like all of this is routine. Jefferson's attempt to work at Freeland High has him meet with the white principal from season two, who's very much pissed that apparently the ASA saw fit in dicking around with school policy, giving Jefferson a demotion to school counselor, allowing him a lot less work (presumably so he can go superheroing all the time) but also bigger pay. And then one of the recurring students from Freeland High, Tavon, gets abducted by the ASA agents for being a suspected metahuman, and the poor principal, bless his soul, tries to stop them and gets beaten up for it. Speaking of the ASA takeover, they're also taking over Hendersen's police station as a holding cell and kicking him out, despite the original promises of how Hendersen's authority is going to be left alone. 

Jefferson of course isn't someone to stand for this sort of thing and is completely ballistic about the fact that one of his students was just kidnapped and arreted with basically no real proof. He gets into a meeting with Gambi to analyze the Odell Watch, and apparently they're smart enough to let Gambi mess with the tracker within it. Jefferson also sort of has an encounter with Anissa, asking her about this whole "Blackbird" business, and the two butt heads again with Jefferson especially taking umbrage at the fact that Anissa spilt everything about their identity to Grace, an unknown element. 

Grace then shapeshifts into a youger form and starts screaming in PTSD, and... okay? We get a neat tender scene between Anissa and Grace, who confides that she's a broken bird who was pretty damn abused after spending her childhood in a sex trafficking ring, and had to run from place to place and adopt different identities and stuff, but Anissa's a good girlfriend and it's neat.

Eventually, after the whole Tavon thing, Jefferson quickly realizes what's important. He confronts Odell (who in no vague circumstances threatens Jeff's daughters), and Gambi poinst out that Black Lightning can't be seen in the streets... so Jeff and Anissa make peace, and when Jeff zaps the police station to take out the power, allowing Blackbird to go in, do some of that superhero fighty-fight and free Tavon and the other suspected metas. It seems that all's well and done, but Odell quickly figures out that Jeff has a hand in freeing these specific metas and tells him that he gets "one pass". Okay, Odell. 

Also, while all of this is going on, a knowing Hendersen just calmly plays poker and gives absolutely no fucks to the ASA soldiers being beaten up, which is easily my favourite part of the episode.

While all of this is going on, Jennifer's slowly being manipulated by Odell more and more, which I felt was... kind of inorganic, considering how smart and questioning Jen has been in the past two seasons. Sure, grief and anger at the death of Khalil's mom causd her to willingly 'strike back' at the Markovians, but apparently odell spoon-feeding her videos of Markovian atrocities in Sudan moves her enough to cry and later on even defend the occupation in an argument with Tavon and Nameless New Student at school? Okay, then. Odell also gives Jennifer a gift, a new costume that allows her to make like a CGI aurora when she flies to space or something. It's an interesting direction to take Jen in, but I feel like it's pretty clunkily handled. 

Also Painkiller spends a bunch of random scenes killing random people as the ASA's personal killing dog, killing traitorotus soldiers and stuff. It's fun to see actor Jordan Calloway bring such an amazing swagger and confidence to the role as a devil-may-care hitman, but the scenes are just kinda there. 

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As we close out the "Book of Occupation" arc for Black Lightning, it's sort of obvious what they're kind of doing here, just really hammering home that despite the threat of an invading foreign force here to plunder all of our metahumans, the actual government agents supposedly protecting them, the ASA, are no better and are also trying to exploit the metahumans and the people of Freeland. The message isn't subtle at all, the Markovians honestly have so little actual presence in the story and at this point we're all just rooting against the ASA, which the show has sort of shown is basically an occupying force oppressing everyone. This episode sort of wraps up and follows up on a bunch of plot threads, but it culminates in the spark of resistance, with the episode ending with Jefferson Pierce being beaten the fuck up by ASA goons while trying to stop his own students, protesting after Tavon's death at the hands of ASA agents, gets beaten up in front of his school. 

Tavon really hasn't been much of a character or presence in the show, but the tragedy of Jefferson and Anissa's well-intentioned (if pretty damn stupid) attempt at bringing Tavon back into Freeland to meet his parents hits pretty hard, and with a dead child -- one who isn't even a metahuman to boot; it's all a misunderstanding -- its no surprise that all of the bottled-up resentment not just among our heroes but also the peoople of Freeland reach a breaking point. That said, though, it's pretty dumb for Jeff to tell Anissa to actually bring the kid back to Freeland instead of, like, borrowing his phone and showing that selfie-video he made at the beginning of the episode to his parents, and Anissa point-blank says that. Both Jeff and Anissa are going to have to deal with a huge amount of guilt now and that's probably going to be something that'll push them into pushing against the ASA. 

Odell, meanwhile, is going aroud hunting for Blackbird, because he hasn't put together that Blackbird = Thunder. And as Blackbird fights Painkiller at the climax of this episode in an encounter that killed Tavon and poisons Anissa, Agent Odell shows up at Anissa's apartment... and thankfully, Grace is there to shapeshift into Anissa to throw off Odell's scent off. Okay, that's one crisis averted at least. 

Lynn, meanwhile, gets more and more obsessed with curing the Freeland metas, because she's a doctor and that's what doctors do. She basically realizes that through some sci-fi handwave, apparently doctor Jace has slipped a little message that only super-smart scientists can see, that there's an amino acid chain slipped into the metahuman-killing virus that can be easily turned into an antivirus that'll stabilize the metahumans' other problem, which is Green Light burning out their bodies. The catch, other than the fact that this solution comes from the very shady Helga Jace? The synthesizing of the cure requires Lynn to get samples from a very specific metahuman -- Tobias Whale.

It's a neat series of scenes to see the ever-confident and smarmy Tobias just dick around in front of Lynn, trying his dang best to antagonize her as she tries her best to ignore her, but turns out Tobias is pretty dang smart, and at the end of the episode he's basically trying to get Lynn to do him a favour while at the same time not hiding his huge, burning desire to murder Jefferson. Lynn ends up telling Odell that, well, she basically wants Tobias Whale dead at the end of all this. 

Oh, meanwhile, Jennifer, who got emotional at seeing her father beaten up by ASA goons, ends up nearly blowing up until New Kid Brandon grabs her, and surprise surprise, the prominent background character actually is a metahuman that can nullify or absorb Jen's powers or something? Whatever the case, Jennifer ends up meeting Agent Odell later on, who isn't particularly pleased at seeing a black man beaten on the street -- and allows Jennifer in her Lightning persona to unleash vengeance on the ASA agents. Which is... an interesting thing to do? How much of it is just Odell taking advantage of a situation to earn Jen's loyalty, and how much of it is actual disgust over his troops going too far?

We get a very fun B-plot, too! Henderson also gets a subplot that follows up from his couple previous appearances, where after giving a speech about a bounty on Blackbird, he ends up arresting other members of Freeland's society that has been helping out -- Reverend Holt, who's been smuggling people out of Freeland; and... Two-Bits the bartender? Who's stealing ASA food and selling it to people? Okay, that's random and I kinda wished we had a bit more of him. No La-La, too? What was the whole point of that La-La scene in the season premiere, then? Henderson leaves them sort of in a van for the duration of the episode before letting them out and telling them that they could work together a lot better as a proper resistance. Henderson's working with Blackbird and a bunch of others, and they basically want to be organized. S'neat. 

Speaking of B-plots, there's an interseting short scene among the Perdi tribe. A lot of our focus gets tied up with Tavon and his upcoming requiem, but the Perdi people are pretty damn angry at Anissa's attitude and her just heaping more and more problems on their doorstep and making them a bigger target for the ASA. I wonder if a betrayal is going to happen some time down the line? 

Anyway, next up is the "Book of Resistance" and with the Pierce family being one foot in with the ASA and one foot in with the Resistance, it's going to be interesting to see where things unfold. Lynn and Jen seems to be leaning more towards working with the 'devil they know' thanks to different forms of manipulations on Odell's part, Anissa is the one who's the most attuned to the resistance, and Jefferson is sort of in the middle, where his heart is with the people but he recognizes the necessity of at least picking his fights and sometimes rolling with the punches and stuff. Because I have no doubt that by the end of the episode the entire Pierce family's going to light the ASA up on fire for what they've done to Freeland. Overall, a pretty neat episode. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While her shape-shifting powers (and real name) are original to the show, Grace actually shares her comic-book counterpart's origin of being a kidnapped child that was sold into a sex trafficking ring.