Part 2 of my coverage of the final season of CW/DC's Black Lightning TV show.
Just as I mentioned in my previous CW-superhero-show-recap-reviews, this one is going to be a lot shorter and reactionary compared to my previous coverage of CW/DC shows. Again, this review was written over a rather long period of time as I go through the season slowly and write my comments and notes after watching each episode.
S04E08: Things Fall Apart
As we go down the second half of this final season, 'The Book of Ruin' continues with a bit of an acceleration on the conflicts after the brief intermission with Painkiller. The FBI arrives on the Jefferson residence, under what is clearly a Tobias-orchestrated frame job that makes it look like Jefferson was embezzling Garfield High's money. Simultaneously, we also learn that he's going after other things that Jefferson loves -- like demolishing Jefferson's grandfather's house under the guise of creating a new hospital and giving back to the community. Tobias has been very oddly handled this season, just essentially being in the background pulling everyone's strings, and I do hope we get to see more of what his supposed master plan is.
This ties in with Jennifer (or 'JJ') going to Garfield High to see a split among the student communities, some of whom quickly decry Jefferson for betraying them. She gets a crush on one of the other students that defends Jefferson, which leads to a bit of a conflict in the next episode. This 'new Jennifer' storyline isn't the most exciting and one that feels caused by the actress exiting, but I do have to admit that the new actress does a pretty good job at mimicking the original actress's mannerisms.
We also learn a little bit of the superhero sci-fi stuff that seems to be relegated to the background for most of this season -- Lynn uses Gambi as the willing subject of her experiment, and we learn that Tobias's secretary Val is actually a power-cancelling metahuman. On the other hand, Jefferson and Gambi manage to also get information of Tobias's magnetic-meta hitman Red, and find out of his existence. Anissa and Grace go and get some files about Monovista International's cure project, but ends up coming into blows to Ishmael, and while the two of them retreat, the threat of Ishmael as the big scary meta-hunter causes TC to contact Khalil to bring him in for the finale.
S04E09: Lyding
Lynn gets a fair bit of focus in this episode. The episode opens up with a (rather long) nightmare as Lynn has a nightmare of trapping her family and forcing them to take the metahuman cure. She goes to her job to find out that 26 years' worth of research was seized by the government due to Jefferson's embezzlement case; and at the end of the episode while the rest of her family is out, she gets arrested by Agent Mason, with an intentionally-protracted sequence of her being searched and processed as an inmate.
Jen/Lightning, meanwhile, goes through a brief simple side-plot with her dad and TC about maintaining an instagram presence, particularly when she uses her influence as Lightning to help the handsome boy Uriah that she had a crush on last episode get funds for the school music program or whatever. This nice bit ends up backfiring as Chief Lopez uses Uriah's instagram profile to essentially bait Lightning to a meeting where they ambush her. Jen's impulsiveness is essentially her defining trait particularly in this season, and I wonder if this is the moment that makes her grow out of it.
Oh, there's also a sideplot of Khalil and Painkiller arguing with each other as they go and investigate some of Tobias's operations. They do a good cop/bad cop thing, but ultimately Painkiller ends up winning this conversation and kills the criminal after getting intel out of him.
By the end of the episode, we get a multiple-way fight. Black Lightning manages to get himself on a one-on-one fight with Ishmael after some setup. Lightning is flying away from the ambush. And Anissa finds her ally Darius dead and killed in his apartment, and about to be hit by a car... while all of this is going on, Tobias gives a whole speech about taking away everything that mattered to Black Lightning just as how he took Tori Whale away from him, and activates the ominous device we've been seeing all season. As rather obviously foreshadowed last episode, it nullifies everyone's powers... and we get to see Black Lightning, Thunder, Lightning and TC all lose their powers in a very inconvenient time. A pretty all right (if obvious) major crisis mode for a superhero TV show, although I really felt like it probably could've been built up for more than just a single episode.
S04E10: Revelations
As we start off the final arc of 'the Book of Reunifications', we're wrapping up a bunch of the side-threads... which means certain storylines end up being quickly and abruptly finished. Which does beg the question as to why they were built up for so long. Of course, after the cliffhanger of episode 9, everyone essentially survives from their powers being removed; but the 'anti-metahuman' aura is still on the entire city of Freeland because of the plot device that Tobias Whale stole from Monovista... which leads to a confrontation between Gambi and his girlfriend Lauren... a plotline and character that really didn't amount to much and really does overstay her welcome especially in an already-packed season.
Jeff and Officer Shakur meet up with Lynn as she's being arrested, but after the prolonged, protracted humiliation sequence last episode... it basically ends up being handwaved away when Anissa calls in Lynn's lawyer ex-boyfriend. Did he exist in previous seasons? I don't really care, and the five or so minutes of Jefferson being jealous and pouting over it felt particularly pointless. Jennifer gets panicky because of another identity crisis, and against everyone's advice, shocks herself and flies up to the ionosphere to regain her powers. Okay? The rest of the Pierces remain without their powers, which is fine but we don't really... get much out of them?
The Kobra Kartel gets written out of the story, essentially, and Ishmael (who's really only there for the action scenes quota; he doesn't have much of a personality) gets hired by Tobias. Khalil, who is in contact with TC, goes on his own sidequest to get Tobias's ledger to solve the Pierces' legal problems... and finds out that Looker from the previous seasons is involved with Tobias's master plan. Oh, and said master plan is shown when Tobias gets into a call with a cabal of... illuminati gang leaders? It is so random, and while I'm all for Mayor Tobias taking over Freeland and having monopoly over who gets metahuman powers or not, I felt like both the ledger and the illuminati stuff could've been built up a lot earlier.
S04E11: Trial and Errors
With most of the Pierces stuck without powers, this leaves everyone kind of floundering around. I don't really have anything to say about the Jefferson/Lynn lawyer stuff, which really just peters out on its own. Oh, Gambi also re-earns the trust of Lauren or whatever, but this sub-plot is really wearing thin and we get another 'civilian working alongside the Pierces' storyline. Speaking of civilians, Jefferson reveals his identity to Officer Shakur, and after a bit of anger on his part, the two of them conspire to drug Agent Mason... who conveniently is under Looker's mind control. This sub-plot hinges on me caring about Shakur and Mason, and... and to be honest, I really don't. It is a nice showcase of what Jefferson can do without his powers, which I appreciate.
Lightning zips around and attacks one of Tobias's bases (which was a bit random) and steals a bunch of plot devices, but this tips Tobias into finding out Lightning is still active, and that "JJ" and Jennifer are one and the same. Tobias then decides to arm Chief Lopez with meta-booster serum and the bracelets that make Tobias's metahumans immune to the power dampener wave.
TC, meanwhile, figures out via hacking that Jennifer's crush Uriah didn't actually sell her out, and sets up a date. Which feels like such a huge distraction in this final arc, but this is all there to build up to Tobias's minion Red showing up and murdering Uriah in cold blood when Jen's powers fail. Some stakes! It's interesting how much focus Jennifer's getting... meanwhile, poor Anissa isn't really doing anything in the past couple episodes other than argue with Grace about whether they should be happy or sad that their powers are gone. (Anissa also has some role giving exposition about the very poorly-researched 'genetics stealing' sci-fi handwave, which is terrible even by CW standards)
The big action scene in this episode comes from Khalil fighting Looker, which is a bit of a random addition although I at least remember this show's version of Looker that it feels a bit more epic than Ishmael. Looker being casually horrible in racism also gives her a bit of a nice personality -- Looker tries to take over Khalil's mind with her weird silver powers, but gets outnumbered in the theater of the mind, and beaten down by Khalil and Painkiller. It's a bit odd that Khalil's just doing sidequests while barely being in contact with the Pierces, but there you go. I also really wished that Looker was in the season more, maybe replacing the random personality-less Ishmael throughout a greater portion of this season as an antagonist.
S04E12: Crossroads
As we go to the two-parter finale... some things are way more fitting for a finale, and some things aren't. I'm not sure how much lead-time did the showrunners have before they knew the show was going to be cancelled, but I felt like a lot of the side-characters really didn't matter all that much. Like Lauren, for example, with her will-she-find-out-or-won't-she-find-out. As a character that was entirely a satellite to Gambi, she really does feel bland.
Jennifer is in full breakdown mode after Uriah's death, but Jefferson comes and the two get a great moment talking about the burdens of being a superhero -- with Jefferson rather cleverly remembering an aspect of his and Tobias's rivalry from season one. That Tobias killed Jeff's dad while he hid under the bed, helpless. It's, I suppose, a nice throughline as Jennifer finally matures after being a bit of an impulsive teenager throughout the first half of this final season, although it definitely is a clunky one. Jeff and Jen not really having much of a scene after the whole 'Jeff can't stand his daughter's transformation' subplot doesn't help either.
We then wrap up some stuff on the villain end. After the strange blue-hologram illuminati were introduced all but two episodes ago, Tobias calls them again. When they try to deny him a seat, Tobias apparently has invisible assassins who are ready to kill this shadow council or whatever, and Tobias gets to be the new 'king' of this shadow council that we didn't even know exist a until two episodes ago. Tobias then monologues about his master plan, where he'll control metahumans even in all these other cities like Star City and Metropolis. Okay, sure.
Khalil's little sidequest is now blocked by Ishmael. The two's action scene is pretty great, but it is really an odd choice to depower almost everyone in the Pierces and leave a lot of the heavy duty to Khalil... and don't even have Khalil really interact all that much with the Pierces. The fight is all right, and Painkiller kills Ishmael. Looker, who was slated to be killed by Tobias, ends up begrudgingly agreeing to testify. And... that's all these ex-villains wrapped up. Khalil/Painkiller is quite neat, but I really do feel like particularly in this final season that he should have interacted a bit more with the Pierces.
Anissa, Lynn and Grace all kind of have this rather bland side-plot of informing the public and the victims of the 'stolen genes' or whatever, but it's quite sad that they've reduced Lynn and Anissa in particular into essentially doing nothing in the background compared to Jeff and Jen. Gambi and Lauren also find some Prometehum underneath the city and they're working on basically reversing the anti-metahuman pulse. All right.
At least Jennifer gets her revenge on Red. With TC's help and some ionosphere power-ups, she confronts Red and beats him. She gets confronted by racist Chief Lopez. Red gets arrested, but Lopez gets livestreamed ranting about how all metahumans should be purged and in anger and desperation, she... injects herself with the meta-boosters? Okay.
Far more interesting, of course, is the buildup of the confrontation between Jefferson and Tobias at Jeff's father's hosue. With the reminder to the audience of the genesis of their history, Jeff cooks up a plan to wipe Tobias's memory with, uh... a device. Black Lightning's zappy-amnesia powers are goofy when it showed up earlier in this season, and I am not too thrilled that it's randomly the crux of this confrontation. Thankfully, Tobias catches on to this and destroys it before it can be dignified. I do like Jefferson pretending to be utterly beaten and Tobias eating it up (I felt this could've had a lot more buildup) before engaging in a fight, and Tobias letting Jefferson 'take his best shot'. The episode ends with Jefferson apparently killed and Tobias scaring the shit out of Jennifer, which... obviously isn't the case, but it's a nice cliffhanger.
S04E13: Closure
It's, uh... definitely a 'rocks fall, people die' final season. Comparing this to the final season of Supergirl, which had a fair amount of time within the season itself to reflect on what being Supergirl meant... the final couple of episodes of Black Lightning was really... distracted. We do check some of the boxes, and the ending is, for the most part, a good ending. But I felt like this last couple of episodes were particularly weak, and especially compared to just how strong Black Lightning started off as a show. Nothing, by the way, about Freeland or how the city is moving on was touched upon in this episode. The community of Freeland was such a strong part of the show's identity and while it was given less focus in this season, we got nearly none of it in the end.
Let's start with my least favourite part of the finale -- the actress-swapped Jennifer we have been following for half a season was... an ionosphere energy being impostor all along? And the 'real' Jennifer came back this episode, and we get a clone fight for... for no goddamn reason at all? I felt like this was just a way to bring the original Jennifer actress back for the finale, which, fine, I get it... but it was so out of nowhere and meant that we spent so much time (particularly since 'JJ' got a fair bit of screentime) trying to develop an impostor. This was also shoved under the rug after like, a single conversation at the end, and I really felt like it was handled piss-poorly and even if they wanted the original actress back there were much more elegant ways to do it. Like, uh, just... swapping faces when 'JJ' flew back up to the ionosphere or something. The whole ionosphere thing always felt tacked-on as a vague metaphor of addiction or something, and was dropped quickly anyway. It's quite poorly done.
The 'real' Lightning then goes and essentially one-shots Chief Lopez, who's like... given way too much screentime in the precious real estate of this final episode. This really does make the Lopez and Shakur drama amount to basically nothing as they disappear after this scene, and... again, I really wished this confrontation happened at an earlier point in the show instead of the final episode.
Also, while all of this is going on, Gambi, Anissa and Grace have a little raid on Tobias's little military base (which we just learned about) and it's honestly quite simple even for CW standards.
And for the most of the episode, Jefferson spends most of the episode buried in a coffin waiting for Team Anissa to turn back the power. It's... it's nowhere as dramatic as the show thinks it is, and I really don't buy that Tobias didn't actually make sure Jefferson was dead. There are some flashbacks that has Jeff swap between his adult and child self as he talks to a vision of his dead father, which I guess is good enough as a emotional hook even if it does feel rushed. Ultimately he gets his powers back, ghost-dad tells him that he is a better man than Tobias Whale, and flies to confront Tobias. Again, it is a rather typical 'superhero gets his groove back', but -- and especially for this show -- it feels like it lost a fair amount of the gravitas and thematic cohesion that Black Lightning as a show usually has.
We get a fight; Tobias gets a couple of verbal and physical jabs in, but while I don't expect a visual spectacle in a CW superhero show, I expected an emotional one. It was nice that we get to see these two rivals fight properly, but especially compared to the previous episode's fare, I really expected more. Tobias spent so much time in this season building up this master plan to control everything, and he just... gets thrown out of the window, gets impaled, quotes Moby Dick and dies. He dies, but doesn't really get his whole political and power angle really dismantled, which I thought would at least be a lot more appropriate. Again, it could be doable if the show distributed the characters a bit differently instead of wasting time with the very shoehorned Fake Lightning bullshit, but as it is, it does cause Tobias's defeat to ring hollow.
Speaking of side-characters... TC hacks into Khalil/Painkiller's mind and removes the 'kill order', but also wipes Painkiller's mind of the Pierce family. Um??? Again, very random to toss in here, and while I realize this was because of a spinoff being planned back in the day, I felt like Khalil's exit from the show was already done last episode. Speaking of random spinoffs, the 'stinger' of the show has La-La (I forgot he existed and got carbonite'd) get freed from his cement prison. What a waste of a character, by the way, La-La really didn't get to do anything this season and I really wished he took over the role of Ishmael or someone.
Ultimately the final moments were with the Pierce family, with the aforementioned handwave that no one noticed that Jennifer got replaced by an energy being (surely if they wanted the energy being fight, it might be better to have Jennifer actually be Jennifer up until 12? Or something? With the vague memory-copying bullshit it could've been easily whatever the writers wanted), we wrap up some bits and bobs. Jeff and Lynn are getting remarried (which I keep forgetting hasn't already been done), and the two of them and Gambi are stepping down to let the next generation be superheroes. Again, it rings hollow because we don't really get anything in this episode that shows that Jeff is ready to move on -- if anything, wouldn't he be galvanized by the speech prior to fighting Tobias? The only real scene that we got of Jefferson being ready to pass the mantle was last episode, ironically enough, with the fake Jennifer. Which makes that plotline even worse. (By the way, it makes it even worse that Anissa and Lynn essentially got sidelined for a fake Jennifer's character development).
Again... it really is a messy finale that misses the point about what made Black Lightning's original couple of seasons so compelling in the first place. Even the buildup of Tobias and all the hullaballoo about the more non-superhero way that Tobias is striking back at our heroes (Lynn's case in court, Jeff's dad's house, Tobias's status as a mayor) weren't even mentioned. I would've been happy with a simple, basic finale -- and while the Jefferson/Tobias fight is that, everything else around it really wasn't. Again, I get that for the most part these CW shows didn't have proper time to wrap up the way they wanted to, but this one is particularly frustrating because they theoretically have the formula even up to the penultimate episode. Definitely a shame.
