Black Lightning S02E09 Review: More Runaways

Black Lightning, Season 2, Episode 9: Gift of the Magi

Yeah, I kind of didn't realize that there was an additional episode of Black Lightning that I haven't reviewed, but the whole "Book of Rebellion" storyline has been pretty unengaging to me. I honestly don't really think I have much to say about this particular "Book" in the second season. It's still better than the Loker mini-arc, of course, due to the relatively tight focus it has with Jennifer and Khalil's running around... it's just not a particularly fun focus. It doesn't help that Jennifer and Khalil are pretty one-dimensional, all things considered. They're teenagers running away from different sorts of 'cages', they are really in love with each other, and they have powers. That's honestly about it, and this episode honestly feels more like a repeat of the previous episode, but with less hectic running around and more crying.

We do get a pretty great sequence when Jennifer genuinely realizes that Khalil is dying due to the poison that Giselle Cutter had infected him with, and that her little antibiotic-stealing spree isn't doing anything. There's, again, no real reason for her to not actually try and get Khalil to a hospital or contact her super-smart-doctor-scientist mother when Khalil is quite literally on his deathbed. I get the whole running away from home to be free and to be in love thing, but I really don't buy this part of the story. Of course, we basically get Jennifer fighting Cutter, torture the antidote out of her by poisoning Cutter as well, and they're on the run again. It's a solid story, but not a particularly interesting one.

Meanwhile, Jefferson, Anissa and Gambi pretty much spend the entire episode running around trying to look for the duo and basically missing them by a step. There's some little rehashes of last episode's arguments, but that's just that -- rehashes. Lynn, meanwhile, has a bizarrely bland B-plot of running around and trying to be useful, looking for Khalil's father and... getting nearly no information other than the address of Khalil's apartment and some backstory about Khalil's brother. Honestly, I don't think there's any real reason not to lump Lynn in with the other three.

The rest of the episode is the introduction of a bunch of new characters. We've got Todd Green (played by the Blue Ranger from the new live-action Power Rangers movie), a super-smart dude who gets passed over for a grant by racist people, and then basically gets roped into Tobias Whale's operation. It's a neat enough introduction, and gets Tobias back into the criminal mastermind seat instead of being an abusive, petty boss. Oh, and there's this one other dude in the final scene that's teleporting around killing people in the bar. Apparently he's a hitman called to Freeland?

Overall, a pretty bland episode. Granted, part of me is just not being invested at all about the runaway teenager storyline, and considering that took up like 95% of the episode, there's no real surprise that I'm not particularly impressed with this one.