Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 1: The Book of Occupation, Chapter One: Birth of the Blackbird
I've been pretty harsh on the second season of Black Lightning, and for pretty good reason, I feel. It's not as bad as the utter clusterfuck that was last season's Flash, but despite a strong start, Black Lightning's second season was marred with pretty terrible management of its side-plots, and generally sort of being nowhere as good as the first season in giving the stories it wants to tell adequate screentime. And as such, I end up being pretty late to the party for season 3.So we start off season three with... something interesting? The status quo has been shaken as Agent Odell and the ASA is heading this huge cold war against the nation of Markovia as a metahuman arms war sets up, and for the most part, the Pierce family is separated into two groups throughout this episode. Jefferson and Lynn are in some sort of secret conspiracy government base that's all white and ominous, while Anissa (as the titular 'Blackbird'), Jennifer and Gambi remain in Freeland.
And the episode starts off pretty confidently, with a well-shot montage of scenes of random metahumans -- implied to be the Pod Children -- being interrogated by a bodyless voice, before we finally settle onto Black Lightning. And I feel that this is perhaps not the most exciting part of the show. Lots of revelations, sure, but it just feels pretty bland. We get Jefferson, Lynn and Odell sort of discussing their situation, and clearly Odell and the government are being absolute controlling dicks, although Odell is at last nice enough towards the couple because they're useful.
On the other hand, though, both Black Lightning (and his newfound see-through-walls-without-goggles power) and the audience are alerted to Tobias Whale's presence in the facility, and he's not in the best shape since he no longer has his weird magic drugs to keep his youth. The A.S.A. is using Issa, the truth-aura metahumans from season 2, to interrogate Tobias Whale, and we sort of discover that he literally has no idea where the Briefcase McGuffin is, and during the conversation, he ends up revealing that he knows a bit too much -- that Odell was working under direct orders of the President to set up Proctor as a scapegoat and take control of Freeland's metahumans as weapons. This causes Odell to eventually kill off Issa, which is a massive dick move. You'd think trapping him in a government facility would be enough, y'know? Odell was at least kind enough to give Issa a seemingly non-brutal death with a poisoned meal, and he twists his death into some anti-Markovian propaganda when he talks to Lynn later on.
The Freeland stuff is a bit more interesting. We've got a bunch of random plot threads going on that I don't particularly care about -- Anissa's random new AI; random videos of Grace Choi turning into a leopard or some shit (???); Anissa hooking up with reporter Jamillah Olson; Jennifer going around with a hologram disguise and also having to use her powers in secret to let the powers out -- but ultimately, that's all just sort of window-dressing for subsequent plotlines.
The idea that Freeland is essentially being oppressed and plumbed for metahumans, ostensibly 'for your own protection', is pretty interesting setup, and as the ASA brings in Commander Carson Williams to put the police in place and play along with their story, we get to see briefly the curfews and new martial law being enacted. Throw in the fact that Black Lightning and Thunder are essentially MIA, and the morale of the town is at an all-time low.
The action sequence in this epsiode is when the metahuman shelter (more of a prison, effectively, after the ASA took over, where children are forcibly separated from their parents) is attacked by Cyclotronic, a metahuman who once foud himself at the mercies as essentially a living weapon used by the American government, and poor Cyclotronic ends up getting essentially murdered by Commander Williams, himself a metahuman able to mimic other people's powers. Cyclotronic may be a Markovian terrorist, but I do like that to the people in that facility, he probably looked more like a liberator.
We also give Anissa significant focus as she runs around in her alter-alter-ego, the Blackbird (who's working with good ol' Reverend Holt!), who ends up hijacking a bus full of refugees, and with the help of uncle Gambi, ends up breaking through... uh... a force field that the A.S.A. have set up. Okay? I felt like we jumped a bit headlong into crazier sci-fi stuff a bit too much, but I can't say that I'm complaining too much. The episode ends with Anissa having to fight off a bunch of A.S.A. goons and getting knocked out, but spirited away by the people she rescued.
Overall, I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan of the tonal shift in Black Lightning, particularly compared to the first season -- we're essentially in some sort of dystopia-land where the government who claims to be out for the welfare of the country is all too willing to weaponize the metahumans of Freeland and manipulate them like chess pieces, forcibly drafting them into a war they didn't want, while the other side, the Markovians, is so ambiguous as a threat that they might either be worse (they do have Jace, after all) or be merely an excuse for assholes like Odell to make more human weapons. The setup is at least interesting, and apparently topical to some current events in the U.S. of A? I am so uninformed about American politics that I'll not even try to strike up a comparison. We'll see if the show manages to deliver on its promise, though -- if nothing else, it's a pretty neat mood-setter of a season premiere.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Cyclotronic Man, a.k.a. Ned Creegan, is a minor villain from the comics who originally fought Batman and Robin as the electricity-manipulating villain Bag O' Bones, before resurfacing with a new costume and with additional powers to fight against Superman and Black Lightning in Metropolis. He would later go on to menace Batman, Black Lightning and the Outsiders with upgraded powers as the One-Man Meltdown, and the Outsiders discover that Creegan has been experimented with by the prison staff without his consent.
- As far as I can tell, Carson Williams, Jamillah Olson, as well as the other metahumans seen in the prologue scene are all original characters to the show.
- Grace definitely didn't have random shapeshifting powers in the comics, just super-strength and super-healing.
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