Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 7: Henderson's Opus; Episode 8: The Battle for Franklin Terrace
So after Agent Odell's apparent death (he got better) at the end of episode 6, the ASA has all the excuse they need to crack down on the people of Freeland. We get to see the ASA grunts move around the city and pull people out of their homes and stuff, really ratcheting up the hostile-occupation themes up. Throw in the little B-plot of Reverend Holt very nearly being ready to send people to the promised land with his golden handgun to protect the refugees (it's actually the Two-Bits chicken wings delivery service), and we do get more showcases of the subjugation of Freeland truly rising in scale.
And through all of this, Black Lightning refuses to take a stand -- at least in the eyes of the people of Freeland. it's so easy to paint things in black-and-white, to paint the Markovians as the enemy, or the ASA as the enemy, but Black Lightning is trying to keep his emotions in check and save everyone... but his popularity takes a nosedive when he uses his lightning abilities to create a shield to stop a bunch of Freeland people from gunning down a bunch of ASA soldiers. At another point in the episode, Black Lightning also defuses a bomb that Henderson and the Resistance were trying to use to sabotage an ASA convoy.
This leads to a confrontation between Henderson and Black Lightning. And while I argue that part of what made Black Lightning intervene might be a bit of a miscommunication (he wasn't aware about the yield of the bomb, or if it's meant to be a smokescreen while they led metahumans out of the city) Henderson being angry at Black Lightning for the rather hypocritical stance he's taking is pretty well-done. What made the Resistance acting out of the law for the good of the people any different from Black Lightning's vigilantism?
Anissa, meanwhile, is still recovering her powers from Painkiller's venom, and basically guilt-trips Jefferson to help evacuate Grace to the Perdi people. And... eh? Grace gets to do some leopard transformation thing to take out an ASA agent in the episode's third-act action sequence, but honestly we don't see all too much about Grace beyond her being traumatized and being a nice person, and we honestly could've stood to spend more time with Grace before we basically write her back out of the show. It's kind of clunky. Oh, and despite a bit of a terse standoff with Reverend Holt, Black Lightning proves himself to be a champion of the people again as he protects the evacuees from the ASA and knocks out Major Gray's unit. It sort of feels like kind of a roundabout plot to pad out this episode as the show hammers home how the ASA threat is escalating.
Jennifer, meanwhile... continues to bounce around characters. Her scenes with Brandon really didn't add anything new other than the fact that she's stretching things out a bit too much and making light of Brandon's situation. She also meets up with Major Gray (which is Odell without any of the subtlety), Odell's temporary replacement, and Jen basically uses the situation to help out with investigating Dr. Jace. Lynn, on the other hand, is working to sneak Gambi in. She, too, butts heads with Major Gray. Lynn and Gambi... find out about robo-zombie-Khalil, but apparently Khalil's memories are still locked inside the brain (which conveniently has a video-play feature). Khalil wants to kill 'it', while Lynn, being obsessed at saving everyone no matter the cost, wants to save Khalil from this zombified state.
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I've been doing a bunch of these 'two episodes in a single post' review, huh? Sorry, comes with the territory of binge-watching. If/when I ever get to catching up with the other superhero shows I've missed, that's likely going to be an approach I'm going to take as well. Anyway, while Black Lightning isn't a show that's as tied into the Crisis on Infinite Earths as the other CW shows, it's still a participant, and episode 9 is still a tie-in that focuses on said Crisis, making episode 8 sort of a mid-season finale of sorts. It's got a huge confrontation and everything!
And it's pretty neat to watch and cheer as Black Lightning, Thunder, Chief Henderson and the police start to slowly reach their breaking point. While it's been a terse cold war with the ASA over the past couple of episodes, Black Lightning finally puts his feet down now when the ASA threatens to drive away a bunch of people from their homes, includnig Jeff and Henderson's ex-teacher, an old lady called Ms. Shepard who only wants to water her plants. It's a bit on-the-nose, but this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, even if it is admittedly kind of ridiculous that it's this specific building that the ASA needs to have at all costs. Really, all those secret bases and none of them are a suitable base of operations?
This leads to Black Lightning to stand in front of Franklin Terrace, a lightning-wielding metahuman who knocks back the ASA agents with all the fury he can muster. Painkiller gets deployed but poor robo-Khalil gets beaten the shit out by Thunder, who tosses him out of the building with the only real pause in the fight being the moment when Anissa realizes that she's fighting Khalil. Hell, even the supposed miniboss fight against Commander Williams (the power-copying metahuman from the season premiere) barely lasted five seconds against Black Lightning, with Jefferson taking him out in a pretty cool one-liner as Williams literally knocks himself out since he doesn't have a fancy power-regulating suit or the experience of using lightning powers like Jeff does.
Meanwhile, while Jeff, Anissa and many other members of the Resistance basically have picked a side, Lynn is... a bit more conflicted. Part of it is her own drug abuse, part of it is Tobias getting inside her head, and part of it is a desire to believe that all her work is actually her doing some good. And it is -- she cures the Green Light children -- but underneath it all, underneath all of Tobias's racist and sexist remarks, underneath Tobias threatening to murder Lynn's family... Tobias does raise an interesting point. Odell and the ASA are as terrible as Tobias is, and they both want to create an army of metahumans. The difference is that Tobias at least is upfront with his villainy. And, of course, Lynn quickly realizes that Tobias is right, that the ASA have massive canisters of Green Light they will eventually flood Freeland with in order to make an army of metahumans that they can control... an army of robotic Khalils, so to speak.
Jeff and Anissa's superpowered display has basically rendered the Pierce family's del with the ASA null and void, and... and they really could've warned Lynn to get out of the Pit a bit sooner. She escapes before helping Tobias do so, but drops her purse holding both her work and her drugs, which leaves her panicked as Gambi drives her away. I'm... I'm genuinely not sure what direction we're heading with Lynn, but eh.
Meanwhile, Jennifer and Brandon continue to... sort of be there? He sort of discovers that dr. Jace experiments on people and is evil and stuff and is involved with the Markovians, and also over the course of these two episodes sort of realized that Jen can blast all of her excess powers into Brandon, but ultimately it's a pretty m'eh
subplot. A bit more interesting is the Resistance story, where Jamillah Olsen rises up and helps Blackbird and some random pod kid metahuman called Baron/T.C. (I'm 99% he's a new character?) to transmit out a message from Freeland to dispel the notion that Freeland is occupied thanks to a SARS outbreak.
Anyway, throughout episode 8 the people of Freeland struck a pretty heavy blow against the ASA, and are mostly united once more. Presumably after we deal with this whole earth-shattering Crisis thing, the people of Freeland will finally move towards working against the multiple threats of the ASA, the Markovians and whatever Tobias Whale is doing? Overall I do think that this leg of Black Lightning really could've been done a fair bit better as far as pacing and arranging the order of events go, but it's a pretty neat set of episodes nonetheless.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- I didn't realize until this episode, but minor recurring character Erica Moran is a gender-flipped version of Eric Moran, a.k.a. Freight Train, a metahuman with the ability to absorb and redirect kinetic energy after being bitten by an alien parasite who granted him the power. Initially working for Simon Stagg and opposing the fourth incarnation of the Outsiders, Freight Train eventually defected and joined the Outsiders.
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