Black Lightning S03E14-15 Review: Meta-Prime

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 14: Homecoming; Episode 15: Freedom Ain't Free

Episode 14: Homecoming
I always forget that Black Lightning, for some reason, gets a significantly less amount of episodes compared to its sister shows, and this is us entering the final three-parter of the third season, "The Book of War", where the multiple sides in Freeland -- the ASA, the Markovians, the Pierce family and everything in-between -- finally clash with each other. There has been a bunch of complaints from me about how the third season tries to do a lot while not really doing all that much, particularly in its first half where it's not even exactly clear if the Markovian attack is even real or not, but if nothing else, like many CW shows, the actors really do carry the show.

And things are happening hard and fast in this episode. A good chunk of it is still a combination of set-up for the "Book of War" as well as a bit of a respite from the whole assault on Markovia last episode, with the Pierce family sitting down at a table and promising to each other to have no secrets and all that stuff, talking about Jen's time as a manipulated weapon for Odell, about Lynn's addiction and the fact that she actually hid a pill of Green Light in the house, all that stuff.

But while this is going on, things are happening rapidly in the episode as we zip through and try and get as much set-up about the major players in Freeland. We get Gambi ripping out the eye of one of Lady Eve's twin assassins, which honestly sort of came out of nowhere. There's also Lady Eve and Lala meeting each other in a confrontation, then Eve and Gambi meeting each other in a confrontation, with Eve giving the ASA briefcase that has been sort of a Huge Deal in the second season but hasn't really been super-relevant other than scenes like this that end up reminding us that, hey, the briefcase exists. We get continued mentions to Lazarus the weird dude that revived Lala and Eve and we're still not sure why that even happens (or why we should even care, really). We've got the Perdi being attacked by the Markovians and boy oh boy I keep forgetting the Perdi even exists.

The briefcase, at least, is finally explained. TC is able to open it, and apparently it's a database of the genome of every metahuman the ASA has had contact with... including Gravedigger, the "Meta-Prime", the first metahuman in recorded history. We learn about Gravedigger's backstory as this episode basically sets him up as being the Big Bad instead of just a pretty powerful metahuman flunky of Markovia, and how Gravedigger was a black soldier in World War II who was 'volunteered' into a super soldier program, he had his meta-gene activated, and ended up with mind-control and longevity powers and became a super-spy-soldier-hitman. I'm pretty sure that there are better ways to utilize a soldier that has the ability to bend people to his will with a simple phrase or two instead of having him fight in the trenches, but at least we get to see Gravedigger do badass action scenes, which I appreciate.

Anyway, apparently the USA and ASA has been financing the Markovian metahuman program, and it's not until Gravedigger defected and lead a coup and is basically the real ruler of Markovia. Okay, sure. That's a lot of info-dump to us, which really speaks as to just how nebulous Markovia has been in the show's history when we can drop such a gigantic bomb on Markovia's history and I just shrug and go "yeah sure it doesn't contradict anything". Also, Gravedigger kills Colonel Mosin, which is a thing that happened... I really wish I had more to say, but Mosin is so one-dimensional. Also also, Gravedigger has access to a potluck of random metahuman powers thanks to the research that Lynn and Jace left behind, so sure.

Speaking of more things happening... we get more Khalil, and I kind of wished that we've saved this for next season? We've had a bit too much focus on the whole Khalil/Painkiller/firewall stuff and this episode has Painkiller break free of his little mind-vision prison and beat up Brandon, TC and Jennifer before Khalil regains control, and Khalil sort of peaces out in angst and grief after Jennifer rejects him in a balcony-rooftop-talk. It's an okay scene, I suppose, but compared to the original Khalil/Painkiller scene we saw earlier in the season, this just felt abrupt, like we're just going through the broad strokes instead of actually exploring the emotions and character changes, y'know? It makes sense, but I just don't care a whole ton.

"Homecoming" is really mostly just setup, except it's kind of hard to really care about some of the setup when things like the briefcase or Lady Eve or Lala haven't really been relevant, and there's even Brandon going around hunting Dr. Jace. While the core of the show has been relatively consistent in the amount of screentime they get, a lot of these B-plots and B-characters show up maybe twice throughout the season in very vague scenes and it's really hard for me to care about them, y'know? This episode mostly just sets things up, hastily wraps up the whole Eve/Lala/Gambi/briefcase stuff that the season has been completely ignoring prior to this episode before we get to the climax of the season, and build up Gravedigger a bit. It's decent as a standalone watch, but as part of a whole, it does highlight a lot of the plot-juggling problems in Black Lightning's third season.
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Episode 15: Freedom Ain't Free

As much as a lot of the B-plots and B-list characters suffer, though, at least the plot moves on at a decent pace? Again, I wish the show really had time to actually explore Gravedigger beyond the quick information dump about his tragic and sympathetic backstory in episode 14 and a vague connection to how the fact that he's a victim of an asshole government is a similar situation to how the ASA has been treating Freeland all season long. And Gravedigger's huge plan is to 'free' all metahumans by forcing them to leave Freeland and be liberated under threat of death. On one hand, it's the bread and butter of some of the best, most interesting antagonists like there, and why Magneto is such a compelling villain when he's written well. On the other hand, the writing for Gravedigger here ends up feeling like why Magneto is not a compelling villain when he's not written well... Gravedigger's plan, for lack of a better term, is just kind of dumb. No one, least of all Americans, are going to want to go along with Gravedigger showing up with an army with guns and shit with the promise of being 'liberated'. Sure, Gravedigger's backstory is certainly sympathetic, and the ASA is definitely a piece-of-shit organization, but the way he goes about things is certainly not one that's going to gain him a lot of supporters. Maybe if he had actually made a 'free to choose to enter Markovia, Markovia accepts all metahumans with the promise of no experimentation or exploitation' drive, he'd be more sympathetic? As it is, the show writers just easily slapped together a sympathetic backstory and the execution of a clearly antagonistic way of doing his plan. There's enough of an ambiguity to Gravedigger that you go 'yeah, he's got a point', but at the same time the fact that he's going around being all murder-y and invade-y and clearly refuses to calmly negotiate with our heroes and it's clear that the writers really want us to know that this dude, he's the bad guy.

The show tries to add another layer to Gravedigger by having Lynn discover that Gravedigger is actually Black Lightning's grand-uncle or something, thought to be dead by the family, but Gravedigger himself hasn't really gotten any sort of super-meaningful interactions with Jefferson that finding that out really ends up with nothing but a shrug from me. While everything about Gravedigger has been pretty great as a complex antagonist (save for when he is introduced in the show), this random detail felt, well, random and shoehorned in. I'm not even sure what this is for, other than to maybe tie in the Pierces into the ASA/USA manipulation and exploitation themes? Or just for the whole Jeff-won't-kill-especially-not-family and Lynn just wants Jeff to "do what's necessary" argument? Either way, it's absolutely random, and as someone who's watched the finale, it sure doesn't add anything to these two episodes.

Still, once you get past that, "Freedom Ain't Free" is a very entertaining episode of superhero television. And the ASA is still portrayed as being the most dickish and villainous of the various organizations around, with Odell making it clear that the U.S. military is prepared to nuke Freeland, the invading Markovians and wipe everything off the map, because, like any self-respecting superhero movie, you need to have extra stakes. That's actually pretty brilliant, and fits pretty well with the ASA's way of doing things since they're all gigantic pricks.

Black Lightning, meanwhile, does another round of superhero recruiting and concocts a plan to confront Gravedigger's army as they charge into Freeland. Conveniently forgetting that he now shares a universe with Superman, Supergirl, the Flash and a dozen other superheroes, Black Lightning gathers his dwindling group and a significant part of the episode is placed on Jennifer arguing with Jefferson on why she, the strongest member of the group with no quantifiable limits to her powers, is placed in reserve. Jeff might try to pretend to be Sun Tzu all he wants, but it's clear to everyone that he's just trying to protect his daughter.

And we get all of the characters we care about hanging out for a wedding -- Anissa and Grace's -- and I wish that I had more to say about this? Anissa and Grace's story has been a long-running B-plot and the fact that Grace is missing or sidelined most of the time does mean that she's not as interesting of a person as I wished she was -- she's badass, she's in love with Anissa, she's got PTSD... that's about it, really? The episode kinda hints at her powers 'evolving' or something, but that plotline gets dropped after a single conversation.  The wedding does give us a pretty cute moment of peace and family-dom and all of the cheesy stuff, and the scene does work well -- if nothing else, the Pierces and most of their allies have a very good familial bond and the episode's wedding scene shows this to us well. It's also a classic way of building up the dread before a literal war comes on their doorstep, all this peace and love and happiness that really emphasizes to our heroes just what is at stake.

And then, of course, Jennifer gets TC to track Gravedigger's movements, and heads out on her own to one-shot and wipe out Gravedigger's entire army (is that a regular army, or a metahuman army? We'll never know). What she doesn't know, though, is that Gravedigger's a really tough son of a bitch, and with a bunch of other powers that he's able to take on without overloading himself, Gravedigger just tanks through Lightning's zaps and throw her into the Freeland forcefield, very damn near killing poor Jennifer if Black Lightning doesn't zip in and catch her. There's a bit of a tense moment as Jeff has to restart his daughter's heart, and, well, we end the episode with Black Lightning and Gravedigger finally facing off with each other, mostly because it's Black Lightning's show and he's gotta fight the main villain.

We've got a bunch of B-plots too as the show scramble to wrap up every other dangling B-plot while also introducing a lot of new things about its new big bad villain. Lala shows up to reject anything that Jeff is selling, but Jeff really should've led with "they're going to nuke us if the Markovians do invade" instead of speaking in vague gang terms. Lala also kidnapped an ASA doctor to find out about Tobias. Painkiller takes over Khalil and starts murdering random soldiers. Brandon has attacked Dr. Jace with his powers and demands to know all about his father and stuff, and at this point I just don't care anymore. Erica and TC being all cute and stuff is cute. Also Lady Eve wants a seat back at the 'Shadow Council' with Odell in exchange for the briefcase. It's nice that all of these are getting tied up, but I really do wish that there was another episode in "The Book of War" arc to properly give these lesser plotlines time to breathe and be relevant. Still, all things considered... still pretty entertaining despite the mess. It's a far better-constructed season finale compared to the previous season, I suppose.