Welcome back, Black Lightning fans! Our beloved superheroes are back for a second season, and this premiere started off right where the last season’s finale left off, so let’s jump in.
Proving itself to always be paralleling real life, we open on a news report in which video of cops choking a ‘suspected Green Light Baby’ to death is being shown. It’s a stark opening, and it fits the show, which has never shied away from the realities of police brutality in a white supremacist society.
Immediately we cut to this episode’s true MVP, Lynn, who is being questioned by the ASA. Lynn stands her ground, as she does throughout this episode in multiple situations, including while arguing with Jefferson who can’t seem to see her as having just as many (or more) gifts as him. Lynn never reveals anything to her interrogator and insists that she needs and deserves access to the pods with the Green Light Babies because she’s the expert on Green Light. Needless to say, the questioner thinks only of how annoyed he is that she’s making his job difficult, but Lynn manages to pull some strings and continue studying with access to the pods.
Meanwhile, the federal government has decided that it now owns the pod people, because of course they did. The community needs to raise at least $500,000 to be able to afford to bring a lawsuit against them for custody. Naturally, our shero Anissa Thunder-slaps a bunch of guys in a trap house and steals the money, delivering it to the church where some of the families have gathered for Bible study.
While Anissa does super-hero stuff on her own terms, Jen struggles. She doesn’t know how to control her powers, and is glowing and levitating in her sleep now. It doesn’t help that Kahlil keeps texting her, and her best friend calls Green Light Babies ‘freaks.’
The kid who was killed in the opening scene later wriggles out of his body bag and runs away; when Jen sees the video of this, she goes into uncontrollable glow mode and locks herself in the bathroom. When Jefferson comes home to find Anissa and Lynn worried outside the bathroom, he goes in and absorbs the extra energy into his own body. They have to figure out how to control Jen’s powers, and what those powers even are. This is a family that does things like this together, and I get the sense they’ll all rally to help her. Plus, Lynn in her queendom keeps insisting that Jen and Jefferson get therapy because their lives are not just about powers but about mental health! I love Lynn.
Then we’ve got Jefferson himself, who has a pretty flimsy excuse for why he wasn’t at school when the attack happened last season (he was on vacation! Such funny timing!). The Garfield board is unhappy with him to say the least, and they vote to close the school entirely. Jefferson offers to resign as principle so long as it keeps the school open. We’ll see what happens with that in the coming episodes. Oh, and Henderson finally figured out that Jefferson is Black Lightning, and in their confrontation, it’s clear he feels betrayed. I suspect their alliance is imminent, because it has to be!
Lastly, let’s talk about Kara. Jefferson’s erstwhile secretary who turned out to be an ASA spotter wants out of the shady organization. She kills Cyanide in an epic and very violent battle involving an extremely sharp pair of heels. Then she goes to Gambi to ask for safe passage out of the ASA in exchange for Proctor’s mysterious suitcase that we still don’t know the contents of. He agrees (and also tells Jefferson). When Kara dons her night vision goggles to not-very-stealthily break into Tobias’s lair, presumably for the suitcase, he shoots her in the stomach with a harpoon gun. Somehow she still manages to jump out the window, so I’m sure we’ll see more of her. Tobias, for his part, seems as irate as ever, with the added bonus of an escaped victim and the loss of Cyanide.
That’s it for this week! Can’t wait to see where this season goes, especially with Anissa and Jen. Men get a lot of screen time on this show, but the women really make it worth watching. Here’s to season 2!
