Welcome back to where this very sporadic season of Black Lightning left off, friends! When we a few weeks ago, our favorite super-family was reunited, Anissa was attempting to locate Grace, Lynn escaped Tobias’s minions’s raid on the Meta facility, and Tobias and Cutter blew up Todd’s “new car.”
This week sees the return of a season 1 character we haven’t seen in a long while, and he’s got more of a storyline than ever: Lala. The episode opens with him walking the halls of Garfield with a gun, looking for Jefferson, who for the sake of plot and convenience is the only person in the school at that time. Lala is still haunted by the ghosts of the people he killed (and, in the case of his mother, someone he didn’t kill but is still dead), and he’s talking to them all the time. They argue endlessly with each other, too, about whether or not Lala should kill Jefferson. Because despite Lala’s partially wiped memory, something in him connects Jeff with the death of his best high school friend, Earl.
That something is a scientist/Jesus type dude who reconstitutes dead people (like Lala) by pouring their organs into giant magic ice baths. Weird, right? But apparently this is how Lala keeps coming back to life. It’s the scientist guy who tells Lala, after his most recent reincarnation, that in order to find peace, he must find knowledge, which will lead to redemption. And oh yeah it has something to do with Jeff and Earl.
After shooting Jeff in the shoulder and going through waves of intense distress and fighting with his ghosts, Lala calms down enough for Jeff to jog his memory by showing him old yearbook photos. It works. Lala remembers that he killed Earl himself for two reasons: 1) he knew there was a hit out on him and he didn’t want him to be killed by anyone else; and 2) he wanted to move up in the 100 and killing his best friend and sticking his body in a basketball hoop would prove his chops to Tobias. So, Lala concludes, he must kill Tobias—for real this time—in order to find redemption. I only wish this will work, but I’m not holding my breath.
While Jeff and Lala spend the day alone in a classroom being stressed out, Lynn, Anissa, and Jen all have their own long days to deal with. Lynn is hanging on by a thread at the facility as Agent Odell is breathing down her neck. He describes the metas as “dogs” that are simply weapons to be used in service of their country. Lynn sees them as patients, so that’s a fundamental disagreement right there. Before the episode’s done, Lynn will be locked out of the lab to helplessly watch as Odell pushes Wendy Hernandez to the limits of an aneurism.
Meanwhile, Jen is really excited about the prospect of a super suit, and has a lot of ideas about how it should look, which she gleefully shows Gambi. He gets a prototype made and they test it out with Jen standing in the big sphere thing in the lair where they usually test her powers. She’s as happy and carefree as we’ve seen her in a long while. She even does the moonwalk, which is super cute, until it she starts to create fire and smoke in the sphere and gets scared. So, the suit is a work in progress. But Jen is coming into her own and I’m here for it.
Finally, we have Anissa, beautiful lovestruck Anissa, who is encouraged by Jen to just find Grace already okay?! Gambi tracks down a “stepbrother” Grace had in one of her foster homes, and the reason I put that in quotes is because I think Grace and her stepbrother might be the same person? Anissa goes to the address Gambi gave her, twice. The first time a man answers the door and tells her trouble will find her if she stays there and slams the door in her face. Then we see Grace on the other side of the door, and I think the man is something/someone she can morph into but I’m not 100% sure.
What I am sure about is that there are some creepy and gory things in that apartment, because when Anissa returns later, this time as Thunder, she kicks her way into the apartment and finds a bunch of dead horses/donkeys with their entrails everywhere?? The implication being that Grace is like a leopard or something that needs fresh meat? I don’t know, all we see is the man from earlier who may or may not be Grace, who fights Anissa until she leaves. So, cool.
And in this week’s twisty ending, we learn that Odell has set up cameras all over the Pierce house and knows everything about them! He hires a bunch of tech people to set them up and then promptly kills them so that he’s the only one who knows. It’s sad and disturbing that he creeps on my favorite Pierce moment in a long time, this cute selfie!
That’s it for this week! We didn’t have to deal with Tobias this week, how great is that?! Here’s hoping that the Anissa/Grace storyline gets resolved(ish), and that the Pierce fam figure out that Odell is watching them sooner rather than later. Thanks for reading, see you next week!
