Lovecraft Country tackles personal and national trauma in “Rewind 1921”
TV Reviews Lovecraft Country
Secrets come out, Hippolyta is back, and Tic, Leti, and Montrose are headed back in time. It’s the Tulsa episode, everyone! This bit of history which was lost to most non-Black Americans makes its second appearance on an HBO series. Once again the survivors are front and center, and the endless trauma of Black people in America remains the theme. Lovecraft Country finally explores in depth how Montrose became the man he is today in this powerfully moving episode.
Poor baby Diana took the brunt of the hit with the Police Captain’s spell. With her blood turned black and her skin shriveled up, Diana must fight to live long enough for Tic, Leti, and Montrose to find a counter spell. All the adults surrounding her quake with fear, knowing the responsibility for the young girl’s suffering lays at their feet. As they argue, their secrets inch toward the surface. Leti’s pregnancy and Montrose’s parietal accuracy remain hidden, but Ruby reveals her intrepid affair with Christina. She promises Christina will perform the spell to heal Diana. Unfortunately, only the Police Captain who cast the spell can lift the curse. The Captain’s spell first turned Diana into the physical manifestation of a jigga boo, then caused her to flesh to rot and fester from the inside out.
Luckily, the hellhounds didn’t kill the Captain in last week’s attack, which Leti spun as a gas explosion—but to call him alive and well would be false. We learned that the police force kidnapped Black citizens and hacked off whatever limbs an officer needed, attaching the Black body part to the white officer with magic. Christina sentenced William to a thousand deaths by overriding this quick-fix spell. But, that line of deaths must end for the officer, as Christina did promise Ruby she would slow the spell’s progress. Christina takes particular joy in watching the final death mask wash over the Captain’s face.
Leti and Ruby finally have the conversation they’ve needed to have for weeks. Ruby reveals that she believes Montrose and Tic to be violent men—not an unfounded thought, considering how quickly those two go to blows. Of course, Leti knows Christina. She knows Christina intends to kill Tic, and uses Ruby to get closer to Tic’s blood. Both sisters go their own way, but each takes the lesson of the other.
Watching Ruby call out Christina brought a particular joy and relief to their relationship. For so long I couldn’t tell who was playing who. Christina always seemed to possess the upper hand, and yet she could never pin Ruby down. Now that Christina confesses what she wants magic for, their attraction makes more sense. Christina gave Ruby the ability to go places she’d never gone before. It’s the same wish the young Braithwaite held for herself. Using magic as a key, no corner of the universe would be off limits to her. The desire to control the world belonged to her father. Like Ruby, Christina just wanted to escape the box built around her identity. Ruby understood, and so made two crucial decisions. First, she demanded Christina promise not hurt Leti. Then she killed off her Hillary, proclaiming her white identity a red head. I guess it’s hunting season for Ruby Red.
Hippolyta returns a new woman. No longer timid, she stands bone straight, ready to tackle whatever event befell her daughter. Hippolyta’s been on Earth 504 for 200 years calling herself whatever she damn well pleases. As everyone questions her, she straightens her crown and walks into fire. A goddess reborn of Earth and water, Hippolyta molded herself into a champion. She plans to go back to the multi-dimensional machine to retrieve the book of names from the Tulsa Massacre.
Down at the conservatory in Kentucky, Leti gets up the nerve to tell Montrose she’s pregnant. Montrose reveals the gender of the baby and blames Leti for the probable death of his son, Tic. Hippolyta turns herself into a motherboard. With over six trillion alternate realities, she needs to direct the computer to open a portal to this Earth’s Tulsa in 1921. While the process looks painful, Hippolyta doesn’t hesitate or falter; but Montrose does. He’s entering the nightmare of his own past, the reality he spent three decades drinking away. Confronting that reality—not just the severity of his father, but the horrendous acts of terrorism inflicted upon the community—is the biggest step he’s taken in his life.
The trio hop through the portal, and realize that they only have a few hours before the attack begun. Time travel rules apply. They can’t do anything that changes the future, despite knowing that Tic’s mother’s entire family would be burned alive in their home, along with the book.
The secret Montrose kept from Tic his whole life finally comes to the surface. The news hits Atticus like a ton of bricks. All the beatings Montrose made him endure, all the time he spent with George wishing he could call him dad—and now he lives with an unknown. Who really sired him?
Tic snaps when he realizes Montrose came to the past high on liquid courage, and he tells him all the hateful things he’s stored in his heart since he was a child. Finally, Tic decides to end his relationship with his father after they’ve saved D’s life. The reality of the harm done, combined with his worst fears staring him in the face, brings Montrose to a halt. Montrose watches his younger self being beaten with a lengthy branch, by his drunk and enraged father. Homophobia that causes the beating to extend until Montrose cannot stand. We see what the love between Montrose, George, and Tic’s mother meant. Dora, Tic’s mom, protected Montrose, loved him like a brother. And she couldn’t stand the way George stood by and watched Montrose be beaten. She used her life to stand in between Montrose and the cruel world.
Of course, Montrose has just now discovered the hero with-in. He takes off. Leti and Tic think he went to warn his older brother about the impending terrorist attack, so they decide to split up. Leti, though invincible, finds herself being chased down by an angry white mob. She runs into Dora’s house for shelter. The entire house flies into a panic, rounding up their weapons, and searching for the kids.
Leti agrees to help protect the house—shooting first to warn, and then to kill. Hannah immediately something wasn’t right with the new girl. The tennis shoes gave her away. As the house burns down around them, Hannah has to choose whether to save her family from burning, or accept her fate and help her descendant by giving up The Book of Names. She chooses to help Leti. She binds the book in a spell, allowing future users to only use the book for welfare and not evil. “When my great-great grandson is born, he will be my faith turned flesh,” Hannah blesses Leti as the upstairs begins to spark and crackle with flames. We cannot hear our ancestors proclaim us as their wildest dream, and as a descendant of slaves, I found power in Hannah’s proclamation. Truly this is what art is for.
Hannah turns out to be a woman of God. She asks Leti to pray the “Our Father Prayer” with her. Their words drown under the poem “Catch The Fire” by Sonia Sanchez, posted below. As the house burns, they gripped hands. The love, passion, and knowledge passes like fire from one mother to the next. As white men cackle while the life built for them burns around them, Leti continues to hold Hannah’s hand even as she burns and screams in agony. The past is never dead, and we cannot outrun the tragedy inflicted upon our ancestors. But we can become less vulnerable to the attacks, and we can honor those who survived long enough so that we might exist. We are tribute to the lives they might have led, were they truly free.
Catch the Fire
(Sometimes I wonder:
What to say to you now
in the soft afternoon air as you
hold us all in a single death?)
I say—
Where is your fire?
I say—
Where is your fire?
You got to find it and pass it on.
You got to find it and pass it on
from you to me from me to her from her
to him from the son to the father from the
brother to the sister from the daughter to
the mother from the mother to the child.
Where is your fire? I say where is your fire?
Can’t you smell it coming out of our past?
The fire of living…not dying
The fire of loving…not killing
The fire of Blackness…not gangster shadows.
Where is our beautiful fire that gave light
to the world?
The fire of pyramids;
The fire that burned through the holes of
slaveships and made us breathe;
The fire that made guts into chitterlings;
The fire that took rhythms and made jazz;
The fire of sit-ins and marches that made
us jump boundaries and barriers;
The fire that took street talk sounds
and made righteous imhotep raps.
Where is your fire, the torch of life
full of Nzingha and Nat Turner and Garvey
and DuBois and Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin
and Malcolm and Mandela.
Sister/Sistah Brother/Brotha Come/Come
CATCH YOUR FIRE…DON’T KILL
HOLD YOUR FIRE…DON’T KILL
LEARN YOUR FIRE…DON’T KILL
BE THE FIRE…DON’T KILL
Catch the fire and burn with eyes
that see our souls:
WALKING.
SINGING.
BUILDING.
LAUGHING.
LEARNING.
LOVING.
TEACHING.
BEING.
Hey. Brother/Brotha. Sister/Sista.
Here is my hand.
Catch the fire…and live.
live.
livelivelive.
livelivelive.
live.
live.
Montrose did not go to warn his brother, he left to save his first love, Thomas. And this is where we learn that it wasn’t the beatings that destroyed Montrose, but the loss of his first love. He stopped saying Thomas’ name so that he could have a chance at a life. This is the pain he ran from. He referred to the loss of this love, “As the first in a long line of sacrifices,” he made to be Tic’s father. Tic, like all children, forgot his father only existed as flesh and blood. While none of Montrose’s pain makes up for what he put Tic through, it does explain how he ended up so lost. How he could cavalierly say the murder of children are the lesson all Black folks must learn.
For Montrose, murder isn’t a possibility but a stark eventuality. If that reality is not accepted, it will bring a person to their knees. This knowledge weighs so heavy on the spirit that it literally kills the victim. It takes years, but it destroys completely. I think of Eric Garner’s namesake Erica Garner, who, after watching her father be murdered by the police, became an activist, before dying of a heart attack at just 27. I think about the pockets of Black dominated spaces, laced with poverty throughout America, where the average life span of a citizen is just 26 years.
Montrose lived too long at the precipice of destruction. He befriended it and courted it, until he became as close as lovers with the idea of destruction. He could no longer see the difference between himself, and the destruction he caused. It seemed to him an inevitability that he would become his father. He couldn’t see he was making a choice to become his dad. All of it, all of it, came from the seed of knowledge that in America, Black lives don’t matter.
When George faces the person he hid from himself, the little boy who deserved love instead of beatings, the teenager who deserved romantic love, and the man who desperately wanted to be a father, he can admit to his son that every sacrifice was worth it, because it ended in the existence of Tic. By this logic, Montrose believed he could save Thomas without sacrificing the son he loves so much. He held onto that ideal for as long as he could, willing it to be true. But in the end, Montrose was unwilling to take the risk. He relied on his personal cavalry, his future wife and his brother, to save him as he narrates the atrocities he survived. Sometimes, the only way to heal is to speak. He talks out his trauma, with the one person there to witness it, and little by little the pain clenching his heart eases, but does not dissipate.
Tic and Atticus realize at the same time that Tic was the mysterious stranger, the person who had their back, the future that made their wildest dreams come true. It’s a beautiful full circle moment for the father and son, who have struggled to understand one another. Just like the book never burned in the house, Tic was always meant to be Montrose’s savior. It’s not the right way of things. A child should not have to protect a parent. But parents are only human, and do occasionally require a hero. There can be such beauty in forgiveness, in releasing and healing the pain done to us over and over again. Montrose had such a wall of pain, humiliation, and isolation to climb. It makes horrible sense that a new generation would need to come around before he could heal all the wounds inflicted upon him.
Montrose relived his childhood horror from the hotel, naming the neighbors, icons, and children, whose destinies were not yet known. Hippolyta struggles to keep the portal open as Leti walks painfully slowly through bombs that seem as if they were dropped on her specifically, and Montrose stares out the window. Hippolyta’s hair turns blue, Orynthia Blue, for her troubles, becoming the hero her daughter always believed she could be. “Rewind 1921” ends with all the cards on the table. The autumnal equinox follows next week. Will Tic survive? Tune in next week to find out!
Stray observations:
- Am I to understand that Christina let the captain chop up Black folks knowing the spell would work less and less, subsequently causing more Black death, so she could enjoy his pain? She is the devil.
- Anyone else feel like Leti and Tic’s baby gonna come out a girl? They put so much emphasis on him having a son, and the multiple realities, I imagine that there’s some big twist coming in this plot line.
- For the love of all that is good, please let Ji-Ah get a final arc in the series finale. I have questions that need answering.
96 Comments
Hannah deciding to meet her fate to die in the fire for the sake of future generations was possibly the most gut-wrenching scenes I’ve seen on TV.
First, thanks for posting the poem by Sonia Sanchez. But the near operatic version of it over the visually terrifying attack on the entire Greenwood District was absolutely stunning and moving, a gorgeous directorial flourish. The scene with Montrose watching unfold at the park fountain again what has haunted him a lifetime, narrating what is about to transpire to Tic, was the best this entire series has delivered, both actors delivering award level performance.Joelle, obviously this episode moved you greatly and you had a lot to say. May I just add that you expressed everything beautifully. This was top-notch writing on by far the best episode of the series so far.
About Ji-Ah, you and me both.
It would be nice, but they fridged Yahima so I’m not holding my breath.
I was pretty upset about that. I have a feeling Montrose might sacrifice himself for Tic or die another way. I hope not because that would be another bury-your-gay trope they’re doing. I think intersex characters getting fridged counts as being an example of that trope. They didn’t even let Yahima survive the episode they were introduced in.
Honestly, it wasn’t even all that good as a fridging, since the protagonists seem to let it go pretty quickly. I suppose it could be seen in one more factor that causes a (further) divide between Montrose and Tic.I do like this show, but they really do play really fast and loose with their plot.
That was still such a major mis-step for this show, that I’m shocked it made it out of the writer’s room. Even though I loved most of the Montrose stuff in this episode (I did think it was ridiculous that Tic suddenly realized he was probably drunk and yelled at him… Hello?!?!) a part of me still has such an issue with the character and much of it stems to the fact that he’s a *murderer*. And really, in hindsight, there was NO reason for the murder. If it was to cause a further riff between Tic and Montrose that was incredibly short lived and quickly forgotten.
Right there with you. Montrose murdering Yahima (which the showrunner has admitted was a big misstep), Tic murdering Ji-ah’s lesbian friend – not tom mention little moments that don’t add up in terms of character or motivation, like, as you mention, Tic blowing up at Montrose as he is *about to RE-experience the Tulsa Massacre? Really, Tic couldn’t cut him a LITTLE slack at that moment?Warning, YMMV: I like this show enough, and there are very good things in it, but there’s something off about it, like the moments I mention. At first I thought it was the monster-of-the-week structure; I thought the structure was taking precedence over character. But with one episode left, it feels like more of a feature of this show with this showrunner. I heard Misha Green talk about how she thought being on HBO would allow her more time, i.e. longer episodes when needed, but HBO nixed that; so, maybe that explains some of the pieces that don’t quite work for me. LC also, for better or worse, fairly or unfairly, is simply going to be compared to the superior “Watchmen,” which preceded it, was astoundingly great, and covered some remarkably similar territory in themes and even events (like Tulsa).
As a light skinned POC I only have to say PREACH!
I feel like your post should get way more likes. This show gets so much right and then, maybe unfairly, it gets so much wrong.
It is one of the few flaws in the series. Too many characters, especially strong women going, “Oh no, we got to save Atticus!” Ji-Ah had a good story, but it was really all about how it tied to Atticus and nothing else. I was hoping to see her fox face. I feel all the women in this series should form their own all female magic group since most of the male characters are horribly flawed and they killed off the only decent one, George, even though he is alive in the book. It is just really hard to sympathize with men who beat their kids or shoot women in the head for no reason other than cruelty. At least Ji-Ah was trying to please her mom when she killed and lift a curse. Having the females go on and on about saving the male characters sucks because they seem the strongest characters in the piece and deserve better, deeper stories.
This was a somber and incredible episode. Being a queer black man on the other end of a father’s intent to protect his son from being gay…seeing that on the screen brought back so many memories….so much trauma. I’ve never felt so seen, so hurt, so moved. I cannot forgive anything that Montrose has done – but I have walked a mile in his shoes and experienced that same physical and mental anguish….and feeling like a part of you has died from being told not be who you are (and to have someone try to beat it out of you). Wooo…that was a lot to unpack.I’ll say this the Freemans and Dora’s family (do we ever hear their last name?) did not go out without a fight. Hannah was truly the MVP as she accepted the of herself and her family for the sake of the future.I was on edge this entire episode and I felt like at any moment everyone besides Leti was on the chopping block. I cannot fathom going to the past, your ancestral home…and seeing most of your entire family wiped and not being to do anything to stop it. This was such a different take from Watchmen and Tulsa but equally as impactful. I am not sure I could’ve been as strong as Leti, Tic, Hannah and Montrose and not changed anything. Kudos to actors you as I could see their struggle manifest in the bodies and actions- that pain and weight of knowing the slightest change could ruin the past and future.So um is the observatory in Kansas or Kentucky? I could’ve sworn it was in Kansas. Tic’s ability to get there so fast was already problematic – but if was even further away…well then yea -Tic was already breaking the speed of sound or time traveling haha.I am not ready to leave this cast of characters next week.
Yeah I had real fear for Montrose when he and Tic were at the portal waiting and they framed him directly in front of the window. Hollywood loves a stray bullet moment just when people start to reconcile and I’m glad the writers didn’t go that way. It would have been melodramatic and wasteful.
So um is the observatory in Kansas or Kentucky? I could’ve sworn it was in Kansas. Tic’s ability to get there so fast was already problematic – but if was even further away…well then yea -Tic was already breaking the speed of sound or time traveling haha.South Side to Louisville on interstates only takes 4 hours. I-65 was finished in 1958, if Tic was one of the last Americans to leave Korea, that was 54. Even at best, I-65 didn’t exist. South Side to Owensborough, KY takes 5 hours on US-41. US41 has been there since 1926.You aren’t getting to Kansas from anywhere in metro Chicago in 6 hours. South Side to Topeka takes 8:30! Even Joliet to Elwood (ha) – SW Chicago to extreme NE Kansas – takes 7 hours.
Didn’t a character at one point also say it was a 3-hour drive to StL? Not in that Woody in that era! (Or not today if you spend 2 hours just to get past Joliet on I55 on any weekday afternoon.)
The Emmet Till episode pretty firmly puts a pin in the series as taking place in 1955… if it’s our United States.Leti didn’t want to spend 15 hours in a car with the feuding boys on the way to Boston, and she thinks St. Louis is three hours from Chicago. Either the Woody folds time and space or their US is smaller than ours.Even by today’s travel standards, those travel times are short. It’s like someone looked up travel times on Google Maps and then subtracted an hour or two. They should have clicked the Avoid Highways option to more closely estimate 1955 road conditions and then added more time to account for gas and food stops and driving while black difficulties.And yes, the observatory is now in Kentucky.I feel like I’m watching Lost again. Are these mistakes? Or are they clues? Are we in one of Hippolyta’s other universes now? Is the US roughly the same shape, but significantly smaller? And in this one, the observatory is in Kentucky? Or does a show researcher keep goofing up travel times and forget which K state the observatory’s in?
I agree with the comments on logistics. After setting up the incredible and dangerous risks of travel to average Black Americans in that era in the series opener, including making a seeming plot item in Uncle George’s Green Book, they’ve totally gone the other way in later episodes to a distracting level. Tic and Hippolyta can blow their way to backwoods Kansas in record time by today’s standards of travel. They might as well have re-imagined the “observatory” as a warehouse on the outskirts of Chicago just for continuity’ sake.
Whenever these problems pop up in fiction I give the shows the benefit of the doubt (if they deserve it,) that the sequence of events and information isn’t necessarily being showed to us linearly. What if Hippolyta’s journey took two days and they just didn’t show the travel? That gives a lot more leeway for when things are happening, but instead just being shown to us in the order that makes the most sense. My personal opinion is if youre calculating how long it takes your heroes to drive on the highway, you are focusing on the wrong things, especially in a show where characters time travel through alternate dimensions.
The issue is they used it create “just in time” dramatic interactions with Tic that just didn’t make any sense. It just breaks the flow of the story at those given times. It’s not that one needs to focus on it, it’s that it’s a narrative record scratch in the middle of the story. Remember, travel was HUGE deal in the first episode. THEY brought that element to the show – and deservedly so. Now they’re practically teleporting by how fast they fly around the country and they’ve dropped that element altogether. That’s all I’m sayin.
I don’t think it should be a screen writer’s main objective to calculate how long it would take to drive from two states in the 50’s when there is so much more important stuff to focus on. Otherwise I am actually in complete agreement with you. It does take you out of the moment to have the hero swoop in at just the right moment, even if he had been in the same location.
It is weird they just are suddenly there. I could not figure out where the observatory was. I thought it was in Chicago since Kentucky is a drive and are there not Sundown laws? It was made such a point then it was just dropped as a plot line.
I thought the observatory was in Wisconsin. At least it is in the book.
Yep. It’s Wisconsin, but Kansas.
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I have a lot of thoughts about the idea of an invulnerable Leti and Malcolm X’s quote about black women, like we need sci-fi/horror to even imagine it being real. That is so freaking horrifying.
I wish I could feel what the reviewer feels when watching this show. Oh well, one more to go. I’m engaged enough to see how it ends.
This episode delivered what was teased in the pilot of Watchmen show from last year and it was amazing (and heart-breaking) thing to see. The time travel aspect has a nice brilliant twist with time-loop, showing what has happened will always happens. Time is a flat circle, indeed.This show just keep getting better and better every week.
I was struck by something reading the recap/review. A classic time-travel trope in fiction is the notion of the historical atrocity that tempts the traveler to an unsuccessful attempt to reverse it. The most common examples are preventing the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln or JFK, and Hitler’s rise to power.What “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft Country” have done is to add to the fictional time-travel canon another historical atrocity that the protagonist attempts to prevent: the 1921 Greenwood massacre. What this means is that the producers assume that the vast majority of the potential audience regards the event as an atrocity, and that it would be cathartic to see a protagonist attempt to reverse it. This canonical nomination is a big deal in speculative fiction, and reveals as much about the maturity of the audience as it does about the creative freedom afforded to the producers, to say nothing of drawing a functional equivalency between the murders of Presidents, the thwarting of a genocidal dictatorship, and the racist slaughter of a group of citizens by fellow citizens.
Yeah, Ji-Ah needed more of a presence in this first season. Even if she gets a substantial portion of screen time in the finale, her story seems like a great idea that was never fleshed out to scale with the rest of the story. It would have been a great anthology entry. I guess I feel like her story is her story, that it has only a slight relationship to the rest of the squad, and if she sacrifices herself to save Tic, I’ll be pretty bummed. That poor fox-demon deserves to live her best life, as long as she isn’t slaughtering her dates.I hesitate to give Christina’s action any racial motivation, and I’m not sure from the review that you do either. She obviously acknowledges racial disparity, but she seems pretty psychopathic in that she’s clearly in it for her. While she seems fond of Ruby, I don’t think that she would sacrifice anything for her — although she did experience a non-permanent death, so that’s something, I guess. Maybe I should say that I doubt that she will let Ruby stop her from getting her freedom. Also, she was under her father’s thumb until very recently, so I doubt that she was in any position to do anything about the police. She’s a monster, but she’s a monster because I don’t think she cares about most anybody.Which, the body grafting is a weird practice, right (besides the obvious)? It ties into the ghost house experiments, so there’s a narrative through-line, but I would have expected an overtly racist police cabal to steal and attach white body parts. I mean, aside from having a non-matching transplant in a time before transplants, its not like there aren’t white scumbags to disappear. I get the theme, but this was a metaphor that was sort of crammed in.Glad that Tic is back in full hero mode. Also, what exactly is Hippolyta at this point? I would sort of love seeing her go full Terminator next episode.
Kind of reminded me how racist white people fetishize “black athleticism”. He gets the advantages but none of the disturbing racial implications because noone can see it. I do need to mention that those effects were incredible though
Yeah, the FX team is solid. It’s to the point where if something seems too glossy or saturated I assume it’s intentional, like in the opening dream sequence.
Yes, Christina is a monster in the sense that she’s that 1% of uber powerful white people. Power hungry and aware of the social injustices of the world, but so removed that although she may not be racially motivated, she also wouldn’t lose any sleep about the state of the world.
As I keep saying there are 3 types of time travel. One that fiction loves the most where you go to the past and change your present – the BttF type that is full of paradoxes and inconsistencies but is cool for fiction. One that takes you to alternate universe that changes with you actions while your present stays the same – this is how Hippolyta time travelled. And the one when all you did in the past already happened so you are not changing anything. The way the past happened always had you in there.
This is the one we see in this episode. One when all you did has already happened. Tic can only save his parents and uncle because that’s how Montrose remembers it happening. The even so fated he has been dreaming about it. He was always the hero of this story.
This is the one when you just have to stand by and watch good people be murdered because this is how it happened. Leti protected by Christina’s spell going through fires and bombs untouched while people burn around her and she can do nothing to help. She can only be the explanation to what happened to the Book of Names.
They can’t really save anyone who hasn’t been saved. They can only hope to save the people in their present. But they can experience the full trauma of those events.We see how the decades old memory of it paralyses Montrose even before he crosses to the past. It gets worse with every memory those sights trigger. Tic doesn’t get it. I one thing to hear stories and know it was bad and another to experience it. Seeing the abuse Montrose experienced from his father hands instead of just being told about it. And seeing the Tulsa massacre first hand is what finally lets Tic understand how badly those events broke Montrose. It may not quite be forgiveness but it is understanding. And for Montrose to know Tic is the one who saved him all those years ago. The son he failed in so many ways is the stranger in his memories. His hero.
YES! Hippolyta came back! It only took her 200 years but she found a
way back to Diana. It was almost too late but it was just in time. It
felt so good to see her walk in and take over. They clearly could rely
on Christina.We see the final truths revealed. Everyone knows
about Leti’s pregnancy and that others knew and how they knew. Everyone
knows about Ruby and Christina and everyone else’s dealings with
Christina. Hippolyta’s and Tic time in the breach. And most importantly
Montrose told Tic about George maybe being his father (although I didn’t
get what it had to do with saving Diana as he’s still Dee’s uncle no
matter Tic’s paternity).
That last revelation hit Tic the
hardest. He could’ve had the father he dreamt of not the one who abused
him. He could’ve grown like Diana with someone who believed in him
instead of going home to be diminished. Understanding Montrose’s damage
helps a little but isn’t enough.
We saw Christina’s real
colors. Nothing she does is free. Even Ruby understands that. She came
when Ruby asked for help for Diana but she used that to get to Tic. They
had to buy the time to save Diana.
Sure she cares about some
people but only a few. She cared about William but Diana is just a
transaction. If she really cared to help she could’ve save Lancaster and
make him remove the curse in exchange. I was suspecting he didn’t die
from having limbs ripped off since he already was made of spare parts
but Christina planned for this. The very curse Ruby helped place on him
made those wounds unfixable. And Christina just went there to watched
him die as William. Getting William this revenge mattered more than
Diana’s life.
Christina sentenced William to a thousand deaths by overriding this quick-fix spell.
I don’t think that’s what she meant. Just that every time she sheds William’s skin it’s like he dies all over again. Either because there really is part of him there with her or because she’s losing him again. The curse she put on the captain is a separate thing and was to destroy the spell that kept his patchwork body going slowly so he could experience as many deaths but being torn apart made it fail quick. She came in William’s form to gloat so Lancaster knew who did it to him and why.
Am I to understand that Christina let the captain chop up Black folks
knowing the spell would work less and less, subsequently causing more
Black death, so she could enjoy his pain? She is the devil.
I don’t think she let him. She clearly couldn’t go against Chicago Lodge by herself directly or she wouldn’t need Ruby. And Lancaster knew spells she didn’t so confronting him when he was at full strength wasn’t safe. And once Tic’s shoggoth ripped him apart he need those body parts spell or no spell. But yes, after that her spell made the replacements fail so policemen killed more and more black people for new ones. I don’t think that was her plan but we also know she didn’t care. Collateral damage never meant anything to her and we knew that since George. She got her revenge and it doesn’t matter to her who died for it.
But she cares about Ruby somewhat. She still
wants her to follow her. She even makes sure to protect Leti and
promises not to harm her. And she keeps telling Ruby the truth. Yes, she
is planning to kill Tic. She needs his blood for her ritual. All of it
unfortunately. And he is just another guy in her way to fully experience
magic. She may not want it for money and power but she still does by
destroying other people just like her father and his ilk.
The
ironic part is what she describes sounds like what Hippolyta already
found. The magic is knowledge. The Sons of Adam hoarded it for their
gain. Christina wants to own it for herself. But Hippolyta found those
who would share it
with her
so she could experience all the first she could imagine. And now she
uses it to help others.
All this time with Seraphina gave her
knowledge and understanding how to use the time machine. How to fix it,
how to set it and how to connect to it. And she kept it going until they
got what they needed no matter the cost to herself because she loved
Diana. This is that Christina would never be able to understand. She
doesn’t acre about anyone enough to make a real sacrifice.
Hippolyta
might’ve not been there for Dee when the monsters came for her but she
is here now what she learnt in their time apart can save everyone. And she has cool blue hair now.
And most importantly Montrose told Tic about George maybe being his father (although I didn’t get what it had to do with saving Diana as he’s still Dee’s uncle no matter Tic’s paternity).
Christina stated that the spell to slow down the curse upon Diana required the blood of the closest relative to Dee. Before that revelation, it would be Montrose, as her uncle, which is closer than cousin (Tic). But then we learn that Tic is actually Dee’s brother, therefore closer than Montrose. Of course nothing of this mattered since Hyppolita’s return, because mother trumps everything else.
It mattered if George was really Tic’s dad because, if so, Tic is Diana’s closest relative (before her mom comes back) but, if not, Montrose is her closest relative (a half brother is closer than an uncle. An uncle is closer than a cousin.)
. And most importantly Montrose told Tic about George maybe being his father (although I didn’t get what it had to do with saving Diana as he’s still Dee’s uncle no matter Tic’s paternity).
If George is ‘Tic’s biological father then that would make Atticus Diana’s half brother and a closer relative than Montrose. The spell calls for the blood of Diana’s closest relative. Absent George and Hippolyta, that would be Atticus if George was indeed his father.
Tic would be her half-brother and therefore a closer blood relative.
The whole “we can’t change anything without affecting the present” layer to this episode really had me thinking hard about to what extent the traditional “rules” for time travel stories are an expression of some universal psychic desire to rewrite the personal and collective past while acknowledging that realistically all we can do is fight for a better present/future as opposed to something extrapolated from actual science. Was really blown away by how much this episode affected me and how universal it felt despite the extreme historic/narrative specificity.
I thought it was amazingly well done.
I’ve read a fair amount about the Tulsa Massacre and the Red Summer of 1919 that preceded it, but, damn, this episode made me flat-out cry.
i think leti bei9ng there caused the family’s death. had she not been there to get chased into the house the mob might have been elsewhere.
And for Montrose to know Tic is the one who saved him all those years ago. The son he failed in so many ways is the stranger in his memories. His hero.I’ve watched/read enough time-travel stories that I just knew the moment Montrose mentions the mysterious stranger that saved him that it was going to be Tic. I also made a far more bolder time-travel story prediction that didn’t pan out: that Leti and Montrose would end up stuck in the past, live out the rest of their natural lives in the past, and leave the Book of Names in a place that only Tic would think to look. Or Leti could deliver it in person, if the spell on her was really powerful. But, then again, for that to happen, they would have to square the issue of Tic’s son George. So I guess that might not work really well.
Yes, it was obvious the moment Montrose mentioned it but it still was nice counterpoint to their relationship so far. And I liked how they seeded it through the season starting with the very first scene. That was my first thought too once the breach started to fail and cut out. Even when I figured they can’t do that because Leti has to come back for the plot (the book and the baby) I still wondered if Montrose was going to stay behind. But the invulabirtyty spell for sure wouldn’t stop Leti from ageing – otherwise Christina wouldn’t need Tic to make that immortality spell.
Watever happened happened is the only time travel I think is logcal and I love it. LOST , Harry Potter 3 and so many other have done it and it’s kind of mind blowing unless you go into multiple world’s theory but still. I literally screamed HARRY POTTER 3 when I realized Tic was the mysterious man with the baseball bat. Fucking love it.
Yes, I’ve always been partial to 12 Monkeys (the movie) type of time travel. It doesn’t violate causality and it always happened this way so there are no paradoxes. I know some people hate it because you can’t change the past but it’s always is about making the future better and that’s how success is measured.
The great-grandmother’s death I felt didn’t quite land because of both the lingering extensively on obvious CGI (a problem with a lot of modern TV productions, I find; also film, though to a lesser extent). I wasn’t the biggest fan of the poem either, but then, at this point I’ve just accepted that the show’s music supervisor and myself have very different ideas.
yep, looks like you do.
My problem is that burning alive is a horrible, horrible death… and both of the women had revolvers. Couldn’t you put her out of her misery, Lettie?
My issue with this comes from too many comic books as a kid, and characters killed offscreen or in dialogue could still be alive. It seems a little too caught up in destiny and learned helplessness, when Leti could have shielded Hannah or Dee’s sister from the flames to form a new identity and/or help set pieces in place for the finale. There’s striking imagery in a lot of the choices the show went with but it makes the characters seem a little more masochistic. (I also did not super love Leti slow walking through the bombs when the crosscutting threatened to leave characters behind in the past and muddled some of the geography.)
In fires, the smoke will kill you first before flame. Not sure why the great grandma would go unto death without a fight is beyond me. Lucky that the book was not downstairs. They say not to muck with history, then Atticus does. So they could not save Thomas? Montrose could have still married Atticus’ mom if Thomas lived, though I am still confused on if Tic is the son of George or Montrose. I just dislike the trope that gay people get killed no matter what, especially after hand holding or being homosexually intimate with someone. It is lame. Plus…I guess some changing of the future is ok but others are not? Ugh.
Montrose’s monologue directly into camera got me. That was -wow- something else. It felt like a real survivor’s account transcribed into the show. Wonder if it was.
This episode of Doctor Who was traumatic AF
I haven’t read the book, don’t correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like Ji-Ah has a part to play yet. I hope she does. Otherwise why would they have her come? Just to tell Tic he’s going to die? I’m also a fan of Jamie Chung and want to see more of her. Maybe a kumiho can get around her magic, or just is the X factor that Christina hasn’t planned for. Maybe Christina will need to remove her Mark of Cain like her dad did for his spell and she will be vulnerable. Maybe the Shoggoth that protected Tic last time will pop up and make a meal out of Christina. I’d find that satisfying. I have a feeling that Montrose might not survive whatever happens.
When the house burned and Leti was with Hattie, I felt like I could almost smell Hattie as she burned. Then to show the rest of Tulsa burning. I’m glad another show is showing what happened there. I think Watchmen brought it to a lot of people’s awareness for the first time, but having it come up again could push their curiosity to want to get into the facts and the history of what happened. Especially after this summer of protests and pushing back against brutality at the hands of the state.
Ji-Ah isn’t in the book. I have no idea where they’re going with the ending because they’ve made A LOT of changes from the book, some good, some not so good.
I was hoping they would go more into fox maiden mythology. It just seemed a plot line for sex scenes really. And how yet another female character has to save Atticus. Fox maidens have tails not tentacles and are tricksters. I just did not see much here from a wealth of Asian folklore. It was tacked on and flat.
Is she still sitting at the table in the house? I like how she is treated like a villain even though Atticus has killed people cruelly as well. Not sure why she would love Atticus after he murdered her coworker and then best friend in cold blood. Because ”we have to save Atticus?” It dies get tiring when everyone backs the main male character even if he is also horrible. I wish some of the women characters would talk about other things other than Atticus.
I haven’t read the book, don’t correct me if I’m wrong, but
I feel like Ji-Ah has a part to play yet. I hope she does. Otherwise
why would they have her come? Just to tell Tic he’s going to die? I’m
also a fan of Jamie Chung and want to see more of her. Maybe a kumiho
can get around her magic, or just is the X factor that Christina hasn’t
planned for. Maybe Christina will need to remove her Mark of Cain like
her dad did for his spell and she will be vulnerable. Maybe the Shoggoth
that protected Tic last time will pop up and make a meal out of
Christina. I’d find that satisfying. I have a feeling that Montrose
might not survive whatever happens.
When the house burned and
Leti was with Hattie, I felt like I could almost smell Hattie as she
burned. Then to show the rest of Tulsa burning. I’m glad another show is
showing what happened there. I think Watchmen brought it to a lot of
people’s awareness for the first time, but having it come up again could
push their curiosity to want to get into the facts and the history of
what happened. Especially after this summer of protests and pushing back
against brutality at the hands of the state.
Please note that the elderly woman in this episode was not Hannah. Hannah was a much older ancestor. They said in an earlier episode that the lodge originally burned down around 1830, so that would mean Hannah would have to be 100+ years old in order for this to be her. Plus, this woman says that she was given the book to protect, but told not to open it. So, it’s more likely that this is Hannah’s daughter or granddaughter.
*Luckily, the hellhounds didn’t kill the Captain in last week’s attack, which Leti spun as a gas explosionHOW? And to who? Obviously the local police would know better, even if they weren’t part of the magic cabal. Leti is the controversial owner of the only black apartment building in a 1950s era white Chicago neighborhood. Where would she find a sympathetic ear? I understand the show wanted to move on to more important stuff, but that is quite a hand wave.* Ruby’s anti-hero heel turn is well on its way. I do appreciate that the show never gives us easy, happily ever after resolutions. * Hippolyta turning into Dr. Who was not on my bingo card but makes sense. “What’s a motherboard?” “I am.”
I was thinking that as well, but the more I thought about it I realized that the cops who were in charge were the ones who knew about the magic. Revealing the existence of ANY magic, even magic used against them, to the general public probably would jeopardize their power.
Valid point, but surely there was an adequate explanation somewhere between random gas explosion and Shoggoth attack? And how to explain all those police being there in the first place? I don’t want to get too nit picky about it, clearly its not a major story point, but imo that explanation was simply a writer’s band aid to get on with the narrative. There are just some things the show doesn’t bother to explain.
i think the cops also called it a gas explosion. they don’t want to be exposed either.
Loved this episode. My one criticism is that they too often paused the action for lengthly melodramatic speeches in time-sensitive situations where I don’t think the characters would stop what they were doing that long for that much self reflection.
Yes. I told my wife during some of those moments that they could at least have some background noise. We had already seen mobs already up to no good in town.Oh well, that’s nit-picking. Fantastic episode!
while a good visual, leti just walking slowly down the street while the portal was closing, girl run!
Just wanted to say that this write-up was amazing!
Thanks so much, and can’t wait for next week’s finale!
This show is the best thing on tv and is the best thing that’s been on in a long time.
Am I the only one to have seen Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban? The whole – someone’s going to come and save us, someone nobody knew – just wait for it Wait for it. Something’s wrong, they’re not coming! beat. Hold on the stranger is me! I save them from a different time a person nobody knew! Great episode I just found that really funny! Well at least he didn’t yell out expecto patronum, LOL
I don’t know how to say this gently. You’re not the only person who watched or read Prisoner of Azkaban. The reason no one brings it up though is that the pattern you mentioned is one of the oldest tropes in time travel science fiction and most of us here saw in other creative works long before we encountered the Harry Potter version.
So the absolute police carnage and mayhem was written off as a “gas explosion”? Mmm hmmmm…. The problem with writing record-scrath worthy cop outs like that is they make you very suspect of what’s to come. HBO doesn’t have the best track record of late of having these stories hold together at the finish line. (Sharp Objects, The Outsider, True Detective(s), ….) Better to have used far fewer cops for that scene and have had them simply consumed and “gone” than drop that clunker in otherwise ambitious episode.
BTW, I rather like the way they are writing a lot of the White people in the show as one-dimensional cackling rube stereotypes, as a response to generations of the White entertainment system writing Black people as subservient simpletons.
And as some of this relates to currently political climate, I find it interesting how conservative Whites think their stance on Black Americans is noble when it always relates Black American’s life experience to crime. To them, Black Americans are one of two things; Black criminals, or victims of Black criminals. They think Black Americans don’t have any concerns beyond that and aren’t they so special for being “concerned”. And I stress “Black” criminals because the White establishment ignores the far more insidious levels of crime perpetrated by White people on black people from racism and brutality to organized fraud, but they ignore that stuff. This series has been excellent for illustrating these biases and making one see things that have been ignored by the history books.
Um…“as a response to generations of the White entertainment system writing Black people as subservient simpletons”Which generation(s) was this again? I’m all for racial equality but I could have sworn blacksploitation films died in the 1970s.
I thoroughly enjoyed that cackling assholes face being broke by Tic’s bat.
I appreciate the recap of this espiode, but this article was really confusing for me to read. Some of the wording and the way the author explains things kills me.For example, “ It seemed to him an inevitability that he would become his father. He couldn’t see he was making a choice to become his dad. All of it, all of it, came from the seed of knowledge that in America, Black lives don’t matter”, like what?! How do you infer Montroses’ treatment and evolvotion was due to black lives not mattering? To me, that came out of not where and had little to do with his struggle with homosexuality.
And THAT, my friends, is why they’re called “Motherboards.”Michael Williams is an awesome actor. He makes you feel his every emotion, AND he makes you feel every emotion toward him.
I think Christina’s “ascension” will crash, *because* she referred to it as her “ascension.” That word is a loaded one, in the Buffyverse. I’m hoping its use was a deliberate nod to the Mayor’s failed attempt, in Buffy, Season 3.
I find this show incredibly frustrating and I’m glad the season finale is next week; I will be able to properly move on after that.The good stuff can be great. I don’t think Montrose is a particularly good character but boy, did Michael K. Williams sold the hell out of his scenes last episode. What a wonderful actor. And shout out to Jonathan Majors for the scene where he finds out Montrose might not be his real dad. Real touching stuff.But the bad stuff, though… It was obvious Montrose was gonna screw this up even before anyone stepped through the portal. I hated the scene where we see the old lady being burned alive while she continues praying. This type of theatricality doesn’t work when the character is supposed to represent the suffering of real people during an event that actually happened. And I felt like screaming at my TV during the juxtaposition of the scene of Hippolyta struggling to keep the portal opened and Leti slowly walking back to the hotel as if she had all the time in the world. In both this scene and the burning, characters stopped reacting like real people and started acting like characters who needed to act a certain way so the DP gets good-looking shots, which hurts a lot of the immersion we’re supposed to feel.As for the rest of the episode, I now fully categorize Ruby as a villain and I stopped hoping that Christina will become less forgettable. It would have been interesting to see what Elizabeth Debicki would have done with the role but I don’t think most of the blame should go to Abbey Lee. The entirety of the role seems to consist of the character never expressing any emotion and explaining to Ruby – and us – what her motivations are.
This show just makes me weep for history all of the time.
This one had me confused. What does the Book of Names do to save Diana? Is it a spell book? If so, that was lost on me until now.
The Book of Names is a cipher that can be used to translate between English and the Language of Adam, which is what magic is based on.
Oh, that’s right. Thank you for the reminder! This show is incredible.
And is it fire proof??
I don’t think so, but Leti is shielded, and so I think her clutching it protected it.
This episode broke me. I maintain that they’ve made a bunch of missteps with Montrose’s plot in the past, but this episode made it all come together in such harmonious horror. The smile on that white boy’s face as he said “N*gger F*ggot” is one that I’ve seen a thousand times before. We like to think we are in a new world, but we’re not. I’m a gay man of colour, and that sneering smile will haunt me, because I’ve seen it on so many people’s faces. We are not people to them. Thomas was the first in a long list of sacrifices for Montrose, because that is the truth of oppression. That kind of trauma isn’t just one event that defines your life. It is a never-ending buildup of indignities and acts of violence that will slowly grind you down into nothing. I’ll never forget the first time I got a slur screamed at me, or the look of disgust on my parents’ face when they saw two men kissing on TV, but even if someone went back in time to stop a single one of those moments from happening, it wouldn’t change much in the long run because its not just one moment, it is an entire life lived in a society that hates us, that will quietly and overtly break us down every time we build something for ourselves.
No matter how much we desperately try to fit into the mold of what they deem acceptable, it will never be enough. Montrose slowly destroyed all the good parts of himself, traumatizing Tic in the process, in order to be the kind of person society would deem acceptable. And all the while, they killed almost everyone he loved, burned down everything, and humiliated him the entire time.
Thanks for your personal and painful take on that moment. We’ve seen so much of that emboldened sneer and unapologetic, gleeful hatred in the past five years, something that’s simmered under the surface, mostly, being encouraged and celebrated.
Great Epp
I started crying when Tic and Montrose came across his younger self and Thomas fighting in the square and didn’t stop until “I got you, kid.” What a gorgeous, devastating episode.
What is parietal accuracy?Check out this article about how that aria at the end was written for the episode during the pandemic and recorded in a CLOSET:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-10-11/lovecraft-country-hbo-tulsa-massacre-opera-requiemNot much to add, I just hope they bring it in next week and don’t kill off anybody unnecessarily. I don’t need every thread tied up if they can get to it in season 2. Leti holding the woman’s hand while she burned for the future was heartbreaking.
I thought this episode started off a little wonky, but once they go through the portal it became wow! *I kept wanting Leti to run so Hip wouldn’t have to strain herself in those last minutes
Joelle, I love the hell out of your recaps. This is the kind of in depth writing that used to be in the Golden Age of AV Club. I love this show! I can’t get enough of it and I’m going to miss it so much when it’s over. It is so brilliantly written, acted, and scored. If anyone here has the chance, I can’t recommend the official podcast enough. Also, I’ve been going through the unofficial syllabus and it is so in depth and informative that I’m not only mad at society for not making this history more well known, but myself for never looking it up. This show makes me want to be a better person, and I’m going to try. And Joelle Monique, I consider your recaps a necessary part of the show. Thank you for your insight.
Also, folks, Hyppolyta went Super Saiyan Blue! She deserves it.
you want to try calling her “hippo”?
They call him “Tic” because “Atticus” is a mouthful.But somehow, “Hippolyta” isn’t.
interesting paradox that had leti not been there to be chased into the house, they all may have lived.
I have a question about the the line: “I think about the pockets of Black dominated spaces, laced with poverty throughout America, where the average life span of a citizen is just 26 years.”I want to be as informed as I can about issues like this, but didn’t come across anything where the numbers were quite this dire. Life expectancies obvious greatly vary across ethnic groups where there may be predispositions for various health issues, income disparity obviously will lead to vastly different levels and access to healthcare in this country, and different neighborhoods are going to have different environmental factors impacting them like rich white people typically being able to zone and push NIMBY projects to impact other people… but I want to be able to better familiarize with specifics and just can’t find the right set of keywords to come across this myself?