Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Black Lightning finale

The series finale was mostly satisfying. I watched the last two episodes together so that I wouldn't be stuck on a cliffhanger in between. The show surprised me when it revealed that JJ was not actually Jennifer Pierce but an alien entity from the ionosphere who took her place, fooling her family for several weeks. The real Jennifer returned and fought until she killed JJ, or at least made her disappear. No wonder the show runners never put out an announcement that they "recast" Jennifer with the new actress; they were keeping the plot twist under wraps. I also like that the finale did full circle moments with Jefferson going back to the house his father was murdered in, and Lala coming back to life after he broke out of the cement wall.

When Gambi talked about teaching young Jefferson a "code" to live by as a superhero, it was somewhat meta, as it reminded me of James Remar in Dexter, teaching his serial killer son to hunt other serial killers. Gambi even declared that he considered Jefferson his son, having raised him since Tobias killed Alvin Pierce. Lynn also said "our three daughters" to include Anissa's wife Grace in the family, and I appreciated that acceptance. Heck, I've been happy all season to see how much TC was included in the superhero team, because I had been afraid he'd be killed off or written out like that season 2 character Todd Green whom Tobias briefly used for hacking and tech. I do very much love the family dynamics, when they have time for happiness instead of war and tragedy.

On the other hand, some scenes in the finale seemed pointless or underwhelming, such as the police chief Lopez going crazy on meta boosters and trying to kill Lightning, only to be defeated; the rest of the police didn't even comment about how Lightning changed her appearance again. Painkiller showed up to help out the Pierces and to kill Ishmael too. This season, I had assumed that Khalil would only appear in the Painkiller backdoor pilot, but instead he's kept recurring for several episodes, and sometimes his team have been talking to TC too. I'm glad that Khalil got to have a redemption, and he's okay in small doses. However, his frequent split personality scenes of talking to his Painkiller side got annoying fast, so I would not have watched the spinoff if it had been ordered. In any case, the CW passed on the spinoff in favor of other shows.

I hear that the Tom Swift show still has a chance; at first I wasn't interested because it's a spinoff from Nancy Drew, and I got so sick of that show's ghost stories. However, I've read some articles about how they updated the Tom Swift character into a gay black man, and that his show will focus on tech-whiz stuff rather than ghosts. Plus Levar Burton has been cast as his AI assistant, so that definitely piques my interest. I do hope they pick that show up. The CW has more room on its schedule now that they're expanding into Saturday.

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