‘Black Lightning’ Episode 12, 'The Book Of Pain,' Sets Up the Perfect Finale
Black Lightning started out great and became excellent. The show introduced a handful of big bads without stooping to the standard ‘villain of the week’ format. Its fresh take on the superhero family barely feels corny compared to similiar offerings within the genre. Over the course of twelve episodes, there has been a visceral exploration of real-world issues, such as police brutality and corruption within the criminal justice system. Creators Mara Brock and Salim Akil have cultivated a careful balance of exposition and mystery in their storytelling, avoiding a common pitfall for superhero shows and allowing Black Lightning to become something more than tights and teams. In episode 12, “The Resurrection and the Light: The Book of Pain,” everything comes full circle. Almost.
The most important information revealed ahead of the finale details the inner workings of ASA and the extent of their years-long experiments on Freeland’s children. The storyline takes on another dimension when considered in light of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which took place over the course of thirty years, just one of many examples of a government organization taking advantage of African-Americans. The Green Light drug overtaking Freeland also demonstrates the government’s willingness to simply turn a blind eye at epidemics disproportionately affecting black communities.
There are more than forty missing children in Freeland, most of whom Anissa believes she saw in stasis tanks at ASA headquarters. A conversation between Tobias Whale and Martin Proctor reveals that a vaccine meant to keep Freeland’s citizens docile was distributed to the community back when Jefferson Pierce was a child. But the vaccine did not keep Freeland citizens quiet. Instead, it gave young children metahuman abilities. However, a lot of these children died or became sick before they fully matured. The ASA developed Green Light to help these children live and harvest their abilities, but that didn’t work either. Martin Proctor believes Jefferson Pierce is the anomaly, and needs him to figure out how to perfect the serum and use it at a super-soldier serum.
The motives behind the ASA and The 100 partnership are finally clear: there’s not one, at least now that Whale is in charge. While Martin Proctor is under the impression Whale is following orders, it’s clear that’s not what’s actually happening. Whale has his own plans to rule the Shadow Board, the mysterious organization only mentioned once or twice in the show so far. Whale claims he had to kill Lady Eve to get a seat on the board, so his plan feels larger than The 100 and larger than the ASA. He wants to rule the Shadow Board, and presumably take full control over the resurrection powers the organization has mastered.
We still don’t know how Whale and Eve’s resurrection works. Why didn’t Lady Eve come back to life like La La did? While giving Khalil a special spinal implant to make him walk again was a power move to bait Black Lightning, Whale’s relationship with LaLa is less straightforward. The final scene of the episode shows LaLa shaking, terrified of following Whale’s orders. It’s almost like he’s being mind controlled. We saw Lady Eve draining blood from many victims over the course of the season’s first half, but hopefully next week’s finale will go more in depth.
Elsewhere in the episode, we learn that Black Lightning’s electromagnetic powers come in handy in the bedroom. Jennifer is fed up with what she calls the family “powers drama.” Since Jennifer isn’t too pleased with her powers, Lynn has been thinking about ways to suppress the metahuman gene. That doesn’t go over well with Jefferson, but considering Jennifer uses her powers to shock Jefferson back to life at the end of the episode, this seems like a non-issue moving into the finale. Maybe we’ll even see the entire family suit up?
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Right now, the entire Pierce family is hiding from Tobias Whale and the ASA in a remtote cabin. The promo for next week teases a second battle in the woods. Any theories heading into the final episode of Black Lightning's first season? Let us know in the comments.