Lovecraft Episode 10 is titled Full Circle and it lives up to the title as the themes and characters journeys that were set up throughout the season are payed off.
Some more successfully than others so let's dig in...
Unfortunately this was one of those episodes where the pacing felt a little bit rushed - if you blinked you would miss a crucial moment.
Leaving so many threads to be wrapped-up in the finale episode did not work that well for the series overall.
Lovecraft Country excels when the stories feel self-contained within the episode and hopefully the team will figure out which route they truly want to go for in Season 2.
Whether they want to tell self-contained character stories or multiple overlapping character stories.
Diana's Jig-a-Bobo situation was the first to be resolved whereby Atticus and Co call on their ancestors ala Black Panther's spiritual plain to help restore Diana and to get some exposition on how to finally get rid of Christina.
Diana finally has the heart-to-heart with Hippolyta about being left alone.
Although, in retrospect, H had left D with Atticus and Co. who were negligent of her. They were too caught up in their own drama and poor D has now lost her drawing arm and her innocence with that arm.
Hannah, Atticus' great ancestor, finally speaks and we get to know that she is the one who has created the spiritual plain..
She's taken her hurt, basically weaponised it and wants Atticus to be the final solution for white folks with magic.
At least before Atticus is put on the messiac arc, he got to appreciate his family.
He got to set things right with Ji-ah and the family singing Life Could Be a Dream was a nice touch before everything started to collapse.
I guess the smart kids in the house would have known that Ruby is actually Christina based on what Ruby felt about the song.
But that was my first major surprise of the episode when she revealed herself to be Christina and gave Leti the Bran Stark treatment from GoT.
Like Bran, she also survived the fall intact because of Christina's promise to Ruby. After chucking Leti off the tower, Christina gave her back the mark of Cain, which resurrected her.
Atticus sacrifices himself and everything goes right for Christina until the resurrected Leti comes through.
Leti and Ji-ah tag team is able to take away Christina's immortality, her magic and all other white 'people's magic.
Ji-Ah will be part of the darkness before her death - she literally steps into the darkness void... which at first looked like she was saving Atticus or was she?
Yeah, it's one of those things that was not really explained.
It's was while Ji-ah stepped into the void as Atticus life slipped away that we got to see moments from Atticus and Christina's last days, which filled in some of the unanswered questions, like where is Ruby?Atticus' last thoughts to his old man and finally, Atticus' letter to Montrose.
I still feel it was a bit weak to deprive us the audience of Ruby and Christina's confrontation for Ruby to end up in the coma, especially since so much screen time has been dedicated to that dynamic.
Another point of things feeling rushed was how Atticus gets the heroic send-off, his body being carried by his family.
D comes and snaps Christina's neck after Atticus Shogoth protects her from Christina Shogoth.
In Atticus' last moments we got to see him introduce the Shogoth to Christina, which he's kept in Leti's basement since it saved him from Captain Lancaster. We see that D now has a robotic arm courtesy of H.
Now the question is: is D the woman with the robotic arm that gave Atticus the Lovecraft Country book in the future where white people were rioting from the I Am episode?
Is this where Season 2 is going? To a future where white folks have lost magic and they want to reclaim it?
Will D become the new villain because it's very disturbing to have a young girl practically murder an unarmed person.
Yes, the white folks have made her lose her arm and her friend, the judge has acquitted the murder of her best friend and she is justified in her anger so I'm interested in where the show goes with this.
Will they go the Malcom X route of justice by any means necessary or will they reflect on the history of violence and what it does to those who in act it?
The other big question is: will they kill off Atticus? The family has the Book of Names and should know by now how to cast the invisibility spell themselves.
Only time will tell.
Will the family be able to heal Ruby? - we don't know if she's in a coma or has been killed like the original Caleb.
Will we get an answer to the guy in Lancaster's cupboard? What was he doing there? Will white folks and racism continue to be the bad guys without the power of magic? Is Ji-ah still imbued with the fox spirit now that she has her 100th soul or it does not count because it was not during sex?
Other than the unanswered questions, the series overall was brilliant. A nice blend of different genres and it was refreshing that it centred round black people and black experience in stories that don't normally have a black person as their central character.
The idea of taking pages of history and re-contextualizing them in genre television story telling was also refreshing, as was the examination of them through a lens of race, class and gender - it made the series more meaningful.
Also, Misha Green has shown that she's a hot talent with this series.
Yes, the final episode ran at breakneck speed and not everything was wrapped up confidently but I hope we do get a second season because the last episode has left us with many questions outside from the answers they have given us. Which is not a bad thing at all. Time will tell if we will get the answers
It felt like: a better finale than GoT and Lost but this is only Season 1, hoping we will get more.
Rating
***1/2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*trash **ja nee ***it tries ****almost perfect *****Instant classic