Black Lightning (2017-Present)

I’m getting through the Arrowverse by degrees. Supergirl was the first I started watching and it remains first in my heart, as evidenced by the copious posts I’ve written about it. I looped back around to The Flash after I saw the crossover episode in Supergirl’s first season, and although I haven’t backtracked to Arrow or Legends of Tomorrow yet, I have some crossover familiarity with both and expect to get around to them at some point. However, starting with Black Lightning, I have followed the newer Arrowverse shows from their beginnings, which means less to play catch-up with eventually. Thought it was high time I started posting some write-ups about them.

Nowadays, Jefferson Pierce is a high school principal and pillar of his community, but when he was younger, he was Black Lightning, a metahuman superhero with electricity-based powers who kept the streets of the city safe. It was a hard life that wound up interfering with his marriage, and Jefferson gave it up. But as gangs take a firmer hold of Freeland, a new drug that brings on metahuman powers floods the streets, and an old enemy reemerges, Jefferson contemplates taking up the mantle a second time.

I’ve said before that, while I like genre-based allegories for marginalized identities, shows sometimes use those metaphors to tell stories about oppression while ignoring actual marginalized people. The way around that, naturally, is to find a show that incorporates both, and Black Lightning does that with aplomb. Metahumans are mistreated and profiled, but the mostly-Black citizens of Freeland are also subject to systemic oppression in ways that both are and aren’t related to the comic-book goings-on within the show. Seriously, if the Flash had any idea how Black metahumans in Freeland are exploited, I think his head might explode.

Social commentary aside, Black Lightning brings with it all the hallmarks of a good superhero show: cool action sequences, high-stakes drama, sacrifice, and plenty of interpersonal narrative content. I like the twist that Jefferson is a former superhero who’s getting back in the saddle – it offers a different take than the origin stories we usually get out of the gate, in both TV and movies. We explore Jefferson’s origins and backstory, but we also get the additional complications of Jefferson being in a different place in his life now, at a different stage than most superhero protagonists.

At its heart, the show is about, not just Jefferson, but the whole Pierce family. I love his daughters, Anissa and Jennifer, and his ex-wife Lynn adds interesting angles to the proceedings. All the actors portraying the Pierce clan do a great job. Cress Williams brings a gravitas to Jefferson, Nafessa Williams and China Anne McClain both turn in excellent work as we follow Anissa and Jennifer on their respective journeys, and Christine Adams (who I’ll always remember as Simone on Pushing Daisies) threads a tricky needle in her role as Lynn. I also want to give a shoutout to Marvin ‘Krondon’ Jones III, who plays baddie Tobias Whale. While a staggering number of shows cast ablebodied actors to play characters with disabilities, Black Lightning stepped up and found an actor with albinism for the part – good on them.

Warnings

Comic-book violence, sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug references, and strong thematic elements.