This week on Black Lightning, Jefferson comes face-to-face with the realities of the situation in Freeland and who is responsible for them. Here’s our recap for “The Book of Revelations”!
Jefferson and Anissa are training while a montage of news segment plays about Black Lightning and how the city is turning against him since Lady Eve’s death.
Anissa’s kicking ass, and Jefferson is trying to teach her how to determine what is threat. Which means they can’t bring harm to civilians, even if they don’t agree with their world review.
“You can’t be reactive, going around smashing whatever statues you feel like. Picking fights with punks from Garfield. No, you have to be in control. Every minute.”
“I’m not perfect, nobody is.”
Jefferson tells Anissa they have to clear Black Lightning before he can get back in the suit because the police will be shooting to kill if they see him.
—
A Club 100, someone is practicing their set, and through the door, Lala shows up. The two guys that were using the stage apologize for him, but he tells them that it sounded good.
The two guys tell him they didn’t think he was coming back because there were rumors he was in jail or dead.
“Where you been at, Lala? They told us you wasn’t coming back.”
“Who’s “they”?”
“There were rumors.”
“Rumors”?
“Yeah, like, you were in jail or…”
“Or what?”
“That you were dead.”
“Dead”? Yeah, I think I was.
—-
Gambi is being shady as ever, meeting someone in a darkened parking lot. The conversation quickly moves from Lady Eve’s death to wanting to kill Black Lightning.
“I value your counsel, Peter, and I usually appreciate your measured approach, not today. He was a nuisance, now he’s a danger to me, to you, to the ASA. I’ve put a price on his black ass.”
“That’s a mistake, Martin. If we catch him, who knows how he could advance our understanding of enhanced human abilities? We should just wait…”
“ASA’s dissected enough metas. One more isn’t going to help us create our own.”
Gambi is protecting Jefferson because the ASA is trying to kill Black Lightning. When he tries to argue that dissecting Black Lightning would be beneficial to the ASA, the other man tells him they’ve dissected enough metas, and they’re no closer to making their own.
This head officer says that Lady Eve’s death sets back the Freeland Experiment, and that he’s bringing the ASA officers into Freeland to kill Black Lightning, and he’s extremely racist about it all.
“When Black Lightning returned, you said you would figure out who he was and take care of him. You didn’t, so I’m bringing ASA operatives into town to kill him, plain and simple. Give me any information you have that will help them track him down.”
“Martin…”
“I’m sick of this neighborhood, Peter. They don’t take care of it, the food is all fried. The only thing the people here are good for is experimentation. They should be happy we’re here. Green Light will give their lives purpose, direction. We’re doing God’s work, Peter. God’s work.”
—-
Lynn and Jefferson are getting dinner ready and discussing Jennifer. She’s really depressed after her breakup with Khalil, and Lynn has given her an upaid internship at her lab to get her mind off of it.
She asks him how Anissa is doing with her training, and Jefferson doesn’t really go into details about it, and that annoys Lynn a little.
Jefferson isn’t going to let Anissa go out before she realizes that she can’t react emotionally. And Lynn asks him how he can train someone to be something they’re not since Anissa has always been emotional. Jeff tells her that it’s because she has her mother’s brain and she’s a fast learner.
—
Later, Jennifer is with Lynn at her lab. She’s complaining about all the work she has to do, then she switches gears just as fast and asks what’s going on with Anissa and her dad.
Lynn tells her that nothing is wrong and gets sidetracked because the paper’s Anissa gave her are gone. Jennifer uses her mom’s distraction to ask to help her friend put up posters at school and then again to say she’ll probably be out late. Lynn tells her that it’s fine, and Jennifer’s jets out of there before she can realize what she’s agreed to.
—
Anissa and Jefferson are at the morgue looking for evidence of who killed Lady Eve. When Gambi says that someone has put a price on Black Lightning’s head, Jefferson asks who it is. That’s when Gambi lies, and tells him that he doesn’t know.
When they get to a certain part in the wall, Anissa needs to use her powers to break through and get into the morgue. He tries to coach her on using her powers, but she ends up using way too much strength and takes down the whole wall.
They find Lady Eve’s body and give a view of her burns to Gambi. Then Jefferson uses this as an opportunity to teach Anissa about the importance of life.
“When you work with cadavers in school, do you ever think about who they were?”
“No.”
“Yeah, well, she had a life, family. You know, yesterday, she might have been making a grocery list, planning a family get-together, and then someone killed her, for whatever their reasons, not caring about who would be left behind to mourn the loss of her passing. And even if you do care, people are gonna die just the same if you don’t learn to modulate your powers. More importantly, your mother, Jennifer and myself will mourn the loss if you get killed – because you weren’t vigilant.”
They determine that Lady Eve was killed by a machine because if he had done it, her burns would look at like a tree pattern. Gambi tells him that a machine that did that would have to be very strong, nuclear.
Since they can track nuclear energy, it’s possible for them to find out who did the killing. They leave the morgue with a better idea of how to clear Black Lightning’s name.
—
Lynn goes to the lab to check on her samples of Green Light. It turns out that the lab had a break in and all the stuff that was either broken, stolen, or damaged. The technician says that they might have one copy of her work in the “to be filed” folder, but we don’t see the answer to that right away.
Later, Lynn is in her lab, and she has the research, so that’s a great thing! However, the results answers aren’t good.
Green Light matches the powder that was found in Jefferson’s dad’s research.
—
Jennifer is helping her friend put up posters because she’s running for Student Government. Kiesha is climbing up a scaffolding put up to for repairs. Jennifer tells her repeatedly to get down, but she doesn’t.
Kiesha falls and Jennifer uses her powers to stop her from landing hard. Her powers manifest in a way that burns her phone and Kiesha’s posters.
It looks like both Pierce girls will be helping their dad protect Freeland soon! Watch the clip here!
Her whole world is about to change. Stream the latest #BlackLightning now on The CW App: https://t.co/Vg7XITR9Tr pic.twitter.com/0XIUkTT77w
— Black Lightning (@blacklightning) March 14, 2018
—
Lala is being driven around, and LaWanda is in the back seat next to him. Her spirit is telling him that people think he’s dead, and then questions why he’s letting people drive him home. That if they know where he lives, they can get him when he’s all alone.
“You definitely should kill him right now.”
“Kill my dude?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s driving the car. You want to crash? LaWanda, you crazy.”
“I’m good.”
“I’m just saying, people turn.”
“I said I’m good.”
The driver asks him if he’s okay, because he’s clearly crazy, and he tells him that he’s fine.
—
Jefferson and Anissa are getting ready to track the nuclear energy trail, but Gambi doesn’t want them to go because if he digs into Lady Eve’s death then someone might put two-and-two together and figure out he’s Black Lightning.
Gambi is really against Jefferson and Anissa going out, honing Anissa’s skills, and says that he’ll go out and check out the signal. No one has a bounty on his head. Jefferson tells him no and Gambi pitches a fit and walks out.
He’s going to need to come clean soon because his behavior is so obviously shady it’s unreal.
—
Jefferson and Anissa are out, looking around, when Lynn calls.
She tells him that the powder she found was a vaccine, and it has the same active ingredients as Green Light. Which means someone has been working on Green Light for over thirty years. He tells Lynn to talk to Gambi since he’s been in Freeland that long.
I imagine this means that Green Light is something the ASA has a hand in, and if Gambi doesn’t tell them what he knows, things are about to get really bad.
—
Gambi is at a church, listening to someone sing a hymn. He speaks to a fellow church member, and gets the pep talk he needs.
“Do you believe it’s true? That the good Lord delivers us from our troubles?”
“Yes. I do.”
“He expects us to do our part, but I believe He’s there to help us over the finish line, though sometimes, what we want and what we need are not the same thing.”
—–
Annisa asks her dad when he knew he had powers and how he decided to be Black Lightning and about his relationship with Gambi.
We find out that Gambi trained him, and Jefferson tells Anissa that Gambi wasn’t mad at him earlier but worried. They find the gun used to kill Lady Eve and it comes with a dead body. One of the things they forgot was that bad guys usually tie up all the loose ends and that means “killing the killer”.
Jefferson makes a call to Henderson with the location of the body.
Yo, Henderson. You got a pencil and paper? Hampton Woods, coordinates 33, 47, 84, 43. You’ll find a shallow grave, a body, and the weapon that actually killed Lady Eve. Hey, tell the morgue to hold the body so you can match the wound. You’re welcome. I know you didn’t say thank you. It’s implied in your loud-ass questions.
Anissa asks if Henderson knows that Jeff is Black Lightning and he tells her no. It would put him in a bad position. Then she rips him for his cell phone again.
—
At home, Jennifer is trying to recreate her powers. She closes her eyes and thinks about something and her hand lights up, as do her eyes.
—
Lynn arrives at Gambi’s, looking for help with the Green Light powder/vaccine. When Lynn tells him where the power came from, Gambi looks like a deer in headlights.
He denies knowing anything and cuts her off. That’s when Lynn puts it all together.
“You moved here around the time the vaccine came to Freeland. You never talk about your life before Freeland.”
“No.”
“You never wanted to share anything. We assumed you had your reasons.”
“I did.”
“Gambi, Jefferson trusts you.”
“I know.”
This conversation with Jefferson is going to be bad.
—-
The father/daughter bonding continues as someone comes out into the woods to find the body. Jefferson tells Anissa to stay hidden while he goes and checks this guy out since he obviously intercepted Henderson’s message to cops to get to that area.
The guy picks up the gun and turns it on. It turns red, and Anissa runs to protect her dad just as the gun explodes.
Whoever sent that guy out there knew he was expendable, but that guy sure didn’t.
—–
Jefferson is so proud of Anissa saving him that he’s flaily as he talks to Lynn. It’s adorable! But Lynn has some very bad news and she can’t be happy for him.
She seems to gather herself then she broaches the topic of Gambi.
“You got your sad eyes. What’s going on?”
“I went to see Gambi, like you suggested, to see if he could help me find the source of that vaccine.”
“Yeah.”
“It turns out, he knows more than I thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jefferson, you need to talk to Gambi. Ask him the questions we’ve never asked. To find out who he is and where he came from.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Just go talk to Gambi.”
Jefferson can’t believe that Gambi has been keeping things from him, especially who he might be working for or with. Lynn tells him to go talk to Gambi.
—-
Lala is in the shower, talking to LaWanda again.
He wants to know how he died, and why he got to come back. It doesn’t make sense to him. They share a kiss then LaWanda vanishes into the steam. He looks down at the tattoo of her on his chest and gets back under the spray.
—-
Jefferson shows up at Gambi’s, and it’s obvious that Gambi has been waiting for him to arrive.
Gambi tells him that he was just trying to protect him by keeping secrets from him. Now the only way he can protect him is to tell him everything…
It turns out this is some really screwed up stuff, and Gambi is indirectly responsible for Jefferson’s dad’s murder. So, Gambi took Jefferson under his wing because he felt responsible and wanted to protect him.
“Thirty years ago, I came to Freeland as an agent for a government organization called the ASA. They were conducting an experiment in Freeland, giving the people a vaccine to make them passive and keep them docile in what was a very politically-explosive environment. But their vaccine inadvertently created metahumans. People with special powers. And it was my job to find them. But when I realized that the ASA’s vaccine was killing children I leaked the information to your father and his investigation got him killed.”
“Murdered. My father was murdered.”
“Yes, he was.”
“And you turned me into Black Lightning?”
“No. I know it doesn’t make what I’ve done better, but I had nothing to do with that experiment. As soon as I realized that you had powers, Alvin’s kid, I knew I could never let them get you. And so all these years, I’ve tried to protect you the best I could. But now…”
“But now, what?”
“I can’t anymore. Martin Proctor the head of the ASA for this area, is looking for you, and I can’t stop him. If you use your powers or you go out in the suit, he will find you, and they will kill you. And they will find Anissa and they will kill her, too. I’m sorry, Jefferson, but you have to stop being Black Lightning.”
“Stay away from me.”
This type of betrayal causes Jefferson’s powers to come out full force, and he tells Gambi to stay away from him and his family.
—-
Jennifer goes to Anissa because she needs someone to talk to, and the first thing Anissa assumes is that she’s pregnant.
That’s when Jennifer shows her the phone and tells her that she did that with her own hand.
Anissa has no words, but we know she’s not going to keep Jennifer in the dark for long.
Black Lightning airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW!