Black Lightning S2 Ep. 6 Quick Thoughts

This week's episode of Black Lightning was by far one of my favorites of the new season. Getting to see Anissa spotlighted on her own solo mission while expanding the world and lore surrounding Freeland was refreshing to see. These are the types of episodes that reminds me how Black Lightning, unlike other shows, does a fantastic job at taking its time to carefully flesh out its "comicbooky" elements while prioritizing deep character development first. Instead of constantly tossing out metahuman villains at the screen week to week, the show patiently sprinkles them into the season at the right place and time spotlighting each individual as a fully three dimensional character with their own interesting tale to tell. In other words, most of the time, metas are not just special FX to throw at our heroes, but story arcs with their own genuine narrative weight to progress our characters forward.

On The Flash or Supergirl, The Looker character introduced during this episode would've more than likely been some random forgettable super powered baddie for the hero to defeat at the end of the day...the end. On Black Lightning however, The Looker so far is a fascinating new antagonist that has her own piece of world/lore building that enriches the show’s central setting of Freeland. There is a strong sense of historical dominance that surrounds this mysterious woman (without giving any major spoilers away here) making me absolutely psyched to learn more about her and see where they take her down the line.

We also witness our first major step being taken with Khalil's redemption arc centering around a highly entertaining and absolutely brutal fight scene with Tobias Whale. Yikes! Talk about a beat down. We've all been waiting to see this fight go down for ages now and this episode did not disappoint whatsoever in delivering it. There are obviously other points that I didn't bring up here such as Lynn’s depression over the several lost children as well as Gambi’s current situation that I'll save for the discussion with readers.

A blonde haired caucasian woman in a fancy attire sipping tea always seems to point to trouble in countless of stories. Why exactly is that?

Overall, as I mentioned earlier, this was definitely one of my favorite episodes of the new season thus far. However, there was a slightly overstuffed feeling that I picked up on here regarding the various plot points being juggled around in this episode. It almost felt as though the writers shoved in certain character points in order to keep their momentum going, yet in reality, these particular segments could've easily been cut down and saved for a future episode. Either way, I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing where the writers take these intriguing new arcs while I patiently count down the days to the big "Elseworlds Crossover Event".

Episode Rating: 9/10