As I stated after the pilot episode, Black Lightning was not going to be an origin story for Jefferson Pierce, but instead, for his daughters who like their father, have superpowers. We have been seeing his eldest daughter Anissa discover her powers and even start becoming a vigilante on her own. Last week topped it off with her father confronting her and to the audience’s surprise face off against each other (they didn’t know they were fighting each other thanks to vigilante masks). Now the cat is out the bag, and Jefferson and his daughter will need to have a big discussion about where to go from here.
After Anissa has fully recovered from fighting her old man, she’s first surprised (and a little angry) that her father who has preached nonviolence her whole life has been moonlighting as Freeland’s biggest hero since she was a child, and he’s being a little hypocritical telling her not to do what he does. She wants to carry on the family tradition and the who can fight crime as father and daughter. Both Jefferson and Lynn are not having that.
Lynn is being held under the watchful eye of Gambi until her assailants can be found and brought to justice. Jefferson thinks that someone may know who he is and wants to keep her safe. However, he’s not too trusting of Gambi, and with good reason. We know that Gambi has been lying to Jefferson about Tobias still being alive, and he also has a relationship with Lady Eve, meaning that Gambi may be just as dirty as the people Jefferson is trying to stop. Gambi tells Jefferson that he kept Tobias a secret as he knows that Jefferson will try and kill him, and in effect, destroy a piece of his soul by crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed. But we know there’s more than what Gambi is letting on.
Gambi pays a visit to Lady Eve, later on, to help initiate a turf war between her as Tobias. He tells her that Tobias is supposed to be laying low, but is instead causing all sorts of hell throughout the city, and even opening a club where he will be in plain sight, something that is also bad for business. Eve states that he’s one of her top earners and she wouldn’t want to stop that gravy train. She does give Gambi the green light to kill his number two Toledo to send a message. Something that Gambi willingly does. We finally see him get his hands dirty as he takes out Toledo and his men. As he leaves Eve’s calling card, this causes Tobias to become angry. Already frustrated that her new drug Green Light is killing people (and dead addicts can’t buy more drugs), Tobias sets in motion his own plan for taking the fight to Eve.
Both Lynn and Jefferson warn Anissa about the downside of being a superhero. Lynn confesses to her daughter that Black Lightning is the real reason that she and Jefferson split up. She tells her daughter that she can’t have a meaningful relationship if she does this, and she could die. Jefferson tells her that her investigation into his father’s (and her grandfather’s) death will cause people to get in the crosshairs. Turns out, it’s too late as the newspaper editor who gave her the information about the genetic testing turns up dead. This causes her to break down and cry in her father’s arms. Lynn talks with Jefferson and tells him that their daughter is hard-headed and it’s better that he’s by her side protecting her. He tells her later that he will help train her and the two will become vigilantes together. Gambi is even going to make her a suit.
Knowing that Tobias has a club opening up, Jefferson decides that now is the time to take him down and get justice for his dead father. Planning on ambushing Tobias as his own club, Jefferson almost succeeds in killing him. However, Tobias just had too many men. In the scuffle, a stray bullet hits Tobias’ sister who dies with Jefferson trying to revive her. Sometimes there are “innocent” bystanders (his sister is by no means innocent, but not his intended target). At the same time, Tobias had his own plan in motion. A group of his men goes to Lady Eve’s headquarters and a shootout commences. However, they are not using bullets to take her on, they are using high-powered “lightning guns” during the shootout. Lady Eve manages to fend off most of them, but one of Tobias’ men manages to shoot her and fry her with the weapon (bye Jill Scott). Because of the electric nature of the guns, the police now think that Black Lightning is the culprit. As a result, Tobias has managed to frame Jefferson and since Lady Eve’s criminal activities were not known, in the eyes of the public, he just murdered an innocent woman. Jefferson lost his only friend in the police force as a result.
The cherry on top of the episode though, is the return of LaLa. The member of the One Hundred from early episodes who Tobias killed wakes up in a hotel room to have a vision of Lawanda (the poor mother LaLa killed) asking him if he believed in the power of resurrection before disappearing into a tattoo on his chest of her. Looks like LaLa’s back!
Next week, Jefferson starts training his daughter, and LaLa comes back on the scene!
