Black Lightning‘s Series Finale Had Absolutely Zero Chill and No Heat

Despite the fact thatBlack Lightningnever really suffer a hazard to in full gain from the kind of interconnected , multiversal - hopping madcapsthat the CW ’s other comic book shows enjoy , it spend four season cut up out a distinct space on the connection where Black superheroes could stand front and center as the focus of their own stories . Last nighttime , it had its swan birdcall in “ The Book of Resurrection : Chapter Two : Closure . ”

From the very outset , Black Lightning used its Hero of Alexandria and the urban center ofFreelandto harness the sort of level about systemic , anti - Black racism that are every bit as much a part of American history as comical Quran themselves . In doing so , Salim Akil ’s series brought its DC characters to life with a purpose beyond contiguous amusement . Though the series arrived in 2017 already comfortable in that mode of societal justice - focalize storytelling , it ’s been interesting to observe other series like Lovecraft Country andThe Falcon and the Winter Soldierfollow suit in its wake . Black Lightning ’s series finalefeels very much like a via media between the Godhead ’ vision for what might have been in computer memory for the Pierce family , and the world that the CW ’s moved on from Freeland ’s heroes . After a generally uneven time of year in which turf wars between the 100 mob and constabulary once again became the most urgent risk in Freeland , “ Closure ” wrapped things up with an hour of convenient , and ultimately dissatisfactory , sendoffs for characters who really deserved better .

The finis opened with team Black Lightning think Jefferson Pierce ( Cress Williams ) to be quite dead . While his crime syndicate was gutted at the approximation , his decease is preface so quickly and dramatically that it ’s voiceless to be very invest in it because — like most amusing account book stories — it ’s intelligibly not what it seems . Even though the Freeland law ’s new weapons void metahuman powerfulness , the idea that Tobias Whale ( Marvin Jones III ) finally succeeded in killing Black Lighting is enough to convince Anissa ( Nafessa Williams ) and JJ ( Jennifer ’s fresh identicalness , and played by Laura Kariuki , which we ’ll get to more of shortly ) to bound into action for retaliation . With the police force ’s meta - blocking emitter still up and running , the sister , even with the help of Grace Choi ( Chantal Thuy ) do n’t stand a opportunity against the cops ’ weapon system , but Gambi ( James Remar ) reason he might be capable to shut it all down if they move rapidly and cleverly . This being Black Lightning ’s series finale , it would have made horse sense for the show to try and focus a turn more on a specific set of characters rather than trying to spread itself thinly across an raiment of so - so subplots , but in “ Closure , ” everybody eat , albeit to vary degrees of narrative success and effectiveness as big sendoffs .

Jefferson Pierce speaking with the ghost of his father.

Jefferson Pierce speaking with the ghost of his father.Screenshot: The CW

One of the foreign things to total out of this past time of year was actress China Ann McClain ’s sudden exit from the serial publication , and Jennifer being transform into “ JJ ” after exploding in the Earth ’s ionosphere and subsequently find a new forcible form . It never felt like Black Lightning had the time or distance to give the Jennifer / JJ arc the attention it authentically needed to feel like an interesting , constituent maturation for her character , but the coda attempts to wind thing up by fuddle yet another twist in the mix . Though the show had already gone to great lengths to ground that the two were the same person , the finale give away that when Jefferson first bring in the dispersed free energy he believe to be his girl back down to Earth ’s control surface , what he was actually deport was another entity made of vestal energy . After JJ make a trip back up to reload her powers , she arrives on Earth and has a sudden fit as , up in the ionosphere , the real Jennifer wills herself back into a physical form and have a beeline for her imposter . Lovely as it is to see McClain back in Black Lightning , everything about JJ and Jennifer ’s confrontation feels like a rushed afterthought that was n’t the original plan , but was what worked for the sake of the finale . As JJ explain how , in her original form , she envied physical beings who were subject of feeling , “ Closure ” weakly suggest that the beast may have the upper hand over her human opposite number .

Elsewhere in the metropolis , taking a series of vigour blasts straight to the dresser nearly kills Anissa , and elsewhere still , Jefferson struggle to violate costless from the coffin Tobias buried him alive in . The story switch into schmaltz gear as all of the Pierces mull over on how far they ’ve come as they contemplate their respective deaths ; all Jefferson ever unfeignedly wanted was to do right by his city and his syndicate , and in truth , that ’s exactly what he did , false destruction notwithstanding . Whether it ’s because of the emotional intensity of it all or because hearing the dead recently became a thing for the hero is n’t clear , but when his father ’s voice begins speaking in his oral sex , Jefferson realizes he can delineate energy from the irradiated promethium fund in the Earth around him .

“ Closure ” briefly feels as if it ’s arrive at its cheesy peak as Jefferson explodes out of his grave and Jennifer somehow just make up one’s mind to resorb her energy doppelganger no trouble , no muss . But the serial publication really exceed itself just moments later as Police Chief Lopez ( Melissa De Sousa ) , a human juiced up with man-made metahuman abilities , go mad with power by suck up electrical energy from Freeland ’s generators . Jennifer and Lopez ’s final battle is supposed to be a big bargain , but from a visual perspective it land somewhere between the memes of Kamala Harris as a fuzz and gifs of Emperor Palpatine shot lightning from his fingertips . Because there ’s so much going on in “ Closure , ” though , the battle does n’t really get a chance to be much more than a so - so lightshow before the episode moves on . Similarly , the “ resurrected ” Black Lightning and Tobias ’ final showdown goes through all the motions you ’d expect from a meaning series here and now , but it ends up feeling more than anticlimactic as Tobias is thrown from a window and stake on a spike . As much of a anti-Semite threat to society as Tobias was from Black Lightning ’s very first episode , his death here palpate like something Jefferson probably should have considered long before this dot given just how bad things got in Freeland up to the closing curtain .

James Remar as Peter Gambi.

James Remar as Peter Gambi.Screenshot: The CW

you may see from the way that Khalil / Painkiller ( Jordan Calloway ) were also brought back in for the closer how there were potential hopes for thePainkiller spinoff seriesto potentially revisit his and Jennifer ’s relationship , specially with JJ out of the depiction . But the CW decidingnot to move forwardwith Painkiller mean that “ Closure ” and its erasure of Khalil ’s memory of the Pierce family are the end of his tale in the larger Arrowverse . By the closing moments of the serial finis , it ’s heavy not to feel like you ’ve just sat through a relatively mediocre episode of Black Lightning , but the unfortunate thing is that this is how the Pierce ’ story close . At least for now .

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Police Chief Lopez about to turn on her fellow cops.