Black Lightning episode 5: And Then The Devil Brought Plague: The Book Of Green Light – 3 things we learned
By Buckie Wells
Episode 5 of Black Lightning gave us a lot of new info, so here are 3 things we learned from “And Then The Devil Brought Plague: The Book Of Green Light.”
Each episode of Black Lightning packs a considerable amount of narrative into its 40-something minute episodes. Last night, Jennifer broke a girl’s wrist, which elicited a Mr. Incredible-like response from Jefferson. Meanwhile, her sister Anissa donned a super colorful latex suit … to go down to her grandfather’s storage unit. While it was a fun callback to her costume in the Outsiders comics, it was a strange outfit to pick if she was trying to be low-key.
More importantly, the episode ended with a confrontation between Tobias Whale’s right hand man, Joey Toledo, and Black Lightning that ultimately ended with Black Lightning running out of juice. Unfortunately, Joey escaped with the promise that his boss would get revenge on Black Lightning soon.
Last week, I asked for more information about both Gambi and Tobias, and this week’s episode delivered. Here are the three most important things we learned.
Black Lightning — “And Then the Devil Brought the Plague: The Book of Green Light” — Image BLK105a_0139.jpg — Pictured: James Remar as Gambi — Photo: Richard Ducree/The CW — © 2018 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
Diving into Tobias Whale’s childhood
In “And Then The Devil Brought Plague: The Book Of Green Light,” Tobias tried to confront a few of his past demons, including his relationship with his abusive father. Because of his albinism, Eldridge bullied Tobias throughout his entire childhood. By the end of the episode, Tobias decided the best way to get over this would be to paralyze his father. Since Tobias also doesn’t age, thanks to a special serum he drinks, his trauma might be one of his few lingering weaknesses.
Not including sunlight, I guess.
The many, many secrets of Gambi
Early in the episode, Tobias visited the tailor shop to have a short conversation with Gambi. Although Gambi’s connection to Black Lightning clearly isn’t a secret, Tobias revealed his connection to the ASA, which explains why Gambi is “privy to all sorts of information.”
Still, we haven’t learned why Gambi works with Black Lightning or how he pays for all the technology in his lair. This week, he added a flight modification to the suit. He clearly has some engineering knowledge as well, so I’m more interested in understanding Gambi’s motivations than anyone else’s at this point.
Especially since he isn’t as forthright with Black Lightning as he should be.
Alvin Pierce, journalist extraordinaire
In addition to learning about Tobias’ father, we also learned about Jefferson’s father, Alvin Pierce. Prior to his death, he was working on an expose on the whereabouts of missing kids and various experiments they’d undergone. Assuming he was looking into metahuman projects, his research eventually led to his murder before any articles were published.
Thanks to an online video that name dropped the Legionnaires, Jennifer began digging into her grandfather’s research and found some sort of unidentified substance in his storage locker. There’s little to go on at this point, but it does make one wonder about the exact origins of Black Lightning’s power.
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Gambi appears to understand how Black Lightning’s power can be manipulated, so what if he and Alvin were partners in the project that created several metahumans? Or something along those lines. Alvin was a reporter and Gambi is but a simple tailor, but until we know the exact nature of Gambi’s role in Jefferson’s life, I’m going to assume he holds a much more nefarious past than we realize.
Black Lightning takes a brief hiatus but returns on Feb. 27. Don’t forget to check back for our weekly recap and review right here on Culturess.