1x10 Full Circle

[6.4/10] The frame story, for lack of a better term, has consistently been the weakest part of Lovecraft Country. Unfortunately, this ending is basically all frame story. That’s understandable. It’s natural that the show is going to try to tie off all its loose ends and complete the season arc here.

But it doesn’t come together in a natural or compelling way. The episode has to wrap up tons of storylines for all of its characters that got a more fulsome hearing in other episodes. It also has to bring all the magical rumblings involving the Braithewhites and Tic’s family and everything else together in a single hour. That requires a lot of plot mechanics, and basically disrupts the pacing, the structure, and the momentum in the episode. Everything, every character more or less, gets the short shrift, and very little is explained or built to in a satisfying manner.

But hey! I liked the “Sh Boom” scene in the car! For however much this finale is just a cavalcade of long overly-florid oratories and unavailing ad hoc magical whatever, that’s a very human moment. A very blended family, piling into the car together, in a very tense and potentially deadly situation, only to all sing and jam together over an infectious tune? That’s something, and it’s practically the only moment in the episode that lands as strongly as it should.

The rest is a combination of streams of hollow maxims about family and faith that don’t have the emotional impact intended, in addition to a bunch of deus ex machina magic contrivance that doesn’t feel adequately established or built to. I swear the middle chunk of the episode is just a nonstop parade of speeches. Every scene is just one character monologuing to another about whatever the theme of the moment is, and it becomes truly exhausting after a while.

A lot of these scenes pay off big things that show devoted whole episodes to: Tic’s relationship with Ji-Ah, Hippolyta’s connection to her daughter, and so on and so on. Then, it’s just “boom, that’s done now” after a couple paragraphs’ worth of emotional exposition. It’s a really unsatisfying approach, squandering a lot of the goodwill that the show’s built up to this point.

The same goes for all the magical goings-on. This sort of thing is why I tend to gravitate away from shows with magic at the center. Inevitably, the climax of these types of stories ends up coming down to “We just have to use a bigger/deeper/stronger magic than the villain is using!” rather than something that requires any real ingenuity or creativity.

This is no exception. The best we get is a “reverse the polarity” spell for Christina’s magic. Okay, I guess? The show never really set that up or suggested this magic works that way. The best it does is suggest in this episode that they need to create some sort of binding spell to stop Christina, leading to a scavenger hunt for human tissue from her and Titus. There’s a mild twist when Ruby’s loyalty is confirmed in lethal terms and we realize that Christina has assumed her form, but even that was fairly predictable and made me wish we got more of Ruby’s story/ending than the rushed glimpses we got.

So of course, everyone plays their part. Tic de facto sacrifices himself for a better future for his family and his community. Leti learns the spell to make it happen, doing her part after fighting the woman who killed her sister. Ji-Ah ends up being key as she can join Tic and Christina with her tails which is apparently a way to manage the tissue combination necessary. The rest of the crew...can fight townspeople? Sure? Dee can make friends with Tic and Leti’s devil dog and crush Christina with her Skywalker robot arm? Uh...okay? So much of this feels random, convenient, or just rushed. The season arc for this show and the build to it has been weak for a while, and its ending doesn't make the path there any better in hindsight.

The best you can say is that the ending works on a thematic level. There’s something piercing about the notion of generational black trauma giving way to black power. The symbolism when Tic and Leti gather with their ancestors and use their shared strength to avenge their abusers and empower their survivors is potent. The notion of our heroes seizing power from the people who’ve held them and their community down so that they can make a better world for their children is a strong one. Those ideas just aren’t supported well by the in-universe plot mechanics or the bevy of drippy oratories meant to get us there.

On the whole, I’m still left wishing that Lovecraft Country was an anthology with ten, only loosely-connected tales rather than this hybrid standalone/overarching plot method. The acting is still good, and the ideas at play are still strong, and the intra-episode writing is often quite good as well. But this show is, unfortunately, anchored around longform storytelling, and never proved itself terribly good at it. In the end, I’d recommend plenty of the series’s individual episodes, but I’d have a tough time recommending the show as a whole.