1x07 I Am.

[7.3/10] I’ll be honest. I don’t know quite what to make of this one. I like the themes of empowerment here. It connects to the idea in episode 2, where Titus gives the parable of God allowing Adam to name things, and that being a form of power. Here, Hippolyta is given the chance to name herself, and by extension, to define herself and empower herself. That’s a cool notion.

But the execution is...confusing? I kind of like it! I like weird, impressionistic things that I don’t understand. Still, the episode did leave me feeling like I wanted more out of it, and maybe less of other things.

Again, I wish the show would just commit to telling one-off stories, but that ship has clearly sailed. A lot of the non-Hippolyta material here feels disconnected or outright extraneous. Tic finding someone who knew his mom’s family and discovering he has a portentous birthmark is fine, but seems random. Leti and Ruby reconnecting and reconciling, with the prospect that they may nevertheless be playing for different teams is nice, but again, feels more like seedwork than anything so compelling right now.

Hippolyta’s story is just kind of...weird though? It feels like a series of homages to things I’m only faintly aware of. That leads to a sense of disorientation, but it’s also kind of exhilarating, and works well to situate the viewer with the character. Her trip across one of the “Many Worlds” to a futuristic spaceship and a scene that looks like something out of the music video for “What’s It Gonna Be” is a little jarring, but once she starts naming herself and hopping worlds more deliberately, business picks up.

For one thing, we see all the intelligence she displays that’s otherwise been squelched or unfed up to this point, discovering how to open the orrery and making the calculations necessary to use the machine at Titus’s observatory. It’s a nice way to show she’s full of untapped potential.

Her interlude dancing in Paris with Josephine Baker was a trip though! The sequence there is so fun, but I love the epiphany that comes at the end with it. Her exchange with Josephine is a touch overwritten, but I really like the notion of Hippolyta discovering a world of possibility in a freer society that she hadn’t even conceptualized before. It reflects the real experiences of black soldiers stationed in Paris during war who found themselves more accepted there than in the places they come from.

The Afro-Spartan fight against a horde of what seem to be Civil War soldiers was, again, weird, but also rousing in its way. Watching Hippolyta find her strength, go out and kick ass like an action hero, and give a Braveheart speech about casting off the shackles of oppression and proving what women like them are capable of is empowering. The action scenes are well-shot and appropriately bloody for HBO, and it’s a cool vignette overall.

And yet, I like the intimacy of her reconnecting with Uncle George, joyful in the reunion but also angry at how he made her feel smaller and kept her shrinking. She can voice that frustration now in a way she couldn’t before, noting the curiosity inside her that he admits he snuffed rather than fostered because he wanted to have her at home waiting for him. I like it because George clearly loves his wife, but it reflects how those sorts of patriarchal structures and expectations can weigh people down even in loving relationships.

But then she ascends and becomes Hippolyta the Discoverer. It’s a cool, retro 1950s futurist mood, full of bubble helmets and ringed skirts and other visions of what people thought tomorrow had in store seventy years ago. It’s some great production design, and a place where the show’s often less-than-convincing effects work for the unreality of the moment. Despite that curiosity and achievement feted, Hippolyta decides to go back, for her daughter, even as she wonders whether a version of herself this big, so full of life and meaning, can even fit in her old home. That’s heartening, and makes me wonder who she’ll be when she returns.

Overall, this one threw me for a loop, but maybe in a good way? It’s an out there episode, but out there is good, and the message and story of empowerment at the center of it boosts it like hell.